Survival by design

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 25/07/2020 (2243 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been tough on a lot of people, but it’s especially hard on younger people who might otherwise be starting their careers.

So it has been for Danielle Friesen, 23, a multidisciplinary artist who graduated from the graphic design program at Red River College in 2019 after graduating from Miles Macdonell Collegiate.

“Graphic design was a discipline I added to my toolkit,” she says. “It started with fellow artists asking if I would make posters for their events and it just made sense to learn another way of communicating. It’s a skill that is could potentially provide a more steady income as well as just to extend as (an art) maker.

“My work consists of ink, paint, clay, recycled objects… and as I move forward, the list builds,” she says. “The visual stories I create are emotive.”

But those stories came to a standstill when COVID-19 locked down the world as we knew it.

“The pandemic completely depleted my creativity,” she acknowledges. “I felt a lot of nothing.

“I did not want to go anywhere, due to living with a highly at-risk family,” she says.

“After a while, I went to work at my hired job but not my studio,” she says, referring to her work as an on-call mail carrier.

“As time moved on, I finally picked up a pen again, but it has been a very emotional time for many reasons,” she says.

One of her strategies was to turn some of the negatives into a creative force, as in the first of her five items she needs to survive the pandemic.

1. Unrest

“There has been a lot of unrest being collectively felt,” Friesen says.

“Everything that has been going on in the Black community has really struck a chord for me. I am mixed so I come from two sides — Black and white — and that has raised so many questions for myself and so many conversations that I’m having with my family and with my friends, conversations I’ve never had before.”

But that unrest spurs turning anxiety into an image, she says. “My head is so full, but I know a visual will shape in my mind. When it does, it is essential for me to make it happen.”

2. Texture

“Studying graphic design taught me the importance of texture,” she says. “It makes everything more human and interesting. So when I am not creating, it’s always fascinating to just explore different environments.

“Texture is where the nitty-gritty is,” she explains. “Walking downtown, I’ll just be noticing how a piece of cement work looks. It’s cracked a certain way and I’m able to take photos of these textures that I find and I can implement those.

“I took photos of my dad’s beard,” she says with a laugh. “The hair is so coarse, and I use it as a brush on Photoshop for adding textures to illustrations and design. A lot of my projects have my dad’s beard because it’s such a nice texture.”

3. Cycling

“Moving my body is so beneficial to my work. It gifts me time to think but more importantly, not think at all,” she says. “I have been regularly cycling during this time and it has been enlightening.”

4. Thoughts

“This seems broad but for me it can be acute,” she says. “My mind has a way of depicting disturbing forms. I have a very vivid imagination.

“Sometimes it’s like a movie playing in my head and no one else is seeing it,” she says. “A lot of the times when that happens, it’s not very good and I find it when I’m not using my hands, exerting that energy; I start to dwell and that’s not healthy for me to do. Everything gets sticky up there.

“Drawing has given me an outlet to control it.”

5. Fear

“I am so lucky, having found something I belong to and feel alive doing,” she says.

“The fear of losing that brings me fear. So I get up and do it all over again.”

 

 

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @FreepKing