fbpx
  • Subscribe & Support
  • Sign up for Free Newsletter
  • Print Edition
    • Get Home Delivery
    • Read ePaper Online
    • Newsstand Locations
  • HV1 Magazines
  • Contact
    • Advertise
    • Customer Support
    • Submit A News Tip
    • Where’s My Paper?
  • Manage HV1 Account
Hudson Valley One
  • News
    • Schools
    • Business
    • Sports
    • Crime
    • Politics & Government
  • What’s Happening
    • Calendar Of Events
    • Featured Events
      • Art
      • Books
      • Kids
      • Lifestyle & Wellness
      • Food & Drink
      • Music
      • Nature
      • Stage & Screen
  • Opinions
    • Letters
    • Columns
    • Editorials
  • Local
    • Special Sections
    • Local History
  • Marketplace
    • All Classified Ads
    • Help Wanted
    • Post a Classified Ad
  • Obituaries
  • Podcast
  • Log In
No Result
View All Result
  • News
    • Schools
    • Business
    • Sports
    • Crime
    • Politics & Government
  • What’s Happening
    • Calendar Of Events
    • Featured Events
      • Art
      • Books
      • Kids
      • Lifestyle & Wellness
      • Food & Drink
      • Music
      • Nature
      • Stage & Screen
  • Opinions
    • Letters
    • Columns
    • Editorials
  • Local
    • Special Sections
    • Local History
  • Marketplace
    • All Classified Ads
    • Help Wanted
    • Post a Classified Ad
  • Obituaries
  • Podcast
  • Log In
No Result
View All Result
Hudson Valley One
No Result
View All Result

Sean Nixon’s “Drawing COVID” exhibition opens March 13 at Unison

by Frances Marion Platt
March 11, 2022
in Art & Music
0
SUNY Professor of Art and Rosendale resident Sean Nixon will be exhibiting 48 pen and ink drawings about the “cultural trauma of Covid” at Unison in New Paltz. (Photo by Lauren Thomas)

Much of what we know today about the Great Plague of London (1665) and the Great Fire of London (1666) can be chalked up to the fact that a British Navy bureaucrat, a bourgeois Londoner named Samuel Pepys, decided on New Year’s Day in 1660 to keep a diary – and then kept at it for a full decade. He also captured plenty of inside information about the Restoration of King Charles II and the Second Dutch War, which ended with the treaty that transformed New Netherland into New York. That his diaries survived was a great stroke of luck for historians.

Situated here on the downslope (we hope) of the Great Plague of the early 2020s, one is tempted to wonder who will turn out to be the Pepys of COVID times. Surely a lot of people put their overabundance of downtime in the past couple of years to good use by journaling. But technology and communication options have changed tremendously since the 17th century. What’s the contemporary equivalent of making a daily entry in a diary, hoping to preserve your observations for posterity? Our younger generations like to post selfies on Instagram and make YouTube and TikTok videos; but who knows whether those media will not have gone the way of the eight-track cassette and no longer be viewable by, say, mid-century?

Time to look in the mirror America.

Maybe it’s safer to stick to classic low-tech formats: actually writing things down on paper…or sketching them. One chronicler in our neck of the woods who has been doing the latter since the onset of the pandemic is Sean Nixon, a professor of Art and head of the Graphic Design program at SUNY Ulster. Billed as “a time capsule of our shared collective trauma from March 2020 to March 2022,” Nixon’s new solo exhibition, titled “Drawing COVID: A Story, Two Years and Counting,” will have its opening at the Unison Arts and Learning Center in New Paltz at 4 p.m. on Sunday, March 13.

Besides its value as art and as a story of our times, “Drawing COVID” will be special in terms of its participatory design. Beginning with the opening event and all through the run of the exhibition (closing on April 24), visitors will be offered ways to leave their own commentary and reactions to Nixon’s drawings. “We’re going to have paper and pencils and pens out, and tables where people can just sit down and draw,” he says. “We want people to come to the show and do some drawings, write some poems, speak, dance, scream…” Viewing the pandemic as a society-wide traumatic experience, he describes his vision of the exhibit as “a cathartic artistic exhale through the creative process.”

Kids, in particular, are encouraged to participate. Besides making art, Nixon – a West Philadelphia native now based in Rosendale – specializes in giving presentations and teacher trainings in applied learning. His module at SUNY Ulster is called the Real World Program, based on the premise that young people are more motivated to learn when teaching methods are practical, experiential, hands-on: “learning through doing,” as he puts it. The interactive design of the show at Unison is a logical extension of his pedagogical approach.

At a safe distance.

But you won’t necessarily notice that you’re being taught anything, if you go. Nixon’s simple, elegant ink drawings of his responses to current events and societal trends during COVID are refreshingly accessible – like “New Yorker cartoons without the need for captions,” according to his description of the works. Presented in chronological order in a paperback book that will be available for sale during the exhibition, the drawings begin with Pin the Tail on the Future: a sketch of himself blindfolded, groping ahead, and ends with him juggling planets and peace signs in Give Earth a Chance.

