A few words from curator, mother, and arts enthusiast, Kelly Schaecher:
For young families the past year has been full of long days and simultaneously not enough hours to get everything done. A year full of fear, awe and compassion. The time the pandemic isolation creates/created is equal parts - tear your hair out challenge and a magical time creator depending on the day. Bursting with ideas on how to use the time creatively and desperately avoiding the B-word (Boredom) parents walked in the woods, watched many movies and opened the art cupboards.
In 2020-2021 children lost most extracurricular activities and spent over 5 months at home with their families.* Normal play dates have not occurred for 6 months. Families have navigated this sort of enforced Little House on the Prairie existence in various ways with varied levels of enjoyment and stress. Working from home with children is not for the faint of heart. We can do many things but doing them all at the same time is a recipe for something being burned, quite literally. Many families turned to the arts to busy the idle hands in their households, to distract from the barrage of sad news, scary stories and worry about family and friends both near and far. We decorated our front windows with rainbows in solidarity, neighbours dropped handmade pins with healthcare workers, people raked their leaves into huge hearts, we knitted, made elaborate Halloween costumes by hand, sculpted, carved, hammered and painted our way out of misery and into light.
This is a show of light from little hands in a dark year.
It is in the sharing of delight that it multiplies and so we share it with you here. Thank you to Saint Matthias and the Chapel Gallery for opening your space for this project.
* Children of essential workers had full time care but that came with other concerns.