Making art in the time of Corona

Art is always made in isolation. Well at least my art is. And now all I have is isolation. Isolation and time. If I wanted to, I could spend all my time making art, which is exactly what I’ve always wanted. A dream come true right? In theory absolutely. Yet there’s this whole matter of having all this time to make art, but the reason there’s all this time is there’s a global pandemic going on. All my emotions are all over the place. Everything feels uncertain and scary. So in order to try to deal with all of this, I’ve been spending so many of my days making art. Yet I feel like instead of processing everything through my work, I feel like I’ve been using art making as a distraction and a drug to keep my mind occupied so I don’t spend all my time thinking and feeling all the scary things about what’s going on in the world. And maybe that’s ok? But a lot of the time it doesn’t feel ok. It feels like I’m numbing out, like focusing on making art is the one coping skill I have, the one thing that’s keeping me from completely going off the deep end. So again, what’s wrong with that? That’s not such a bad thing. It may feel like a drug, but it’s not a drug. It’s the best kind of addiction because it’s constructive not destructive. Every time I work on something, I’m actually making something come alive. In a world that feels like it’s coming apart at the seams, I’m helping put my world back together. When I see it that way, it seems like a good way to spend a pandemic.