Art at Home
This project was done right at the beginning of the "Stay at Home Orders" in our part of the nation in early 2020 during the Covid 19 pandemic. The J. Paul Getty Museum, in California, had already decided to have fun with the circumstances. It challenged people to find a gallery art piece and make a recreation of it. Their photographed recreation side by side with the original was how they were to submit it. Paying special attention to setting, color, lighting and content we had to recreate the art piece with things we had at home using photography. Our task was to take it a step further by changing something in the original to something Covid related in the recreation and to pick a number to go along with the items changed. None of the images could have the same number. Here are my five recreations. Each one will show the original first and the recreation second.
Young Italian Woman at the Table
Original by Paul Cézanne
In my recreation, my oldest daughter is leaning on a table with books. The tablecloth in the original was very colorful. At that point, I had read 6 books during Covid. Something I rarely had time to do. The colors of the book covers were similar to the colors in the tablecloth. I also thought the boredom on the face of the young woman was perfect for Covid 19.
Dish of Apples
Original by Paul Cézanne
For this recreation I was already missing my friends. I made the poster to resemble the backdrop of the painting and changed the center to say, "Until We Gather Again". It is a double entendre for the gathering of people and the gathering of apples. There are 12 apples to represent the 12 friends we always gathered with before the stay at home orders
were enforced.
Jeanne (Spring)
Original by Edouard Manet
This recreation required some searching for the right background and the weather needed to cooperate. I made the hat from a baseball cap, silk flowers, a black sash, and toilet paper for the ruffle. The my middle child is also wearing a rubber glove and a mask hangs from her forearm as part of the sleeve ruffle. This was early in 2020 when catching Covid due to touching something that a sick person had touched was a major concern. Toilet paper, rubber gloves, and masks were 3 items that were very hard to find. I shouldn't have used toilet paper that way because it was very scarce at the time. What we do for our art!
Landscape with Stars
Original by Henri-Edmond Cross
At the beginning of the stay at home orders, my adult children happened to all be home.
We had been empty-nesters for six months and had gotten used to cooking less. With all of us home, we ended up cooking a lot more and used aluminum foil for leftovers. I saw this original and immediately it reminded me of foil scrunched up in a ball and then opened up again. So using foil, I watered down acrylic paint, yellow and white craft paper, and my thumb prints on a green stamp pad, I recreated this piece. There are 10 prominent stars in the sky, which stood for the number of times we had to used foil for leftovers.
A Group of Fragments from the Temple of Apollo
near Phigaleia (Bassae)
When I saw this group in one of my gallery searches, I wanted to try to recreate it using items we ran out of a lot during Covid. Because the originals were pieces of something larger, I wanted to do the same. My recreation uses pieces of something larger as well. From left to right my recreation has the top to a foaming hand soap dispenser, an almost empty toilet paper roll, the top to dish soap, and the bottom of a coffee K-cup. With many people living together, we ran out of these 4 items frequently.
