Where Are We Now?
In this issue of A Plate of Pandemic, the featured artist is painter Amy Sudarsky. When I talked to her recently about the pandemic’s impact on her work, she pointed out the double-edged nature of the situation, the pre-Covid life and the current one. Like many other artists, writers, and musicians, her pre-Covid life was already fairly solitary, so the mandated isolation allowed her to concentrate without concern for deadlines or external distractions. Her studio, a separate venue from her home, then took on a special meaning. It was a place to get away from a situation where getting away was temporarily prohibited. And when in the studio, her remove from daily life, from external circumstances, was extremely concentrated.
The three subjects featured here are professional models, people she doesn’t know well. Amy Sudarsky’s goal in portraiture is to convey not merely a figure, but a psychological element that comes across through the model’s expression. In Dana (2021) she discerned an inward sadness; in Nicole (2022), a distance conveyed by her indirect and downward sightline. The portrait of Tim, drawn much earlier (1999) but now even more relevant, she sees as an expression of desperation, sadness, and loss—what people all over the world have experienced during the time of Covid.
Selma Moss-Ward
Editor
editoraplate@gmail.com
September 22, 2022
Cocktail Hour
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. –T.S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” One year into the CoVid lockdown I
On Pause and Lockdown
Barely a person outside Broadway lights are off Work and school are done remotely Call, text, facetime to reconnect and reminisce Watch DJ Nice play songs from back in the day on Instagram Connect people through Zoom
Human After All
for Debbie, in time of plague If, in all of this, I were to sicken and die, let this be my testament. Pregnant long ago, I felt you quicken deep inside, not knowing what that meant. It meant
Gold Star Mothers
We ended up here by accident, not knowing John Otto named it Gold Star Canyon to honor mothers of sons who died in World War I. Not only is today Mother’s Day, it’s my son’s 19th birthday, my son
The Virus and the Dinosaur
2020-2021, Istanbul, Turkey, Earth I wake up from a deep nap, refreshed and renewed. Immediately check the time. It is almost 6 o’clock. At 8, the second lock-down will begin. I have two hours sharp. So sharp that
Invisible Forces
March 9, 2020 It’s called a Worm Moon—the first full moon of spring. The temperatures are warming, and earthworms, asleep all through the cold winter, begin to waken and wriggle up out of the newly thawed ground. Sharing a close
Tomato Triptych
In the summer of 2021, Pastor Ali teaches me how to prune tomato plants. “The trick,” she informs me, “is to remove the suckers.” The suckers grow between the stem and branches of the tomato plant. Shoots that