Finding Clarity Amidst the Cacophony

It’s not the challenges that define us, though. It’s how we process them, address them, respond to them, and gain clarity amidst them.

Among those challenges has been, at least in the early months of this now year-long Twilight Zone existence, a discomfiting sense of isolation and detachment from much (and many) that we hold dear.

Wishing them away is an exercise in futility.  Finding joy and equilibrium in the moment is a healthier path to that still-nebulous destination called New Normal.

How, though? That’s the million-dollar question.

Julia Stewart and Annie Leeth, 2015 Collegiate graduates, lifelong friends, and skilled and innovative practitioners of their crafts, have found a way, albeit after a bit of a search.

They’ve created an installation combining art and music entitled But I Huff and Puff and You Still Won’t Come Out that’s on display outside Collegiate’s college counseling office in the South Science Building and will remain so through March.

“This is an immersive experience,” said Pam Sutherland, their honors art teacher at Collegiate and at whose behest they are sharing their work. “You’re looking at the painting while hearing the music. 

“They (Julia and Annie) were both really contemplating what it was to be isolated. I think true artists actually best express themselves when things get tough. They’re not motivated by the joys of life. It’s the losses and extremes that feed great expression. In this case, they had a lot to work with.”

Julia’s oil-on-canvas painting is entitled Containment. She created it over a roughly four-month spring-summer interlude in 2020 when she spent much of her time alone in her studio in the Manchester district of South Richmond.

“I was feeling trapped in my little space,” she said. “I was literally scared to go out even to the gas station across the street because of this virus. I was wary of jumping on whatever trend is going on and painting about it. It’s a tricky thing to paint about a pandemic.”

At about the same time, Richmond was experiencing a racial reckoning in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death. Julia’s apartment is located near the Robert E. Lee Monument, the site of protests, and she had an up-close-and-personal view of history.

“It was very eye-opening for me,” she said. “I had this weird feeling of being contained and discombobulated. It was a summer where a ton of things were happening.” 

Containment became a reflection of her feelings.

“It was a very colorful summer, very heated, very passionate,” she said. “That helped inform my choices of color. Beyond that, I don’t want to approach a painting like, ‘Oh, I’m going to make this about the pandemic’ or ‘I’m going to make this about Black Lives Matter.’ I don’t think that’s the right way to approach it, so I was really just painting about what was around me, sort of letting my feelings inform the way I painted and the colors I used.”

Julia, who earned a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University, uses the term “chaotic” to describe Containment. There’s no linear story line, she explained, and no person with whom to identify.

Which begs the question, What are the images in the painting?

“That’s an empty light at the top,” she said. “There’s a broken egg, a Monster Energy drink, a laundry basket, a head of (purple) cabbage. Just odds and ends that accumulated in my studio. The individual objects aren’t supposed to symbolize anything beyond the fact that they’re just random objects.”

The idea, then, is to represent in a visual your concern about the craziness of the times?

“Exactly,” she said. “Painting is a way for me to say whatever I want to say, even if I’m not sure what my final stance is. It’s definitely a form of communication, even if it’s a really confusing message and there might not even be one specific message.”

Though they are separated by distance, Annie (who lives in Atlanta) and Julia worked in concert nonetheless. The theme of their collaboration revealed itself in time.

“We wanted it (the artwork) to be true to our own experiences,” Julia explained. “We were both feeling trapped. We had to get to know our physical surroundings a lot better. We were both protesting over the summer. She was stuck in her apartment just like me. After we began our projects, that’s when the collaboration happened.”

Annie’s presentation is a song entitled “All We Are.” Her friend LeeAnn Peppers, a multi-talented artist (singer, songwriter, poet, filmmaker) based in Athens, GA, wrote the lyrics.

Annie wrote the music to accompany LeeAnn’s spoken words and produced the final product, which is accessible by scanning a QR code.  

“She’s talking about the idea of materialism as comfort instead of each other,” said Annie, a University of Georgia graduate, talented violinist, and an engineer for Maze Studios. “She’s saying that we’re not comfortable around each other in the way that we should be, and we cover it up with the things we own and then don’t understand when we start to feel trapped.

“She (LeeAnn) sent me the recording. I tracked the tempo of her voice. That ended up being the first layer. The rhythm of the piece is based on how she’s speaking. We were trying to bring the audio and the visuals together in a way that you could see Julia’s painting and think of it as either a good or bad thing or a stressful or a calming thing. Then, once you had the full experience with the audio, it became a little bit more clear that something’s wrong here.”

At its best then, for both artist and observer, amidst the cacophony and consternation, disillusion and upheaval that envelopes us, reflection, introspection, and creation can have a therapeutic effect.

“Art in many ways is a coping mechanism,” said Pam Sutherland, an accomplished artist herself. “Not just artists know this. Many people going through the pandemic know it. You can be shut off from other things, but you can be alone with yourself and create something.  That’s really valuable.”
    ~ Weldon Bradshaw