Pandemic Dreams 2021

Fri, 13 Jun 2025 03:32:40 GMT

I envisaged Pandemic Dreams as a show that would reflect upon Covid and the many different responses to the constraints that we experienced. I was then presented with the possibility of working with students from a local middle school who attended a weekly class at The Delaware Contemporary.

The idea of including perspectives from a group several generations removed from my own was immediately appealing and so we set to work. By this stage, I had produced 35 larger pieces (24” x 30”) and was beginning work on a series of smaller roundels that would be interspersed among them; my idea was that the students would experiment with the roundel form and the most successful ones would become parts of the show.

I first explained to them the concept of the show, asking them for their memories of Covid and the ways in which our behavior had been altered by isolation; I also asked them to think of how reality itself had seemed dream-like and to think of how such an idea might be communicated through collage and illustration and within the dimensions of a roundel. And with that we started. The two teachers of the class had stockpiled a trove of magazines and other paper materials that the students could examine, cutting out anything that seemed engaging; as they did so, themes began to emerge and any teaching was entirely task-oriented and conversational. At the end of each session, students placed work-in-progress and materials they had yet to use in named boxes that they would use in subsequent weeks.

Over the six weeks that ensued, the group produced a significant number of the roundels so that when it came time to pick the ones that would be parts of the show, we had more than enough to choose from. We chose the ones that made the most of the form and also had specific points to make. In hanging the show, we also tried to position the roundels in such a way that they connected with other pieces around them, either technically, thematically or in terms of color.

I have always believed that collaboration is key to our being educated in the arts and this experience exemplified that contention. Not only was I able to offer my advice to these talented and invested young people, but they contributed to the success of the show by developing their own distinct visions of a phenomenon that we all experienced but in distinct and specific ways. That they were able to do so through the medium of collage was not surprising. Almost any other artistic technique would have required lengthier study whereas collage is an invitation to cut and paste.

The development of an eye for design comes with the doing, as do the compositional skills. By the end of the few weeks that we worked together, some of the students had developed a sophisticated awareness of how to frame word and image into a unified whole. It was a privilege to work with and learn from them.

Interpreting Trappings 2021 by Hugh Atkins

Mon, 26 May 2025 02:31:05 GMT

Read what the artist says about Trappings

The only two moments of color in Trappings are the two faces, one of an African-American woman and one of an Asian-American woman. Both are entrapped by linear forces that try but fail to hide their uncompromising gaze. The corner pieces show grids that are attempts at containment that are incomplete or broken, while the central boxes in the lower part of the picture list great African- and Asian-American authors advancing into the central image, headed by a shard that implies the beginning of the end of racial intolerance.

The picture was inspired by attacks on Asian women during Covid and the senseless death of

Breonna Taylor.

The collaged elements were taken from pictures of skyscrapers, ship’s rigging and canoes. The rest of the illustration is pen and ink. My work tends to involve just such a mix of techniques, in part because of my being drawn to collage through the writing of a journal that I had maintained for thirty years although latterly it had become increasingly pictorial. This led me to pasting images into designs on deconstructed grocery bags, but they would always incorporate drawn and painted elements also. As I graduated to more conventional surfaces, I continued to experiment with mixed media and particularly with the surfaces of the works I produce.

I tend not to use PhotoShop or other computer aids, preferring to focus on a more hands-on approach that derives in part from my background in directing for the stage. When I used to contemplate mounting a dramatic production, I would first try to imagine a mood for the piece, just as I do now when envisaging image and color for a picture. I would begin rehearsals with a vision of how they would proceed, but I learned quickly that a formulaic approach would not work; there needed to be room for improvisation and for the accidents that all artists know will occur.

The pieces that I used in Trappings were the results of several such accidents. I had thought of the idea of trapped faces but I couldn't find images that suggested the idea rather than making it obvious. I was still thinking that the piece would be in color when I came across a series of black and white photographs of skyscrapers and I realized that arranging them at angles could create a claustrophobic atmosphere that would create a notion of imprisonment.

The divisions between windows made me think of ship's rigging, but I was left with the need for a final key image. By this stage, I had decided that the dominant colors would be black and white, so that determination focused the search. When I found the picture of the canoes, I was struck by the force of the image, but, as so often with collage, only when I cut them out and played with them did I discover how to use them. Using them perpendicularly as opposed to resting on a Pacific beach turned them into a sinister force rather than a benevolent one.

hugh-atkins

Pandemic Dreams 2021

Interpreting Trappings 2021 by Hugh Atkins

Read what the artist says about Trappings