When the coronavirus brought daily life to a halt in March 2020, Lititz artists found a way to keep working together while staying apart. At least one of them used the effort to help local food banks, too.
A challenge instead of a meeting
Beth Kaylor Brunner, president of the Lititz Art Association, said the group’s monthly meetings had to stop under COVID-19 restrictions. So the association created a challenge it called “quARTantine.”
“We can’t meet so we are doing a challenge,” she wrote.
Members were invited to create and share at least one piece of art per week, in any medium. Each week followed one of the seven elements of art: color, line, value, shape, form, texture and space. Color was the focus of the first weeks. The association posted members’ submissions on its Facebook page so the community could follow along.
Daffodils, roses and orchids
Brunner set the pace, painting a new small piece nearly every day. Her first was three daffodils. “This week and next week is ‘Color,’ and I decided to use a split-complement,” she wrote on Instagram, describing a color scheme that pairs one hue with the two colors beside its opposite on the color wheel.
She followed with more florals: a coral rose painted with warm and cool colors, and a different orchid on each of three days.
Beads, watercolor and onions
Other members brought their own approaches.
Donna Edson Felton, who works in paper, tile and jewelry, was inspired by a color palette she had seen the year before and “turned a bowl of beads into a bracelet.” She said the structure helped. “I’ve always worked best with deadlines and now this quarantine can ignite our creativity,” she wrote.
Ashlee Showalter painted a bright modern bouquet in watercolor, hoping to lift someone’s spirits. “I wanted to take advantage of the color element of this challenge by using the brightest, cheeriest colors I could achieve with my watercolor palette,” she wrote.
Vitaly Borisenko submitted realistic still lifes, including an oil painting of two onions on a kitchen towel. He explained one decision behind it: “Deciding which kitchen towel to use, with blue stripes or the red ones, I chose red to match the color spectrum of the onions.”
Art for food banks
On the eighth day, with a painting of a red-orange poppy, Brunner announced she would sell each 6-by-6-inch challenge painting for $35 on her website and donate $5 from each sale to a local food bank. Only a few remained by the time the story was first published.
She also pledged part of the proceeds from her small paintings of Lancaster County farms and a North Carolina lighthouse to food bank support, at a time when demand for food assistance in the county was rising quickly.
A community of creatives
The Lititz Art Association hosts an online member gallery with links to individual artists’ websites, giving residents a way to find and support local creators while galleries and shops were closed.
The group is also the sponsor of the Lititz Outdoor Fine Art Show, held each summer in Lititz Springs Park. In spring 2020 it was still scheduled for July 25, though organizers, like everyone else, were watching how the pandemic would develop.
Why it mattered
The early weeks of the shutdown were isolating for many people. For artists used to monthly meetings, shared critiques and shows, the weekly challenge kept a creative community connected. It also gave neighbors scrolling through difficult news a steady stream of flowers, color and still lifes, made right in town.
More information about the association and its membership is available on its website.
This story was originally reported by Lynn Rebuck for LititzDailyNews.com in March 2020 and has been updated for our archive.