Artists: Roxie Castro x Penny Gordon-Chumbley

Project Statement: One concept was clear from the outset of our process…we wanted to address the pressing social issues of 2020…the coronavirus pandemic, racial oppression, climate worries. Roxie and Penny, like most Americans, care about these issues and wanted to find hope for solutions to these issues.
Quickly, we narrowed our focus to the COVID-19 virus. To create our visual concept, we began with graphs, charts and even information in numerous languages. We talked about our favorite media: printmaking and cut-paper collage and how to marry the two. Like the virus, ideas began to pop and spread.
We grappled with the idea of how to present change and hope. By morphing the familiar shape of the coronavirus germ through various stages into a passion flower shape, we knew we could illustrate how Nature makes changes and eventually evolves into a a better life form. Taking the metaphor one step further, we fashioned this metamorphic process into a bouquet, a present for the viewer. Knowing that the virus is complex, containing multiple layers of problems and approaches, we wanted to capture the idea of layers. Showing our idea in a shadowbox solved the dilemma of how to present layers; each layer is a different stage of the evolution process.
We brainstormed words that captured the current state of affairs and words that expressed our hope for the future. By adding stems with text, we showed a progression from negative to positive…our hope for the future.
What did we discover during our collaborative process? Simpler is better. Chunk the work down into stages. Play. One can change course while keeping the core idea. Roxie’s ideas focused on process; Penny’s focused on concept, but both artists contributed to the ideas of the other. Roxie squished ink between transparent acrylic sheets to depict cellular beginnings. She designed and executed the layering of the acetate sheets and created and calligraphed the stems. And she constructed the entire assemblage, including the lighting. Penny created the bouquet cut paper flowers. The spirit of collaboration brought us patience, community, trust.