Marking 2103 Lives Lost: A Covid Visual Memorial

2103 people, who lost their lives due to the pandemic, are represented by each dot on this painting. The dots were made one at a time on a piece of fabric that has the monoprinted texture of a construction fence that was stitched following the warped grid.

Construction sites use construction fences as a barrier to keep people out of danger by blocking off the site. Unfortunately, these 2103 people succumbed due to a danger what we cannot see.

Covid Vaccine Prize

The dots in the center panel of this painting represent the day I got my second Covid Vaccine at my local Community Senior Center with 308 others. The white dots represent all my family members and friends who were waiting for theirs.

The white dots on the left and right-side panels represent the millions of others across the US who are waiting for their first shot, and the silver dots represent those waiting for their second shots.

Covid Vaccine: Unexpected Opportunity

In February 2021, I took my mother-in-law to get her first Covid vaccine. She was scheduled at the end of the day. When we were getting up to leave after her 15-minute waiting period afterward, a nurse ran up to me and asked if I had gotten mine yet. I replied no because I’m in the last group that would be phased in due to my age. The nurse explained that they had three more doses and they wanted to give me one of them, so it didn’t go to waste. Knowing that more than 1,200 wasted doses had already gone to waste across the state of Massachusetts, largely because there weren’t enough people around to get shots when health-care workers got to the bottom of opened vaccine bottles, I agreed to get it. But that was after a lot of texting back and forth with my husband and physician’s assistant neighbor because I felt guilty getting it ahead of friends and family who had medical needs and really needed to get it before me.

Hoping to Avoid a Second Wave is a series of two paintings.

The Covid-19 numbers in Massachusetts were low for much of the summer of 2020 but started inching up in August as people grew restless and wanted to socialize and travel in the warm weather. My family and I were being diligent by not taking risks unless we had to, but as I walked around my neighborhood and saw big parties, I was filled with a range of feelings about it. These paintings were trying to express visually what I was feeling inside.