Hunger Strike (No Show) Exhibition Catalogue

Exhibition Catalogue

My name is John Sheridan. I am a long time Bay Area artist and activist. The idea of an art exhibition featuring Covid-19 related art occurred to me while I was in the middle of a long 23 day Hunger Strike from July 11 August 3, 2020.

I refused food for 23 days to protest the lack of Universal Covid-19 testing and tracing, and to focus public attention to this criminal oversight that was allowing the virus to spread through the country. It was clear from very early in the pandemic that some countries, notably South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam and New Zealand had quickly moved to crush the spread of the virus to their populations. They instituted widespread testing, closing of borders and social tracing. The United States on the other hand - like some tragic, helpless, apocalyptic giant - allowed the virus to begin to spread unchecked and to devastate its people.

A small few epidemiologists and academics such as Ashish Jha, Paul Romer and some others sounded the alarm that the US would not defeat the virus unless it put itself on a war footing and implemented a nationwide free universal testing and tracing program to find all of us who were infectious. That is why a national program is necessary - to test everyone multiple times and if one tests positive, their close associates need also to be tested and if necessary quarantined for 14 days. This would largely stop the spread of the virus IN ABOUT A MONTH or so. It would only cost some money.

This preamble explains what we need to do - but we are not doing. The President of the United States has spent months denying the existence of a pandemic, then denying it was dangerous, then denying that it would continue, all the while refusing to engage the enormous resources of the US government and industry to test and find all of us who may be infectious and to isolate them, at government expense. Until even he tested positive for the virus.

The horrifying results are well over 200,000 people dead in the United States with many more made ill, and many more deaths to come. This spread has partially shut down the economy, since there is no national plan on what to do, which has resulted in worse-than-Depression-era job loss with nearly 11 MILLION people still out of work since March of 2020. As always, people of color are dying more often and are recovering their jobs at a slower pace than white Americans.

In the midst of a massive economic lockdown and paralysis, it was very difficult for me to do anything. My understanding of the need for Universal Testing and Tracing led me to desperately try to imagine what one

person could do to try to focus attention on the need for universal testing and tracing. But I like millions was locked down, relegated mostly to my home.

My personal sense of despair, while knowing that there was a solution to the pandemic, led me in June to conclude that if I could "do" nothing, then I would really do nothing - I would not eat. A Hunger Strike was the one thing I could do as an individual and try to bring public attention to this solution of universal testing and tracing.

So I began to prepare to stop eating - leaving the length of time open-ended even to myself. I gathered up all of the contacts to major and local media that I could, studied hunger strikers of the past such as Cesar Chavez, Dick Gregory, Mahatma Gandhi and the brave Suffragists in England, among others.

After much study and preparation I began the Strike late Saturday July 11 and continued it one day at a time, for 23 grueling and very difficult days, all the way until August 3. It was during this intense time I conceived of an art exhibit of Covid-related art and began outreach to all of the art venues I could find in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Out of a list of over 100 art galleries and other spaces devoted to art - only 5 venues even responded. It seems as in everything the Bay Area is not as progressive as it likes to pretend itself to be.

But on Day 17 of my hunger strike, one response I did receive was from Jean Marie Durant, President of the Board of the Oakland Art Murmur. She was very supportive of my goal of both raising awareness that we have a solution to the pandemic as well as tying this to create an exhibition of Covid-related artwork. She put me in touch with Caroline Stern of Deco Arts in Oakland who was willing to share her exhibition space for an exhibit.

While any sane person realizes the likelihood of one person's hunger strike and one exhibition of art related to the Covid pandemic is not going to overturn the mass of confusion, ignorance or even lack of caring of the public at large or our government, we are proceeding in the spirit that the future is not yet written, that a few people can make a change and make a difference. And that we have to try.

The first step was a hunger strike, by one person.

Followed by an exhibit to raise awareness put on by a few more of us. There is still a need to change the course the society is on - in order to stop the suffering and to save lives that will otherwise needlessly, cynically and criminally be lost. We hope to spread the word that we have a solution - Universal Testing and Tracing but we must organize to demand it be implemented, politics be damned.

