“Artists reflect back to society what their values and concerns are, and it’s like, what are they saying now? How are they reflecting the stay-at-home order? What are their fears and concerns? Because that’s going to be all of fears and concerns on some level,” Erma Murphy, co-director at the Mill Valley arts organization, told the Marin Independent Journal.
There was clearly no shortage of topics for artists to explore.
“It blew me away that the media was so concerned and fascinated with the shortage of toilet paper where all these people were dying, and I thought to myself, something is wrong here,” Sausalito artist Jay O’Neill, whose “Victorian Wife” piece shows a Victorian-looking woman wearing a mask and holding a roll of toilet paper, told the IJ. “But, I also wanted to make people smile. That’s what my art does.”
The 411: O’Hanlon Center for the Arts‘ online exhibit “Humankind in Crisis” features 80 works created in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. VIEW EXHIBIT HERE. PROGRAM HERE.