Mara Ellsworth

It’s quiet and eerie here in quarantine on Plum Island, Massachusetts. I spend my days making art that reflects the new reality- expressionless face masked strangers, Twilight Zone-like ventures to the grocery store, the dark incessant soundtrack of the media. I escape by taking long walks along the beach. Nature is intensely alive here. I fill my pockets with the crusty carapaces of sea creatures strewn across the shore. I can't help but also see these marine remnants through the lens of the pandemic. They are the victims, the multitudes hurled by the ferocious force of the waves.  

My medium is stark white chalk on black paper, the simplest, most accessible materials available to me now. I feel an urgency to respond to the circumstances. The first week of quarantine, I tried to continue my previous exploration of color-saturated erotica but hit a wall, blocked by a complete sense of disconnect.  My pre-COVID work feels irrelevant.  

My current plan is to appropriate images from daily pandemic life, then exaggerate them to reflect the current zeitgeist. Perhaps, this is too contrived but I’ll only know if I try. I want to represent the strange dance of bodies avoiding each other in public places, the empty shelves at the grocery store, the omnipresent invisible biological enemy, and the barrage of strident public health messages with no end in sight. I include double images of figures, like avatars helping us navigate through the minefield of this virulent virus.