Graphic created with Canva by Avery Van Etten
Northwestern University senior Kevin Eisenstein makes tiny, detailed pen markings, working on his latest major drawing project. Nick Rueth, another Northwestern University senior, creates and processes realities through fiction and nonfiction writing. Cody Colvin, founder of Colvin Theatrical in Michigan, helps transition live theater to livestreams. And emotional support instructional assistant Taye Schaffner shares her powerful singing voice on social media.
Art can have both physical and mental health benefits, explains Johanna Hayes, a
dance/movement therapist at the Institute for Therapy through the Arts in Illinois.
Hayes says that by addressing cognitive processes, such as stress, art can also affect
the physical body, for example by reducing cortisol levels that can cause numerous
health issues when elevated.
We are currently living in a state of hyperarousal and increased anxiety, Hayes notes. Art can help us address and process feelings such as stress and anxiety, she says.
Art can also help us remain connected to others and to ourselves in this time of COVID-19 isolation. “We are hard-wired as humans to connect,” Hayes says, and art is “another way to communicate, another way to process.”
Finding connection when we can’t be together in person is challenging, but not impossible. “We’re not social distancing. We’re physical distancing,” says Hayes. Creative people at Northwestern and around the nation are embracing art from drawing to theater to connect while in isolation.
We’re not social distancing. We’re physical distancing.
Kevin Eisenstein: Drawing to connect with others
In Kevin Eisenstein’s art studio, dark amorphous sculptures that look like they’re melting hang near the door. On top of one of them is a sketchbook that Eisenstein bound to be used as a film prop. A Lego Yoda about a foot tall sits on a speaker, communing with the force in front of an Alien poster. Smaller Lego figurines hang out on his robe, arms and head. There is a bed tucked snugly into one side of the smallish apartment room; when you’re a college student artist during COVID-19 quarantine, your studio is also your bedroom.
Evidence of the Northwestern University senior’s many artistic endeavors fill his Evanston, Ill., room, from his hot-glue-and-Styrofoam sculptures to the mask he made to wear when he performs with his band, Bossman. Dominating the desk in the corner is a drawing Eisenstein has been working on during quarantine. In the center of the drawing is the outline of one of his Lego figures. It looks, in his words, “ambiguously anthropomorphic,” a tall, organic shape on top of a rectangular prism base. Behind the figure are horizontal lines of varying widths which Eisenstein is filling in with miniscule pen drawings.
Eisenstein’s drawing / Photo by Avery Van Etten
“This is a good project for me right now during COVID because basically the only parameter I’m assigning myself is to go in a certain direction,” says Eisenstein. He starts filling in one line from left to right, then moves up to the next line and fills it in from right to left, and so on. He mentions it can take up to 30 hours to fill in one line. He says coronavirus isolation has helped him develop the project because it’s given him “a chance to slow down and focus on one thing at a time.”
Eisenstein wears magnifying glasses to draw the tiny details in each line. / Photos by Avery Van Etten
Eisenstein has dealt with anxiety and depression for years, and he says drawing helps him find relief. “This is a really good way to let out a lot of that emotion in a way that’s still structured,” he says.
Art also helps Eisenstein communicate with others. Recently, art forms like drawing and painting have been promoted as solitary activities, ways to keep busy during isolation, but they also help people continue interacting with one another even while apart. Eisenstein shares pictures of his art on social media. He used the digital version of his current major drawing as a Facebook profile picture for a while.
“I’m trying to create something that communicates on a very elemental level,” Eisenstein says. “It actually feels really social because I feel like I’m making something that I will eventually show to people, and they will see it and empathize with it.”
The digital version of Eisenstein's drawing, shared as a profile picture / Photo courtesy of Kevin Eisenstein
Nick Rueth: Writing to connect with oneself
You are the water I swim in, only I swim through air now. I breathe in air, and I choke on water. I can’t recall when it was that I stopped breathing and started choking, but I know that it was sometime after I met you and sometime before I drowned.
-Nick Rueth, Anatomy of a Manifesto
Click to hear Rueth read a section of their novella. / Audio courtesy of Nick Rueth
For the last year and a half, Northwestern University senior Nick Rueth (who uses they/them pronouns and has been quarantining in Glen Ellyn, Ill.) has been writing a novella. When everything shut down in March due to the coronavirus, Rueth was just about to go on spring break. With all activities and obligations cancelled during the extended two-week-long vacation, Rueth finished editing the work, tentatively titled “Anatomy of a Manifesto.” Rueth describes the novella as “a mix between a romance and a political thriller.” It begins with a breakup and continues to meetings of anarchists and plots to assassinate the governor.
Rueth has been sharing their novella with friends to get feedback, and they also hope to get it published. In this way, the solitary activity of writing becomes a path to communicating with others during quarantine.
