“Let’s make something weird together.” Those were the instructions artist Daniel Danger gave to a few of his artist friends who, like many of us, found themselves stuck inside due to the novel coronavirus pandemic. The result is a 28-person collaboration that’s available right now and io9 is stoked to debut it.
“I pitched this project just as a small quick escapist thing. ‘Here’s something you can spend an afternoon on and be a part of something fun and light-hearted with your friends,’” Danger told io9 over email. “It started with 14 artists and grew to twice that. At the time everyone was pretty much trapped indoors and the walls had started to close in. My sole instruction to each participating artist was to represent themselves within the room, or as a room, however, they wished as if it were sort of an inevitable evolution or oscillation of that cabin fever. How weird could things get?”
https://gizmodo.com/creating-during-covid-nan-lawson-on-art-bringing-joy-t-1843998718
The answer? Pretty fucking weird.
The piece, which is currently untitled, takes 28 interpretations of those ideas from various artists (listed below) and puts them into two, 18 x 24-inch screenprints, available in three different colorways, in timed editions through July 31 at this site. Here are the three sets.
Each image is of two, 18 x 24 inch posters set side by side. The black and white set costs $50 and the other two cost $70. The artists who contributed to this are as follows:
Anne Benjamin
Sara Deck
Clarie Hummel
Paige Reynolds/Phantom City Creative
Daniel Danger/Tiny Media Empire
Jack Hughes
Justin Erickson/Phantom City Creative
Justin Santora
Dave Kloc
Gary Pullin
Becky and Frank
Aaron James Powers
Jacquelin Deleon
Dan McCarthy
Marc Aspinall
Nicholas Moegly
John Vogl
Rich Kelly
Paul Jackson
James Flames
Shane Hillman
Rowan MacColl
Calvin Laituri
And here’s a visual showing you which person did each part.
“When covid hit a lot of us freelance illustrators had a dozen rugs pulled out from under us,” Danger continued. “Those whose income primarily came from gig posters suddenly found themselves without concerts, those who did conventions suddenly found themselves without public gatherings of any kind. I would quietly estimate a year’s salary disappeared in three days in early March. In those early days, many of us talked at length about just what we were supposed to do with ourselves, not ‘out of work’ as we still had hands and time, but just suddenly a bit rudderless.”
And so this piece is the result. Here are a few close-ups of the rooms.
As you can see, every artist took Danger’s idea and ran with it. Some of the rooms are sad, some scary, some funny. And some are just straight fucked up. But when you put them all together it does, kind of perfectly, sum up this incredibly weird and upsetting time we’re living in.
“This will always be remembered as a very strange time in our lives,” Danger said. “So why not document it strangely?”
Again, you can purchase these prints, as well as other new prints Including a reprint of Danger’s Disney poster, at tinymediaempire.com through about the end of the month.
https://gizmodo.com/creating-during-covid-kevin-tong-talks-convention-woes-1843998736
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