Visual storyteller Nilou Moochhala (right) wants to hear how the Covid-19 pandemic has affected you.
How have you managed the loneliness, the disruption, the fear?
Moochhala, who lives with her family in Arlington, wants to know your story as part a temporary public-art work inviting reflection and healing in a natural setting.
See her online questionnaire, inviting everyone who lives, works, goes to school or has another significant connection to Arlington to share their experiences during the pandemic. Your stories will help inspire new drawings that Moochhala is making. Your responses will also be preserved in the Robbins Library Covid archive.
Fill out the survey here >>
Covid’s impact led the artist to sketch daily in that fearful spring of 2020. Drawing became an important way for her to devote a few minutes daily to reflect on the ongoing lockdown. These images are created through a type of meditative mark-making: using color, texture, the rhythm of shapes and movement of line to record a moment during this difficult time. To date, she has completed 365 pandemic “virus” sketches.
The drawings will be turned into “meditation flags” — a format inspired by Buddhist and other traditions to be installed in a woods. The specific site will be at a clearing where an existing ring of gathered branches lie, and these “flags” will build on the energy of that natural structure to create a space for reflection, healing and contemplation.
Menotomy Rocks Park is the site, with installation in place by mid-June and continuing through the end of August.
This project was launched by the the Arlington Commission for Arts & Culture.
See some of the artist’s sketches >>
March-May 2021: Poet offers haiku 3 more workshops; next is Thursday
This plea was published Sunday, May 9, 2021.