Writing has also been a tool for Rueth to explore new perspectives in a way that they
normally would not have time to between in-person classes and socializing with friends.
A recent project they’ve been working on is a fictional story, formatted as a series of
field notes with narrator comments, exploring biological sex and gender identity.
Additionally, they have been processing COVID-19 through nonfiction personal essays
and journaling.
“It’s sort of like a way for me to reflect on everything that’s going on right now and what can be done ideologically or materially to make the best of this pandemic for as many people as possible,” says Rueth. Through journaling, Rueth has also been dealing with emotions such as frustration caused by a social media post using misleading statistics to make an argument about the virus.
“Journaling is always something that helps me stay in touch with my emotions,” says Rueth.
Advice from Nick Rueth:
Dive right into what you’re feeling. Even if you’re writing fiction, it helps just to put emotions down.
Cody Colvin: Theater to connect with community
Cody Colvin is the founder of Colvin Theatrical, a performance production company in Grand Rapids, Mich. He’s been helping produce virtual theater events, including a newly written plays read by actors in Facebook livestreams. Some of the events are even aired on the TV station GRTV channel 24.
Recently, Colvin Theatrical produced “24 Hour Theater and the Temple of Zoom.” In just one day, writers met (via Zoom) and created the scripts, the actors learned their roles, and 24 hours later, the plays went live. The actors appeared in Zoom boxes, portraying video calls with co-workers reviewing a bad young adult novel, family poorly celebrating a socially distant birthday, or friends holding a fan club discussion on Tiger King. In the latter, Colvin even joined in as an actor decked out in a cowboy hat, blond wig and vest, dancing to the Carole Baskin song from the popular Netflix series.
"24 Hour Theater and the Temple of Zoom" livestream recording / Video from 24 Hour Theater Facebook
“We don’t go to see theater for the same reason we watch something on Netflix,” says Colvin. “It’s something that you do to feel connected to people, and it’s something that you do to create catharsis.” Colvin notes that these virtual plays written in a webcam format feel authentic in a time when that is largely how we communicate. The plays are creating “a new kind of honesty,” he says. And
Advice from Cody Colvin:
You never know where your project’s going to end up, and you have to be process-oriented rather than be results-oriented. You have to be able to just create from that space in yourself that wants to create rather than try to create the next great thing.
he says these virtual performances are exciting because they combine the unpredictability of live theater with the unlimited audience capacity of live streams and television.
With streams and broadcasts, performers may not get the same kind of audience feedback through applause or laughter that they do in live shows, but they are still communicating and connecting with others and with each other. For example, Colvin points out that the people involved in the productions can hear from audiences through the chat function on Facebook livestreams.
Colvin says that in the Grand Rapids arts community, everybody knows everybody else.
“People like content from people they enjoy,” he says. This adds an extra element of
entertainment for audiences and performers, and it also helps the community members
stay connected to one another. “There’s the connection between people, and that’s the main
point,” says Colvin.
Virtual performances benefit script writers, producers and performers, who get to scratch
their creative itch, investigate their worlds and communicate. Colvin says, “To be able to
bring something to life no matter what, to be able to create something no matter where you
are, no matter what your medium is, no matter what kind of space you have, that breeds
resilience in a creative.”
To be able to bring something to life no matter what…breeds resilience in a creative.
Taye Schaffner: Singing to connect with family, friends and beyond
Taye Schaffner can belt out songs with the best of them. Now 20 years old, this emotional support instructional assistant at Conewago Elementary School in York, Pa., was in her first performance at age 10.
Most recently, Schaffner was supposed to be involved in a production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at the Playhouse at Allenberry, but the show has been put on hold due to the coronavirus. It has been tentatively rescheduled for September 2020. In addition to hosting shows, Allenberry usually holds cabarets once a week. These have transitioned to a virtual format, and Schaffner performs in them.
Schaffner singing "Pulled" from The Addams Family in a virtual cabaret / Video from Schaffner's Facebook
“This is a good opportunity to still put the music out there,” says Schaffner. “It’s still a way to let everybody get together and share music.”
Schaffner has been sharing videos of herself singing in the cabarets and in other miscellaneous music videos on social media. She’s heard from many people who look forward to watching her recordings. They tell her the songs brighten their days.
Sharing music on social media helps Schaffner connect with other singers. She watches her friends in the virtual cabarets. Sometimes she records songs together with other people using an app called Smule that lets everyone record their parts separately and then put them together into one song. She’s even recorded duets with people from Canada and Rhode Island.
Schaffner can record these songs as many times as she wants before sharing them. She says that is challenging because it’s hard to decide when a recording is good enough to share. Fighting back against the concept that people only post the most polished versions of themselves on social media, Schaffner created a blooper reel of musical mess-ups, showing some of the secrets behind those final videos.
Taye Schaffner Blooper Reel
Schaffner's blooper reel / Video courtesy of Taye Schaffner