COVID-19
CORRESPONDENCE
Dancing about architecture never struck me as a bad idea. Indeed, some days it makes more sense than writing about painting. Something similar occurred when artist Antonia Contro texted a photo of a collage to her friends, violinist Clara Lyon and cellist Hannah Collins, last March. The improvised ukulele-plus-whistle tune they sent in return to Contro’s drawing of a mountain guide pinned to sandpaper sounds just right, all the more so when art and music are presented together as a short video animated by a breeze. Begun in the lonely confusion of the early pandemic, despite (or more likely, because of) social distancing measures, the trio’s collaboration has continued, generating an almost daily artistic correspondence whose emotional resonance ranges from elegiac to silly. An especially charming example of the latter involves a handful of wood veneer and gold-leaf hole punches that can’t help but jump around on the page when prompted by plucky instrumentation. Viewable as part of Only Connect, a recent group show at Chicago’s Carrie Secrist Gallery.
—Lori Waxman 2021-03-18 11:04 AM