Throughout the Fall 2020 semester, I remained at home due to concerns about COVID, public health safety, and irresponsible roommates. This decision left me in my childhood bedroom, taking classes in a completely new format, 800 miles away from my best friends, witnessing deaths continue to rise as we get cheated and betrayed by our government’s response to a pandemic. For my Senior Studio (ArtDes401) course, I create daily observational sketches of a Japanese anemone flower in our garden. 

As an artist, I am constantly taught to ‘make, make, make,’ a sentiment that I try to adhere to, but have found it difficult to do during quarantine. I tried many different practices, yet, I still was unable to keep myself in the zone due to feeling overwhelmed.  However, through this practice of doing a daily observational sketch of a single plant, I pause to focus on a single moment during the day. My process for doing these observational sketches follows this routine: take my dog for a walk, snap a photo of the plant from various angles, head back inside, and climb up to my room to begin sketching the plant. In this practice, I create structure in my life even for just a moment.

At the smallest level, I move my dark pen across a clean white sheet of paper. My eyes carefully follow the form of each individual delicate ridge, crease, and edge of the petal. Pull back the perspective, I observe and sketch a flower in my garden, right outside my childhood bedroom. Pull back the perspective, the form of the flower changes every day as the weather gets colder and the sun sets earlier. Pull back the perspective, people are quarantining, in their homes, losing their jobs, and loved ones. Pull back the perspective, 1.5 million people have died in a global pandemic.

I hope to see this project continue to watch this plant’s life cycle, eventually shifting from death and decay, towards life and growth. While the pandemic continues to drag on, the lives of plants continue to live and die, providing hope and optimism for the future.