In between, Nixon touches on many a milestone of the zeitgeist during COVID time: Zoom classes, conferencing from home while wearing fuzzy slippers, people fighting over masks, toppled statues of heroes of the Confederacy, the fly on Mike Pence’s head, Bernie’s mittens, the vaccine as a valentine, Texas goes full Handmaid’s Tale, Halloween as scary superspreader event, a Christmas card of a family armed with giant hypodermics instead of guns. Most of the images are black on white, with an occasional splash of colored ink; but Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s iconic lace collar crosshatched in white against a black background is surprisingly moving. “The one that chokes me up is the George Floyd one,” Nixon says of I Can’t Breathe: 8 min. 46 sec., his depiction of the dying Floyd in the arms of an angel, intentionally evoking Michelangelo’s Pietà. “I just broke down when he called out for his mother. It’s such a charged image.”

The best offce chair money can buy.

Some of these drawings are blatantly political, some more personal; some tragic, many humorous. There’s something here for everyone who has endured the past two years. Come on out and check it out – and be prepared to check in with your own reactions. For a preview of Sean Nixon’s artwork, visit www.instagram.com/seannixondraws. Visit www.unisonarts.org for updates on gallery hours. Unison Arts is located at 68 Mountain Rest Road, just west of the Wallkill River from New Paltz.

Tags: members
Thank you for reading Hudson Valley One. We rely on your support to continue providing local, substantive news. Please check out our subscription options to keep local journalism alive in the Hudson Valley.
- Geddy Sveikauskas, Publisher
Previous Post

Wireless Edge adds second balloon test for Gardiner cell tower March 26

Next Post

The Walkabout: Hold on there, Henry

Frances Marion Platt

Frances Marion Platt has been a feature writer (and copyeditor) for Ulster Publishing since 1994, under both her own name and the nom de plume Zhemyna Jurate. Her reporting beats include Gardiner and Rosendale, the arts and a bit of local history. In 2011 she took up Syd M’s mantle as film reviewer for Alm@nac Weekly, and she hopes to return to doing more of that as HV1 recovers from the shock of COVID-19. A Queens native, Platt moved to New Paltz in 1971 to earn a BA in English and minor in Linguistics at SUNY. Her first writing/editing gig was with the Ulster County Artist magazine. In the 1980s she was assistant editor of The Independent Film and Video Monthly for five years, attended Heartwood Owner/Builder School, designed and built a timberframe house in Gardiner. Her son Evan Pallor was born in 1995. Alternating with her journalism career, she spent many years doing development work – mainly grantwriting – for a variety of not-for-profit organizations, including six years at Scenic Hudson. She currently lives in Kingston.

Related Posts

Olive Free Library exhibition “Behind the Scenes” opens May 21
Art & Music

Olive Free Library exhibition “Behind the Scenes” opens May 21

May 15, 2022
Real Life Revival in Phoenicia
Art & Music

Real Life Revival in Phoenicia

May 12, 2022
Tad Wise releases his song-diary: For the Record
Art & Music

Tad Wise’s Song for Ukraine released

May 12, 2022
Kingston’s transformation draws new adherents 
Art & Music

Kingston’s transformation draws new adherents 

May 5, 2022
Bardavon Gala features Audra McDonald on May 7
Art & Music

Bardavon Gala features Audra McDonald on May 7

May 4, 2022
Venezuelan Music on the Hudson
Art & Music

Venezuelan Music on the Hudson

May 2, 2022
Next Post
The Walkabout: Hold on there, Henry

The Walkabout: Hold on there, Henry

Trending News

  • Uproar in New Paltz over plan to abandon green electricity 774 views
  • Village of Saugerties planners hold public hearing for Dragon Inn 599 views
  • Saugerties welcomes Catskill Mountain Moonshine 462 views
  • Ryan and Molinaro run for Congress, Gallagher available to move up 461 views
  • School budgets cruise to approval 411 views







Latest HV1 Podcast

Weather

Kingston
◉
91°
Sunny
5:29am8:15pm EDT
Feels like: 99°F
Wind: 9mph SSW
Humidity: 45%
Pressure: 29.94"Hg
UV index: 6
SunMonTue
93/55°F
73/52°F
72/50°F
Weather forecast Kingston, New York ▸

Ulster County COVID-19 Active Cases

Subscribe

Independent. Local. Substantive. Subscribe now.

×
You have free article(s) remaining. Subscribe for unlimited access.
View Subscription Offers Sign In
  • Subscribe & Support
  • Sign up for Free Newsletter
  • Print Edition
  • HV1 Magazines
  • Contact
  • Manage HV1 Account

© 2022 Ulster Publishing

No Result
View All Result
  • News
    • Schools
    • Business
    • Sports
    • Crime
    • Politics & Government
  • What’s Happening
    • Calendar Of Events
    • Featured Events
      • Art
      • Books
      • Kids
      • Lifestyle & Wellness
      • Food & Drink
      • Music
      • Nature
      • Stage & Screen
  • Opinions
    • Letters
    • Columns
    • Editorials
  • Local
    • Special Sections
    • Local History
  • Marketplace
    • All Classified Ads
    • Help Wanted
    • Post a Classified Ad
  • Obituaries
  • Podcast
  • Subscribe & Support
  • Contact Us
    • Customer Support
    • Advertise
    • Submit A News Tip
  • Print Edition
    • Read ePaper Online
    • Newsstand Locations
    • Where’s My Paper
  • HV1 Magazines
  • Manage HV1 Account
  • Log In

© 2022 Ulster Publishing