In March 2020, when the pandemic first hit, Malik Lovette found himself without a studio space to create his art. He began sleeping on his friend’s couch in order to use their garage to continue creating, he said. With the shutdowns, Lovette found that he had to get creative with the materials he used — he found woodblocks by a dumpster that he used to make furniture and started getting commission requests from his parent’s friends.
“I was doing anything that I could and [my friend’s place] had the space to provide that,” Lovette said. “It was challenging, but I was just focused on what I could control.”
Over the course of the past 16 months since COVID-19 first hit, most people faced some sort of struggle. For many artists, this meant having to be extra creative with their work and also channeling their emotions into their creations.
Lovette, a UO undergraduate alum and current UO architecture grad student, first came to the UO as a football player for the Ducks, majoring in fine arts. While Lovette enjoyed playing football, it was always more of a pathway to do what he really wanted: creating art.
“I had this personal goal of mine where I wanted to be respected for my artistic integrity rather than my jersey number,” Lovette said.
In July 2021, that dream became a reality. Lovette exhibited his first piece in a museum at the “JSMA Black Lives Matter Artist Grant Program Exhibition.” His piece, “Unchained,” highlights the correlation between sports and slavery of Black men.
The piece displays an image of Lovette in the center of a black background. Chains are shackled to his hands, ankles and neck and Lovette is bent over trying to break the chains around his ankles. He is surrounded by sports equipment — a football by his left leg sitting atop an American flag, a basketball by his right and a myriad of other equipment around him. A Wheaties box sits to the side of him, a cereal well known for featuring prominent athletes.
All around the central image of Lovette are images of 14 famous Black athletes with looks of pride and accomplishment on their faces.
“There’s this correlation between sports and slavery,” Lovette said. “But then [this piece] offers an internal versus external perspective of being able to show the bad in it — and how it’s been disguised in different forms, how People of Color have had to use this pathway of sports to gain liberation as a U.S. citizen.”
Although COVID-19 provided its own challenges, Lovette used this time to further his work. Lovette is not the only artist who spent this time focusing on self-reflection and expanding their creation.
While the JSMA experienced a number of closures and reopenings throughout the course of the pandemic, it maximized the closures’ opportunities to work on construction and explore new modes of technology, according to JSMA communications manager Debbie Williamson-Smith.
The biggest technological change was the creation of virtual tours through Matterport technology, a 3D platform that allows online viewers to see a space such as a museum. This provides an opportunity for people to explore an exhibit virtually — from the comfort of their own home or in a classroom setting all together. According to Williamson-Smith, the virtual tours are one piece from the pandemic that the museum plans to keep.
The “JSMA Black Lives Matter Artist Grant Program Exhibition” is currently available as a virtual tour and in person until Nov. 21.
For former UO student Kalli Bechtold the pandemic offered a “blessing in disguise.” In the winter of 2020, Bechtold was enrolled at UO as a fine arts major. Once the pandemic hit and classes went online, she took a hiatus from school. Now, she is discovering that she does not want to return at all.
“When I would work on art pieces for class, I would feel like it wasn’t really doing me much,” Bechtold said. “I would always want to shift it to what I wanted to do anyway.”
Bechtold works mostly with oil paints on canvas. A lot of her work is a form of self-reflection, and the pandemic offered her plenty of time to spend alone reflecting on herself and creating art. Bechtold started her first website where she sells hoodies, t-shirts, tote bags and oil paintings in the early months of 2020; she also has a spot to send her a commission request.
All of the images Bechtold creates feature trippy, colorful and “genderless” faces. The piece “How To Lose Your Mind” shows a serious, yellow face staring out at the viewer while its head begins to dissolve into a chaos of curvy lines.
Third-year graduate student and introduction to printmaking professor Noelle Herceg had to find new ways to be creative with the materials she used both for her students and her own artwork. She taught her students to be creative with the materials they had access to around them.
Embodying her teaching, Herceg began to use her kitchen space as her art studio as well. She started brewing kombucha and used the SCOBY, the bacteria and yeast that form during the fermentation process of the kombucha, to create a sculptural piece. She dried it out until it took on a leather-like quality and then put it atop a mold of her belly button.
“For me, the SCOBY pieces are a reminder of intergenerational correspondence and connections to the mother,” Herceg wrote. “The new SCOBY growth from the kombucha brewing process has been peeled away from its mother culture, and now holds an impression of my own navel, the point of contact I once joined to my mother as well.”
While many artists used this time alone during the pandemic to work on self-reflection, other artists had to be creative in figuring out how to work in a group.
The rock band EWEB, Eugene Water and Electric Band, formed in March 2021. They play a mix of covers and original music. At this point, they mostly play house shows at their friend’s house, nicknamed “The Sandlot,” and a few bars around Eugene.
For most of the band members, the beginning of COVID-19 provided a time to focus on their music. Drummer Jack Carek got excited about electronic music as a way to create music without having a full band. After a while, guitarist and vocalist Ben Sickler and Carek grew tired of playing music by themselves. Soon after, EWEB was formed.
Sickler said he reminded himself, “I don’t know when else we will be able to do music all the time,” when he was feeling frustrated with COVID-19, quoting the other guitarist and vocalist Sam Mondros.
On Oct. 2, EWEB played at a friend’s house. The backyard was full of people — dancing to the music and socializing with friends. The band played a mix of original songs and covers, debuting its latest song, “Spider.” EWEB’s music is perfect for jumping around, swaying your hips and screaming along to the lyrics.
For EWEB members, they used the beginning of the pandemic to hone their own skills and have since transitioned to playing shows for live audiences, with their favorite being jam sessions. If you want to catch their music in person, the band is playing a 21+ show at Max’s Bar on Oct. 8, according to Carek.
While the past 16 months have been wrought with hardships and uncertainties for so many, it has also been a time of growth and self-reflection. These artists prove that art will always be created and adapted, no matter the circumstances.
Editor’s note: This story previously included a photo taken by Jasmine Mckinley that was provided to the Emerald. The Emerald was not aware that Mckinely was the owner of the photo and has taken the photo down at Mckinley’s request.
