Daniel Salazar, Jr. of Hartford is writing “Un Nuevo Dia” (“A New Day”), a composition to honor Latinx health care workers and others on the front lines in the fight against coronavirus. Harold Shapiro of Guilford is offering Zoom photography classes as an artistic outlet to mitigate the stress of home isolation and contagion anxiety. Leslie Johnson of Coventry will create a booklet on how to write poetry, to be used by teachers and parents home-schooling their kids during the COVID-19 pandemic.
These are three of the artists who have received grants from Connecticut Office of the Arts’ Artists Respond initiative. Seventy-three state-funded grants have been awarded – $1,000 for individual projects and $2,000 for group projects – totaling $88,000.
The initiative funds projects that create free, online artistic content. Many artists are addressing COVID-related issues. Other projects are unrelated to the crisis. But in the grand scheme, they’re all about the pandemic, because all the funded projects must be available virtually, to bring art to the public while preserving social distancing.
Elizabeth Shapiro, director of Arts, Preservation and Museums for the Connecticut Office of the Arts and State Historic Preservation Office, said artists are figuring out ways to connect with audiences without face-to-face interaction.
“Artists putting in applications have developed strategies to cope through this time and come out stronger and more resilient and more creative,” Shapiro said.
Shapiro said large institutions have an easier time with virtual presentations, as most already have online content and educational and public programming. Individual artists have a harder time, she said, and the grants will encourage them to adapt to the new reality.
“As time goes on, artists have become more and more attuned to what the community’s needs are and why the arts are important to fill that need,” Shapiro said. “They have been able to pivot.”
Here are stories of some of the group projects.
Songs of comfort
When the lockdowns began, Sarah Kaufold and Greg Flower of Mansfield Center and dozens of their musicians friends lost work. They brainstormed ways to use their music to help people who are suffering during the health crisis.
“Music is a way to help people heal. We wanted to get it to the people who needed it,” Kaufold said.
They created the YouTube channel Songs of Comfort and started taking requests through their website, comfortsongs2020.wixsite.com. Working with Middlesex Health in Middletown, they learned which songs patients wanted to hear and recruited musicians to make recordings.
Kaufold and Flower turned those recordings into peaceful and uplifting videos and posted them on the YouTube channel. Hospital personnel bring iPads to the patients’ beds so they can hear the songs they requested.
“It’s not the same, singing by ourselves into a microphone, but it’s still an opportunity for us to share our music,” Kaufold said.
The songs they have recorded so far are “Stardust,” “”The Road Home,” “Strangers in the Night,” “What a Wonderful World,” “Imagine,” “Lean on Me,” “I’ll Be There For You” and “My Fight Song.”
Any Connecticut health care facility is welcome to request songs for their patients at comfortsongs2020.wixsite.com. A few videos also have been requested by family members who have lost loved ones to COVID. “They can’t have memorial services, so this is something they can share,” Kaufold said.
Kaufold and Flower will use the grant money to pay the musicians and expand the project, to buy software to create the sound and for video engineering.
Quarantine documentary
Stephen Bisaccia and Caitlyn Meindl of Derby came up with their arts idea while participating in the “Stuck At Home 48 Hour Film Project” in New Haven.
“We were working on a mockumentary about quarantining, how people go insane. But we didn’t finish it on time. We thought, all right, it’s fine, it’s not a competition, let’s take some time with it,” Bisaccia said. “So hey, we might as well make it a genuine documentary.”
The couple, both of whom recently graduated from Quinnipiac University in Hamden, has been shooting and editing every day, telling the story of self-isolation in the Bisaccia family home where Meindl is riding out the health crisis.
“There’s a lot of my parents in it. My brother and his boyfriend, who usually live in Brooklyn, they’re here now. It’s an interesting dynamic. Some of our neighbors talk to the camera,” Bisaccia said.
The camera is always running at the house, which Bisaccia says was weird at first, but now the family is used to it.
“It’s hard to not shoot every day when you’re doing a doc. You don’t want to miss those moments that make the film powerful,” he said. “Leaving it on all the time, it was a matter of making it the norm. Some people in the house weren’t as comfortable, but the more it’s there the more it becomes invisible.”
