January 12, 2020
How My Artistic Practice Has Changed During the Pandemic
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My work certainly did change during Covid – I assembled a team during lockdown, and onward we worked, on my multidisciplinary work, NO KNOW NOTHING.
In early 2020 I’d been finessing the final version of NO KNOW NOTHING—until, March and Covid. My spirits plummeted when everything stopped and shut down, until I received notice that I’d been awarded a Creative Pinellas 2020 Professional Artist Grant, stating a belief in my “ability to build a future landscape in this crisis, one that will renew and flourish.
Uplifted at that very moment, I believed again that we would endure and survive via our innate ability to create. So did cast and crew members, each a consummate professional in their field, living and working from afar, simply to create in the way that most artists do, in between our day jobs, and without pay. Why? Because we believe in our work.
Like geese flying in V formation, we flew on the lifting power of each other and worked through the trials of existing and creating together during a pandemic. In short, with our single-minded purpose and belief, we are the conclusion of the work, NO KNOW NOTHING.
We pressed on in lockdown, miles apart in the country. Brian Miklas, Video Editor, lives in NYC and had to evacuate the city from May to August. Composer Michael Amish lives in Gainesville. Actors, Charlie Cronk from Clearwater, and Teresa Wilkins from St. Petersburg. Directors Dee O’Brien and Graham Jones, live in Tarpon Springs, down the street from me. Onward we’ve gone, creative shapeshifters, full tilt in every direction of this work.
Director Teresa Wilkens, who said, yes, not only to the work and its premise, but also to the significance of it being inspired by and produced in front of the replica of Pablo Picasso’s Guernica at the Leepa-Rattner Museum Museum of Art. The inspiration and beginnings of NKN began within the museum, starting with a picture taken years ago of a child in front of Guernica – the picture not only drives the play, but inspires it.
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“No Know Nothing is a work of theoretical and performative Art, both responsive to and reflective of our current environment. It fosters support of a conversation and understanding of different factions of our community and society that connect back together, not just to what’s in front of us, but in making us think about what is surrounding us. It makes us think about everything that informs who we are in the world, where there are riots, everywhere, amidst a world that appears to be tearing itself apart with anger, fear and mistrust – towards an understanding that a constructive, positive outlet thru the Arts, leads us as an effective communications tool. No Know Nothing encourages us to remember those things we love and imagine, begging the question, if they were gone, what would it be like without them?” – Dr. Teresa Wilkens, Director of the Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art.
I am continuing to work in this manner – safe distance, ZOOM on another project in FALL 2021 featuring, art, music, theatre with much of my same cast and crew, composer, directors, videographers etc.
There will be a free screening of the 10-minute play now a movie on Zoom, hosted by the Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art on January 16 from 6-7 pm. Find the link here.
– Elizabeth Indianos, Multidisciplinary Artist
