"Connecting in the Digital Age"
by Sara Koons
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When the height of the pandemic hit the world in March 2020, the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts Riverdale location went from a place where people learned together, collaborated, celebrated art, to the stillness of a deserted theme park. Pre-COVID the museum saw a steady stream of guests come into shop, explore exhibitions, and attend art school classes. The perk of working at a museum, and particularly this one, is the art school classes that are offered throughout the museum school. Classes ranging in metalsmith, wood working, drawing, and a multitude of classes for pottery students are offered quarterly throughout the year. At that time I had not only worked in the Visitor Services department of the museum, but had been taking classes every quarter for the last two years in pottery. So when the museum transitioned to working from home due to Covid-19, I picked up my laptop, as well as my clay and tools, brought them back home with me and set my clay supplies down in a spot where they wouldn’t get in the way. I began setting up my work from home “desk” in the living room of my one bedroom apartment. Sitting on my velvet sage green couch, I opened my laptop, checked my email, turned my phone off silent and waited for the first calls of the day to roll in. The first three months of working from home began like this, eventually every day feeling more and more like Groundhog day. In the early summer, the museum’s art school made the decision to offer online art classes. In this virtual world we were now all moving to at a steady pace, classes like Intro to Hand Building, Drawing Comics and Advanced Ceramics were offered through Google Classroom and Zoom. After hearing this I began reminiscing on my days in the classroom, connecting with fellow students, making or breaking what could be a bowl or at least something that resembled a bowl. In the same month the classes were announced, it was announced the school would sell portable pottery wheels, and the more I reminisced the more I considered buying a wheel to make pottery at home. Eventually I stopped overthinking and bought a shiny orange, Speedball Artista Pottery Wheel. Next I decided to enroll in the advanced wheel throwing class, a class I had not attended in person yet but had heard how encouraging the instructor was, and how the students had formed close knit bond over pottery. The day had come: the first evening of class. I set up my shiny new wheel on my apartment balcony on milk crates, got my bag of clay and my tools out, two buckets of water and put a towel over my leg for the mess I was getting ready to make. When it was time to log on for class, I was pretty nervous about the idea of entering into an advanced pottery class. Ceramics did not come naturally to me, and at the time I had mastered some basic techniques, but I was no Michangelo. As I selected ‘Open Video’ on Zoom, and students started filling the screen with their homes, pets, and the conversation began about missing the classroom environment, I saw familiar faces, names I recognized from registering the student over the phone days prior. It was then I realized this would be so much more than a virtual class: this would be a moment to reminisce, talk as little or as much about the present issues of the world, connect and create. For five months, this is what my Thursday evenings would look like. I would drag out all my supplies to my balcony, prop up my laptop a safe distance away from the splash zone that was my wheel, converse with fellow students on their current projects, the state of the world, and get inspired. Keeping up with normal day to day human interaction during the pandemic has been challenging for most of the world and still is, finding this creative and vulnerable space brought me back to what I thought once would be lost. |
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