I’m so honored to be included once again in the juried annual issue of Letters Arts Review!(Once again, my copy arrived creased. The regular issues arrive in pristine condition, but the annual reviews: not so much. Go figure.) The title of the piece is Variations on a Meme by Pandemic.
The meme, “We are all in this together”, has struck many different notes throughout the pandemic. At the beginning it carried cheer-leading tones, optimistic and bright. Then the corporations took it over and included it in their PSA-like commercials. As rifts in the social fabric widened, corporations abruptly dropped it, and the tone of the meme on social media became pleading, as it gradually became clear that, in many ways, we are not, after all, all in this together. This piece opens with this now-well-known theme and then provides 28 variations, ending with a restatement of the theme. Within those variations, a bleak subtext lurks.
This was made for my solo show at The Artists’ Shop last year. (The initial spark was Variations on a Theme by Paganini. I wandered rather far afield, but that was the starting point.)
As shown in Letter Arts Review, 35:4.