Blog by Marie Elcin region 12 member and PAEA board secretary

As the past few weeks of staying home and social distancing have slowly passed, there are so many things I am thankful for. My family, my home, my students who keep showing me their creative efforts, and my community that is showing solidarity, positivity, and caring. There are two more things I’m very thankful for because they have kept me grounded and connected in what for many people is a scary and stressful time. 

The first thing I turn to is my own artistic practice. Throughout my career as an art educator, I have maintained a steady focus on my personal work as a fiber artist. I have always found stitching to be a meditative experience that helps me keep calm and let go of the stresses of teaching middle school art. For the past four years, I have set for myself an intention to complete a year-long project of either daily or weekly pieces. Having a consistent format for the artwork and theme for a year makes it easy for me to keep up a regular practice. It’s like a healthy habit, and I’m grateful that it is there to carry me through the empty hours of quarantine.

The second thing I turn to is my community of art educators. I am fortunate to be connected to several circles of art educators. My closest friends are all artists and teachers. In Philadelphia, led by our PAEA president-elect Leslie Grace, we have a regularly meeting group of art teachers in the Philadelphia Art Teacher Alliance. As an Art21 Educator and mentor, I also have a network of art teachers across the country who I connect with regularly. While I miss our face-to-face interactions, Zoom meetings have become windows into each other’s houses and a place to collaborate, commiserate, and escape our own four walls. Despite being isolated we have found ways to come together and even strengthen social bonds.

My artistic practice and my social circles intersected in 2019. As I started to plan out my year-long project in January 2019, I noticed everyone on social media posting their “top nine” photos on Instagram. I thought they were a strange sort of self-portrait. When posting on social media we already filter ourselves, only posting what we are proud of or like. Then the “top nine” algorithm was culling what other people liked about what you like, creating a doubly false representation of a person’s profile. I felt like social media was giving me a fake sense of who my friends are and making real friendships shallower as we liked each other’s photos but failed to have real conversations. 

I decided to create portraits of my friends on social media. I would attempt to make one weekly or at least start a new one as soon as the last one was finished. My rules were to contact a friend on Instagram, ask their permission for use of their photos and to do their portrait, and have a conversation about how they use social media before I started. Then I used their “top nine” photos as inspiration for colors in a nine-patch quilt foundation piece and used one of their selfies as a source for a line drawing portrait stitched in black thread over it. Sometimes I would add embellishments or quotes in the background to show more about their interests or character. While my original goal was to make 52 of them, I managed to create 30 over the course of the year. The beginning was easy as I approached those in my closest circle of friends- people I actually see in everyday life frequently. It got harder to approach those with whom I had weaker connections as the year progressed. However, in doing this project I was able to deepen those relationships.

Once each piece was completed, I posted it on Instagram along with a description of how I knew the person, what I admired them for, and a quote from our conversation. The portraits documented my social circle so that it did not just exist in the ether of the internet, but was materialized in the real world. Another aspect that emerged from the project was that the majority of the people I stitched were also artists and art educators, and the project became a celebration of the wonderful people in our profession. Here are a few whom you may be familiar with from our PAEA community: Lauren Stichter (Director of Administration and Supervision), Rebecca Hughes (Region 12 co-rep), Wendy Osterweil (former Professor of Art Education at Tyler School of Art), and Sue Liedke (preschool art teacher at Settlement Music School and museum educator at PMA and PAFA).

Our current isolation is heartbreaking, especially for art educators who thrive on the human connections of friends, colleagues, and students. In our schools we are often the glue of the community, celebrating creativity, human expression, and beauty in the world. We know that making and looking at art can raise spirits, build community, and reflect the times we live in. We can still be that glue of our schools even if school now exists in the ether of the internet, by communicating with our students, families, and colleagues, by sharing inspiring artworks, by celebrating the artistic efforts of our children, and by challenging them to keep being creative at home. We can use this time to expand our own creative practices by setting intentions and by carving out some space in our homes and time in our days to establish a healthy habit of artmaking. Finally, we can turn to this wonderful network of art educators in PAEA to share resources and deepen our connections with each other to get through this difficult time.

Connect with me on Instagram @marieelcin