Items

• 
  2019

  Men In The Mirror

  These are all doodles I made during the pandemic when I felt myself crashing, self-sabotaging, or just critical condition emotionally. The drawing on the left is the most recent drawing I made. It shows that I have a heart that is depressed and a mind that is rotting away with a confused face. In the background, you also see the word help radiate from me. This symbolizes how I feel about my education. I feel like, during the pandemic, I'm not able to bounce ideas back and forth on my own, so being alone, I get lost and overcrowded. The one on the top right also expresses my view of myself. It shows that I have a bright flame that either gets drowned with depression or fueled with anger. This relates to the pandemic because when everything got shut down, I Felt very divided with what I was doing and who I was. Lastly, the bottom right picture shows me at a table looking at my hands with a bowl of fruit and pills. This was drawn about halfway through my fall 2020 semester because I have focused on medication. Still, they made me also feel emotionless and more confused about my own personal identity and where my heart was with my art if I can't express it. After this drawing, I became numb and ended up not doing most of my finals and leaving me empty for a while during winter break. The only thing that got me out was seeing my family again after seven months of not really seeing anyone close to me. I also stopped taking meds and had a withdrawal effect at the begging of my spring semester. Now I'm just trying to keep my head up to return to normalcy and see my friends that closely monitored me before knowing how I get affected by certain things.
• 
  2020-05-08

  Physically Distanced Line-up outside LCBO (Liquor Control Board of Ontario)

  A line of people queue using tape lines on the sidewalk 2 meters apart in front of the LCBO location at the Ottawa Trainyards. Those retail spaces allowed to open are limited in the number of people they can hold at one time to permit physical distancing, meaning any additional shoppers must wait outside for other customers to leave. Despite some backlash liquor stores were listed as essential businesses by the province of Ontario from the beginning of the state of emergency in late March. This was in acknowledgement of that fact that there are those within Ontario society with a physical dependency on alcohol and if their access was restricted it might result in an unnecessary strain on the health care system. Not only would time and resources be used if an individual required medical assistance due to withdrawal, they might also be unnecessarily exposed to the virus while seeking treatment. Some industry services have been limited, however; the Beer Store, the only store which buys back empty bottles, is no longer doing so. This is a blow to those who collect bottles on the street or from recycling bins as an income.