Jacqueline Cooper

"The Second Biggest Lie in the World" 2020. Acrylic, watercolor, spray paint on paper, 72" x 48" $400 Artistʼs statement: How Covid 19 has affected my Art I have been working as a Social Worker from home since March 7 th , 2020. I work with seniors so it is unlikely I will return to work on site until the beginning of 2021. I made a conscious decision to start painting, large scale, when I realized I would not be returning to work in situ for a while. In the past I have always worked from photographs, but I decided to channel my interest in Depth Psychology and see where my dreams, in time of Covid 19, would lead me. This work, and subsequent others, are a product of that decision.

The images in the “Second Biggest Lie in the World,” bubbled up from my subconscious which inevitably, had been influenced by media images and rhetoric regarding Covid 19. Nothing in the artwork is accidental, however, I donʼt normally control the plan.

Robert Daulton

Josephine, alive in the time of the covid-19 pandemic 2020. cut paper, 23x23� $600

Bosch's Logman, reversed, executed in the time of the smallpox and plague 2020. cut paper, 23x23� $600 ARTIST STATEMENT: People are more voluminous than the bodies we perceive with our eyes, we exude a wafting plume of bacterias, viruses, pheromones, cells, fumes and motes that envelope us in a cloud at once enticing and compelling, potentially poisonous and deadly. These works present portraiture of persons within that context - personalities among the invisible floating particulate vapor living during eras of contagion.

Annamarta Dostourian

'Hangs in the Balance' a Fitted Face Mask Cover to Secure your N95 (all pieces can be worn separately).

2020. Jeweler's wire, crystal, glass and vintage metal beads, 10 x 10 x 3 in. $65 'Veiled Threat' 2020. Jeweler's wire, vintage brass door pull, lock and skeleton key, crystal and glass beads, 34 x 6.5 x 3 in. $350 Artist Statement: Inspired by the patterns and forms of Armenian and Oriental rugs and ceremonial tradition, I have worked to create a language to highlight our rich and colourful history. As these rugs use geometric patterns to delineate sacred space, I loop and stitch wire, revealing form and emptiness interlaced. My artwork seeks to translate practices of crochet, knitting and weaving into a contemporary practice with industrial materials such as copper, bronze and silver wire as well as constructed experiential spaces.

These two Covid 19 related artworks, are informed by my feeling that this pandemic has created a doorway through which we walk with the entire world. Covid-19 exposes layers of peril. The effects of climate change and structural inequities are no longer abstract, they are now part of our daily lives as unveiled by SARS-CoV-2. It's interesting, the mask, which is a simple way to prevent transmission, has been politicised in the USA, to our great detriment. One could see universal testing, contact tracing and wearing a mask as a way to preserve democracy and the right to live for all.

Mark P. Fisher

A Covid Collage #1, "Hello, Doctor!"

2020. Cut Papers, Gouache, 23 X 17.25 in.

COVID COLLAGE #2, "Red to Blue" 2020. Printed Plastic Sheet, 36 X 48 in.

Covid Collage #3, Heaven 2020. Cut Magazines, Glue, Acrylic Varnish, 10.5 X 14.5 in.

Artist Statement When painting, I try to allay all resistances by arranging marks of pencil and paint into discrete harmonic and enharmonic instants, so as to arrest motifs of the psyche, and forge a personality upon the picture plane. My key tools of investigation are: Narrative, Theatrical Space , and Surface.

Within the daily process of painting, there is the interaction of ideas, materials and the support. While the ideas and materials are fairly mobile and capable of great change, the support surface is less so. It is constant and stable, a physical and metaphorical table. But, beyond its blank stare, it is a seedbed, and a subconscious strata out of which new fruit can emerge. This picture plane, this planar sediment of tacit present, this plinth, wedged between past and future, portends new worlds, and beckons one to bring pencils, brushes and paint to it.

