Joseph Pope III ( Time-Lapse Mural Painting)

Joseph Pope III ( Time-Lapse Mural Painting) with tags stay home, with me, stayhome, flatten the curve, 6 feet, coronavirus, covid-19, murals, health, music, nathaniel rateliff

"My family and I are experiencing what a lot of families are experiencing - uncertainty and anxiety in keeping their kids fed and educated and healthy while taking time to appreciate what we don’t often have; time together to be creative as we navigate this new reality. Two weeks ago, on self-imposed quarantine having just returned home from NYC where we had indefinitely suspended the Nathaniel Rateliff tour, not only was I brainstorming projects for our newly established home school, but I was also filled with a cathartic desire to speak something to myself and neighbors about the urgency, helplessness and desperation many of us are feeling in this moment.

This work was originally inspired by a Washington Post article which presented four graphs showing four very different outcomes for the spread of the coronavirus and emphasizing that our degree of participation in social distancing would heavily influence whether we could flatten the curve. It struck me that for all the times we feel our voice is not heard or our vote does not matter, our independent actions in this crisis truly have direct and immediate effects on not just those in close proximity to us but fellow humans across our global community, and in disturbingly real time.

No one is unaffected by this crisis no matter where in the shuffle we find ourselves and perhaps the resiliency needed to weather the storm is simply in the asking, the antidote found in daily having to create the answer actively, our future dissolved completely into the immediacy of the present moment and the knowledge that we are truly in this together. To be a light to those around me who find themselves out on the frontline’s of essential work, or to my neighbors suddenly at home, looking out the same windows, pacing the floors and sidewalks at a time of day they are usually at work, to focus the chaos for a moment into creation, or to simply use up the old paint I had laying around instead of driving to the store on an impulse to consume, I’m really just selfishly trying to process the fact that things will never be the same, and try and tease the little rudder of the ship toward the new land the best I can.

- Jospeh Pope III

ps. the late Richard Swift track Babylon was running through my head while I made the mural, partially because of the lyric and vibe but also because he just would have had a birthday. Thinking about what he would be doing if he were here during this time..he probably would be making a bunch of weird art in his backyard studios, so taking a projector and laptop into a dark alley at 3 am seemed a fitting way to honor his memory."

#StayHome