The Art of looks back on the past year on the Flagstaff art scene. Andres “Dapper Dre” Adauto showed the first Art of Art in February 2020. This year, a three-part series will focus on the community of resilient artists and the lessons we have learned over the course of 2020.
With spring, optimism hovers between the new leaves and the green grass sprouting from melting patches of snow. March marked a significant anniversary of the first pandemic of waiting from the inside and watching the world spin in unexpected directions. For me it was a year of healing and falling in love with art again.
I took a break from The Art of a year ago to focus on a health issue that landed me in the hospital for a month at the beginning of the quarantine. I couldn’t do anything I was normally able to, which meant I couldn’t talk to others about what they were creating. On April 16, I published the first art since the pandemic started. This return to writing was a breath of fresh air, even though I met artists by phone or Zoom rather than in coffee shops or their studios and workshops.
Many of the artists I interviewed continued to create despite the state of the world. From writing comedic sketches to burning wood, baking bread, filmmaking, podcasting, acting and aerial dancing – these were people who, despite the circumstances, went about doing the things they loved. They made it work. Now, a year later, I look back at the artists I spoke to, who drove me to move on, and who gave me hope in a time of uncertainty.
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