‘Ohio Arts Beacon of Light’ to show work depicting artists’ experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown

Frances Denman
Thu, 06 Apr 2023 01:14:37 +0000
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Cody Miller’s work is on display in “Ohio Arts Beacon of Light” at the Riffe Gallery through Friday. Credit: Cody Miller

Ohio Arts Council Communication Strategist Katie Monahan made her curatorial debut with “Ohio Arts Beacon of Light,” an exhibition depicting 17 Ohio artists’ journeys experiencing and recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic at the Riffe Gallery, located in downtown Columbus.

In spring 2020 when shutdowns began, Monahan was put in charge of the “Ohio Arts Beacon of Light” initiative, an idea that led the council to create an online platform for artists to submit their work for a chance to be featured on the Ohio Arts Beacon of Light Instagram page. This initiative allowed artists to show their work, connect with others and cope together in an effort to inspire and enrich Ohio communities, Monahan said.

“We want to give people a place to be inspired by art, but we also want to help the artists,” Monahan said. “We asked them to include a narrative of how they were coping, how their practice had shifted, if they were able to create — or if maybe they just couldn’t find it in them at the time — how they were handling it.”

Three hundred artist submissions appeared on the Instagram account, Monahan said. Intending to transform the initiative into an exhibition, Monahan said she and Cat Sheridan, the Ohio Arts Council’s Riffe gallery director, narrowed down the pool of artists to 17 to be included in the show.

“I just think it’s such a lovely full-circle story, like, here we are, in person seeing the work,” Monahan said.

Each artist featured in “Ohio Arts Beacon of Light” has anywhere from two to six pieces on display, and these pieces include many of the artists’ online submissions as well as works created since the initiative began, Monahan said.

The result is a large exhibition that includes photography, mixed media, sculpture, watercolor, acrylic and oil paintings, charcoal and colored pencil drawings, installation work and ceramics, Monahan said. Through “Ohio Arts Beacon of Light,” Monahan said she hoped to convey how art can connect, communicate and serve as a coping mechanism.

“I think we really wanted to be able to communicate the power of the arts as a salve of artistic practice, as a healing mechanism whether its artists who are creating the art, who are using it as their own healing practice, or people who are viewing it who can relate to that in some way,” Monahan said.
COVID-19, Monahan said, was a collective experience, but one each individual experienced differently. Despite the artists’ ranging mediums and styles, Monahan said they all came back to a selection of topics surrounding their struggles during the pandemic.

“There were definitely themes that arose as we started looking at the artists and the pieces that we chose, and it was all themes of basic human need: the need for shelter, the need to feel safe, the need for community,” Monahan said. “It’s that collective need for connection and feeling safe and being able to have these conversations.”

Inside the gallery, on the right side of the exhibition — what Monahan thought to be the beginning of the experience — focuses on solace in nature and the process of solitary healing, she said.

Moving through the gallery, charcoal drawings focusing on grief bridge the gap between the reclusive individualism at one end of the exhibition and the community-based works at the other, Monahan said. At the far left end of the room, Monahan said visitors will find work representing light in times of darkness.

“I do think of it as a journey. It moves from that solitary, internal process that I think a lot of us went through,” Monahan said. “I stand here with these flowers, and I can feel those early days when all I could do was go outside and then, as we move through, it kind of represents that feeling of, OK, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel and inserting that physical community back in.”

Sheridan said Monahan’s curatorial arrangement of “Ohio Arts Beacon of Light” and application of themes surrounding COVID-19 was phenomenal. She said she appreciates the way Monahan created a seamless viewer experience through her selection of artists and placement of the works.

“She brought to fruition a capstone of a really difficult time, and I think it wonderfully epitomizes the way that any artists either used art as a salve to help themselves emotionally move through that space or used it to help heal community or used it to articulate ideas about what was happening in our world,” Sheridan said.

“Ohio Arts Beacon of Light” will be displayed at the Riffe Gallery, located at 77 S. High St., from noon to 5 p.m. through Friday. Original submissions to the initiative can be found on the exhibit’s Instagram.