Sketching the Pandemic Year in Smithsonian Engagement Calendar 2020
Week 15 April 5-11
The photograph on the Smithsonian Engagement Calendar 2020 for the week of April 5-11 was Nicario Jimenez Quispe’s The Hat Maker Workshop’. Quispe used wood, boiled potato, natural pigments, plaster and lamb’s wool to make this piece. He is a Peruvian American retalbo maker. The caption explains that his traditional alter pieces are made as “small wooden boxes filled with figures, animals, and other other objects that tell a story. The hats shown here are representations of those used every day in the peasant communities of the Andes, where they are made of lamb’s wool and dyed with natural pigments and sold in markets and fairs.”
By April 2020 making masks had taken over the country and I joined in the frenzy too! For days I watched YouTube videos checking out the various kinds of masks that I could sew. And then I selected appropriate fabric remnants from my stash, gathered the elastic, and got to work. When the old sewing machine broke I called it quits on making the masks. I bought handmade masks from crafters to do my part in supporting them. A friend shared two masks she made. I parceled out a few in a bowl by the front door, extras in my purse in ziplock bags, a couple in the car, and more in my coat jackets along with tiny bottles of sanitizers!! I was not going to be caught without a mask ! And for how long would this go on - no one knew for sure.
Mask making watercolor and ink by Meera Rao
