"It's too late for lemonade" 2021

I'm currently taking a Sculpture class in order to have some social interactions, all be it via zoom, with other artists and our amazing instructor. Isolation for me, makes creating Art more difficult. I always get ideas when driving, listening to music and talking to people. I've not achieved a lot of driving since March 2020. Good for the environment, not great for inspiration.

For our first prompt, the whole class was challenged with creating something that makes us feel uncomfortable or embarrassed from Art21. So many ideas went though my head, however we were asked to not have the piece be of the human body. Have you seen my art? I work with concepts that surround the human body, or some of its parts. 

​Later that same day, I was getting a tangerine. I noticed the bowl of lemons next to the tangerines had a few moldy ones in the bowl. I'm a tactile person and fishing out moldy 'anything' is a bit challenging for me. Got to do it, so I did and * BANG* that's what I would create, moldy lemons. The initial though behind this sculpture was very tactile and visceral. Creating wool felting to mimic mold? Wool felting has fuzzy qualities so it felt (no pun intended) doable.

The idea of infection came to mind very shortly after because of the pandemic. Let's be serious, current events regarding police brutality toward brown/black skinned people is also mixed into this sculpture. It only takes one moldy lemon (or apple), any bunch of what have you, to start a chain reaction. All of a sudden everything is infected.

Connecting spreading anything with the current health crisis is an easy step. The need to physically distance from others so we don't come in contact with virus particles. This pandemic we are living through is so physically and emotionally draining, and presents many challenges. The fear of contamination is running through our daily lives, in ways most of us have not had to think about before.

When I work in my studio, I often listen to a podcast to keep me company. When that is not giving me enough of an energy boost, I usually put my downloaded iTunes music on song shuffle. At a crucial point in creating this piece, the song Freedom by Beyoncé's  Lemonade album came on. At the end of the song, an older woman's voice is heard saying: "I had my ups and downs, but I always find the inner strength to pull myself up. I was served lemons, but I made lemonade."  

This fit like a puzzle piece for me. My own grandmother who was born in 1909, and lost her own mother to influenza when she was just 9 years old, used to say, "Make lemonade if life gives you lemons."

This piece is a statement on that saying but I wanted to look deeper than the idea of making something good out of a bad situation. What if individuals lack basic necessities; like food, housing, clean water, competitive/equal pay? How do they turn that into lemonade? If we, as a society continue to place obstacles in the way of so many people, provide subpar resources, how will they be able to make-do or better yet, turn their lives into something positive.  

​In the sculpture, only one out of the seven lemons is left unscathed from the mold. For now.