The couple will use the grant money to finish their film. It will be released on Bisaccia’s YouTube channel – youtube.com/channel/UCBbEexWtkWqSx1G1vEEIEbQ – by the end of September, in time for the October end of the funding period.
Myths about COVID
Thabisa Rich is a popular singer in New Haven. Her husband, Charlie Rich, is her manager. Lately, with their two kids home all day because of school closures, their minds aren’t on music but on their and other people’s kids. Specifically, how are kids coping with the health crisis?
“People, even the government and the CDC, are learning about COVID-19 as we go. I realized that we’re really not addressing the issue of COVID-19 in a way kids can understand,” Rich said. “I am fortunate that my kids have some basic understanding, but other kids must be so stressed.”
The Riches got a grant to help create a puppet show, which they will write, perform and stream as a series. Each episode will teach children how to dispel common misconceptions about coronavirus that have slipped into the public conversation.
“For example, some people are saying if you take certain drugs or drink cleaning products it will clean your body. A lot of people believe it,” Rich said. “We want to teach them, don’t do that, bleach is not for being ingested.”
The show, which will run for at least five episodes, stars three characters: gullible Bobo, intelligent Coco and Jojo, the comic relief. “It will be entertaining, educational, funny and silly,” Rich said.
The episodes will be streamed on Rich’s website, thabisamusic.com, and on her Facebook page, facebook.com/thabisamusic.
The Rich’s children – Elethu-Ithemba, 12, and Asante, 5 – are participating in the creation of the show. “Elethu considers herself one of the creative managers,” Rich said.
Other Artists Respond grantees
The other Artists Respond grantees are:
Kaitrin Acuna of Meriden, Faustin Adeniran of New Haven, Debra Aldo of Sterling, Laura Angiolillo of Glastonbury, Noah Baerman of Middletown, Cheryl Bartley of Winsted, Kevin Bishop of Norwich, Christine Breslin of West Hartford, Darcy Bruce of Quaker Hill, Alicia Cobb of Bridgeport, Felicia Cooper of Stafford Springs, Theodore Coulombe of Sharon, Brandon Couloute of Bristol, Jeanne Criscola of North Haven, Marek Czarnecki of Meriden, Carol Dannhauser of Fairfield, Leslie Elias of West Cornwall, Melanie Faranello of West Hartford, Amy Forbes of Chester, Lindsey Fyfe of Hartford, Derek Graham of Orange, Ashley Hamel of New Haven, Lara Herscovitch of Durham, Karen Hogg of East Haven, Barbara Hopkins of Vernon, Susan Jackson of Redding, Hyun “Hannah” Jung of Warren, Shannon Kiley of New Haven, Heidi Kirchofer of Harwinton, Jeffrey Krieger of East Hartford, ShawnaLee Kwashnak of Middlebury, Nicki LaPorte of Bristol, Thomas Lee of Bloomfield, Martha Lewis of New Haven, Hunter Liguore of Bristol, Tondrea Mabins of Stratford, Iyaba Mandingo of Bridgeport, Nadia Martinez of Greenwich, Susan “Sooo-z” Mastropietro of Westport, Susan McCaslin of New Haven, Luciana Quagliato McClure of Hamden, Elizabeth McNally of New Britain, Kathrine McNickle of Groton, Joel Melendez of Harwinton, Dawn Metcalf of Suffield, Christine Mitchell of Goshen, Lara Morton of Madison, Frank Natter of Jr. of Deep River, Jill Nichols of Shelton, Kathryn Nolan of Milford, Emma Palzere-Rae of Groton, Bill Pere of Mystic, Adelka Polak of Bethel, Weverson Ponte of Norwalk, Ben Quesnel of Stamford; Valerie Rogotzke of New Haven; Vincent Scarano of New London; Nellie Shevelkina of New Haven; Mary Ruth Shields of Portland; Elizabeth Simmons of Hartford, Rene Soto of Norwalk, Rashmi Talpade of Wallingford, Jesse Terry of Pawcatuck, Marcella Trowbridge of Middletown, Laura Walls of Glastonbury, Debra Walsh of West Hartford and Yves Wilson of Bridgeport.
Susan Dunne can be reached at sdunne@courant.com.