Calgary artist conveys COVID-19 fears, hope for the future with beautiful sketches
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In Calgary artist Debbie.lee Miszaniec’s drawings, the ominous-looking COVID-19 virus takes on a number of guises.
In one, it’s being lassoed by a cowboy clutching a bottle of disinfectant. In another, it hovers outside the window of a sleeping woman. A little girl blows bubbles against an onslaught of the virus in a third and it’s re-imagined as a series of naval mines chained to the aisle of an undersea grocery store in a fourth. Sad, touching and occasionally comical — the series of sketches seem to unfold like a map of the fast-and-furious conflicting emotions, hopes and fears that most of us are feeling in self-isolation.
“It’s a really anxiety-ridden shape in and of itself, nevermind how we see it,” says Miszaniec. “But it is larger than life and we have all this anxiety around it.”
As of the time of this interview, Miszaniec had completed 13 sketches inspired by the pandemic and posted them on her Facebook page, a project she has been working on compulsively since March 17.
“We’re all attuned to the same worries, the same concerns,” says Miszaniec. “So the response to them was really interesting. People were entertained by them; they thought they were sad, funny. I guess they are concerned about all the same things that I’m working through in my sketchbook. I usually paint anything I’m thinking about. But things are happening so fast with this crisis that it seemed like drawing them in a sketchbook was much more manageable. As soon as you are thinking of one thing, then the next thing is coming along.”
The sketches take on many tones. The first has the virus floating above a toppled basket of toilet paper. Another, inspired by the uncelebrated 65th birthday of the artist’s mother, finds Miszaniec portraying the virus as a series of party balloons hovering over a birthday cake. One of the most poignant features an elderly man under a bell jar reading to children as the virus looms like an enormous full moon in the sky.
“Things we maybe overlook in our lives or take for granted I find is an interesting thing to explore,” she says. “The one with the bell jar, I was just thinking about how we take for granted an ageing population and all the lived experiences that we have access to. So when you see people who are the last surviving people from World War Two, for instance, and we’re losing those people and are at risk of losing those people, you want to keep them under protection like a bell jar to preserve that experience for a younger generation who aren’t going to be as badly impacted by the disease.”
Miszaniec graduated from the Alberta of College Art and Design (since rechristened Alberta University of the Arts) in 2008. She teaches, has done public commissions — including two painted utility boxes for the City of Calgary — and her paintings are on display at both the Southern and Northern Alberta Auditoriums in Calgary and Edmonton.
She says she hopes her COVID-19 sketchbook both gives people pause to think about the day-to-day life that we take for granted until it has been disrupted, but also hope that it will pass.
Miszaniec says he hopes to turn the sketches into a Youtube video soon and, eventually, a book.
“I’m looking into that,” she says. “It’s an odd time to be looking into that because so many things are closed at the moment. But I have had a few people say they would be interested in seeing cards or prints for stuff like that. It’s a new experience for me.”
Visit facebook.com/Debbielee-Miszaniec-One-Life-Fine-Art-279190585453584/
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