Jeffrey A. Gomez

Maxims (300BCE-2020) Two inkjet prints, 5ʼ x 2ʼ ea. $360 with frames Artist Statement: "Perhaps introspection is the logical outcome of involuntary social isolation. Certainly for myself this has been the case. Introspection for me, however, was less a search within for "my truth," and more a search without for the​ truth. During this search I studied Jenny Holzer's ​Truisms​ (1978-1987), an eight-foot long photostat of eighty-six original “truisms” housed in the permanent collection of The MoMA. Among her many adages are “SELF-AWARENESS CAN BE CRIPPLING,” “ANY SURPLUS IS IMMORAL,” and “BEING SURE OF YOURSELF MEANS YOUʼRE A FOOL.” I also took this time to research the Delphic Maxims, a long set of classical Greek proverbs inscribed into the walls of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi (4th century B.C.). The best known of these were the three etched into its entrance: "KNOW THYSELF,” “NOTHING IN EXCESS,” and “SURETY BRINGS RUIN.” After comparing, contrasting, and dwelling on these texts, I became interested in putting Holzer and the Oracles in dialogue for others by presenting the ancient Maxims as a contemporary text installation, resembling one of Holzerʼs own. The project is an homage to her, who, alongside the Pictures Generation, legitimized pithy truisms and appropriation as means of fine art-making. More importantly, it is an opportunity for all of us to place ancient wisdom under contemporary scrutiny, personal reflection, and artistic contemplation."

Edi Hsu The identity of a city is created from the collection of its individual people. The world around us is beautiful.

There is no need for adjustments and filters. I create artwork that captures the essence of real people during in-person encounters.

My approach utilizes methods of fashion illustration and traditional East Asian painting, which convey the spontaneity of the natural world through minimalistic brushstrokes. I also have an extensive knowledge of human anatomy, color, and clothed-figure illustration. All of these are used to paint people quickly and accurately without asking them to pose, thereby illuminating them during their natural behavior.

I have customized a portable art studio that fits in my pocket, including a pocket-sized watercolor kit and a travel field-journal. Once I complete the field-journals, I self-publish the books to share with the world.

Throughout my life Iʼve immersed myself in racial and cultural diversity. I was born and raised in the South Bay, and the Bay Area region has been an important resource to explore and experience different communities. Once the pandemic hit, I went out and documented the effects of the pandemic on the local community. As the pandemic persists, I continue to live-paint the changes in everyday life, social policy, societal behavior, and an eventual recovery.

“Pandemic Stage I : Essentials Only” “Pandemic Stage II : Recreational Distance” “Pandemic Mandala - 30 Bay Area People” Archival Prints (Original media: Watercolor and Ink) 2020. 18" W x 24" H each $60 each These are real people & real locations, painted-from-life throughout the Bay Area, California. Each painting was completed on-location, documenting the real-life impact of masks, social distancing, and shelter-in-place policies upon local communities.

These pages are part of a more extensive field-journal, filled with live-painted pen & watercolors documenting the COVID-19 Pandemicʼs effects on Bay Area communities, including social policies, societal behavior, PPE, accommodations, and an eventual recovery.

Fernanda Martínez

Layer by Layer 2020. Acrylic on canvas. 24”x30”.

Not for Sale.

Artist Statement: ʻLa capacidad de liberarnos repentinamente de nosotros mismos y comprender así nuestra conexión con el mundoʼ.

Because pain is the universal constant of life, the opportunities to grow from the pain are constant in life. All that is required from us is that we donʼt numb it. Creating in times of covid reminded me the importance of being present and to not look away. Finding the value and the meaning in every day is the most challenging part of life thus art is an act of courage and layer by layer we pursue our freedom.

Danny Neece

"Pandemic" 2020. 13x19 Giclee Print, original art created in watercolor and ink. $200

Statement: The art that I created is my direct response to my experience living during an unprecedented time. It is unsettling, scary, and quite challenging. My intention was to create confusion and hysteria on paper.