"Hearts to Hold"
This ongoing project consists of a series of bone-white porcelain, spikey coronovirus-shaped bowls that serve as vessels to hold tiny hand-sculpted clay hearts, representing the California lives lost to the coronavirus since the beginning of the pandemic in early 2020. The bowls are each approximately 18" in diameter and stand 6-8" tall (bowl heights vary). They can be displayed separately as open bowls or can be paired together to make round covid-shaped spheres. At the present, I have 8 of these bowls, holding between 70,000 and 80,000 tiny hearts representing the same number of people lost to covid in the state of California.
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I began making the tiny hearts in August of 2020 to commemorate each life lost to Covid-19 in the state of California. I created the first coronavirus bowl to hold the approximately 10,000 hearts I made that month. By October 2020 I had already made and filled a second bowl. As a Dia de Los Muertos tribute, I took photos of myself and the bowls to send strength and gratitude to Dr. Fauci, health workers and others who, elections and background noise aside, were doing the hard work to steer us through the global health crisis. I kept making hearts as we experienced covid surges through the fall and winter of 2020 and I continue to make them still. Seeing the large number of hearts and then holding some of the hearts in the cup of my hand gives me a profound experience of both the magnitude and individual impact of our losses and helps me to hold a space in my heart for that loss. I find the experience strangely comforting. They have served for me as a meditation and a way to focus energy and blessings, and now I would like to share them with the community with the hope that they be an aid in communal reflection and healing.
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Happy to announce Hearts to Hold will have a home at the Pence Gallery in 2022:
Holding Hearts, Artist Statement:
In the summer of 2020, several months into the Covid-19 pandemic and with around 10,000 lives lost in California alone, I started forming tiny clay hearts to represent the lost lives. Then I made a vessel to hold them because that’s what potters do. After the initial 10,000 hearts, I just kept going. By early January 2022, I had made over 78,000 and I will continue to make hearts as lives sadly continue to be lost. May their memories be a blessing. |
Be. Hold.
by Jennifer Nachmanoff How do we hold this day? What to hold onto? What to cast away? Gazing back through the eyes of tomorrow, what will the future’s beholden say? Did we withhold our love or offer it by ration? Stage a holdup on kindness? A chokehold on compassion? Are righteousness and resentment the holdovers we uphold and fear the holdfast around which hatreds embolden? Banished to our bedrooms, we grow large as the world smalls. Holding out for more headroom While building thicker walls. The holidays no longer jolly days, holy, or whole. We set the scene, take our places… stakeholders in our old roles. and yet… and yet… Here we stand, dwellers on the threshold, holding fast, entitled freeholders, Free-falling on this spherical household we call home. Made of clay, unearthed and ungrounded, nearly unhoused and unhomed. Yet not alone. How will we be? What will we hold? When we cast off will we be bold? From the cliff base of now and a future untold, will this ledge we are offered be our toehold into a day when each orb-dwelling heart matters as one and as wholly a part? This is our moment. Can future hearts trust us? Ashes to ashes, clay dust to clay dust. As we do what we can, Will we do what we must? Will we look back and say We had and we held til death did us part? In this moment, For the moment, I hold And behold Your heart. |
Holding Hearts, Together:
This piece was created as a space for reflection on the impact of the pandemic on our collective lives. The original plan was for visitors to engage with this artwork by taking a handful of hearts to disperse throughout the community and leaving behind reflections (holding and casting off). In this moment, however, dipping hands into the bowls feels psychologically uncomfortable. So instead, we invite you to IMAGINE yourself holding a handful of these tiny hearts representing the California lives lost to the pandemic. Then use the paper provided to write down your reflections, memories, and hopes. Consider:
What do you want to hold onto from the pandemic? What do you want to cast off?
How has the pandemic changed your view of community and communal responsibility?
How can we hold and honor those we have lost to the pandemic?
Please also feel free to share the names and memories of those lost to the pandemic.
If it feels comfortable, please clip your responses to the ribbons on the pedestals. If you prefer your thoughts be held privately, please place them in the vessel. The writings will be compiled at the close of the exhibit for a group reading.
This piece was created as a space for reflection on the impact of the pandemic on our collective lives. The original plan was for visitors to engage with this artwork by taking a handful of hearts to disperse throughout the community and leaving behind reflections (holding and casting off). In this moment, however, dipping hands into the bowls feels psychologically uncomfortable. So instead, we invite you to IMAGINE yourself holding a handful of these tiny hearts representing the California lives lost to the pandemic. Then use the paper provided to write down your reflections, memories, and hopes. Consider:
What do you want to hold onto from the pandemic? What do you want to cast off?
How has the pandemic changed your view of community and communal responsibility?
How can we hold and honor those we have lost to the pandemic?
Please also feel free to share the names and memories of those lost to the pandemic.
If it feels comfortable, please clip your responses to the ribbons on the pedestals. If you prefer your thoughts be held privately, please place them in the vessel. The writings will be compiled at the close of the exhibit for a group reading.