Jay Cuciti

Michael’s House, 2020, Gouache and ink, 8″ x 10″

No one in our generation believed that we would live through a monumentally historical period. We went from Spring Break to Lockdown in the matter of seconds. Many of us had to uproot our lives to accommodate the virus. Various loopholes in the COVID guidelines allowed some of us to find normalcy in social lives by gathering at beaches or parks. We held onto those days so tightly because it’s all we had. Sadly, it isn’t summer anymore. The leaves on the trees are dying and the days are harder to enjoy because of the cold. We still crave physical connections and movie nights. We are now more aware that normalcy is far away in the distance. With the breeze and threat of snow coming in, we are left unsatisfied and lonely. So…what do we do? We make charts, formulate, become scientists, and entrepreneurs. We revert to our roots of hunting and gathering and pull from modernity with endless DIY projects. Michael’s House is an attempt at saving our last percentage of sanity. Maybe if their tests come back negative my friends and I can all hang out in this mini jungle and, once again, come one step closer to normalcy.