And so I present Exhibit A.

One of the new things I tried in the January Art Lab was inviting people to make drawings and collages of their national parks in addition to making abstract photos. I’ve used both processes before (people drew maps for Play Passages, and made collages for Landing Gear), so I was excited about trying out these techniques to create different representations of the parks. I didn’t narrow down or test the frameworks, though, which I would usually do. I was in a state I sometimes get into where I just want to try it all, and rush ahead. Collaged landscapes are a very broad category, and I threw the idea out there to see what would happen. 

I received a few wonderful collages, like these by Aimee Ducharme:

I was so impressed and moved by how she ran with the assignment. She went out and photographed the sunset for six straight evenings on the beach near where she lives in Venice, California. (I must note that she also used a film camera, not digital, which nowadays is a creative risk all by itself—prints are not cheap!) Then she made a series of collages out of the prints, and wrote about visiting the National Park of Awe, a place you can set yourself up for visiting, but you can’t really go looking for exactly. There’s a way in which she wrote about the experience of trying to capture the best, most perfect sunset, that mirrors the creative process I’ve been talking about. She sometimes worried about missing the peak time, about getting the right colors and the ideal shot, about sometimes finding a grey sky, but then having her senses suddenly overtake her with the awe and beauty of the sunset itself, the immensity of this stunning occurrence she gets to witness every day during the pandemic.

She made the collages in response to that feeling, piecing together pieces of each day, stretching herself to make an image of a sunset that’s different than the hundreds of sunset photos we’ve all seen. She accepted the grey days and incorporated that acceptance right into the images. But still, she struggled and doubted. She wrote me that felt unsure about what she was doing, that they weren’t coming out how she wanted or expected. I hadn’t seen them yet, but I encouraged her to keep going, to just enjoy that sense of play, to not judge herself. She and I had a lovely back and forth, and she pushed on, finished the collages, wrote about her experience visiting the National Park of Awe, and sent them to me. I loved them, and I loved what she did. I love how she challenged herself.

But then the deadline passed for the submissions from the second Art Lab. And I could see that the collage experiment worked individually, but it didn’t work collectively. I only received a few, maybe 3 in total, besides Aimee’s, and they didn’t fit together in terms of style. I started to realize that collage and drawing don’t make sense at this stage, and maybe not at all for this project. 

And I felt terrible.

I felt trepidatious when I wrote Aimee and explained, but she was wonderful and understanding. So were the others who had tried out the other experiments. She said she got so much out of making the collages, in and of itself.

And that's largely the point. In the Art Lab, we talk about how important it is to give ourselves permission to take creative risks, to try things and then be willing to let go of the outcome when things don’t go the way we expect. Needless to say, this is much easier said than done. It’s scary and vulnerable, but it’s what I’m asking all of you to do when I’m inviting you to make art with me.

There’s a behind-the-curtain aspect of the creative process that I’m engaged in, but as a participatory and community artist, it's important to sometimes pull the curtain back. That can be really hard to do. Playing around with things on my own isn’t always easy, but it’s a lot less vulnerable and scary sometimes than asking people to try ideas out and make things on the behalf of one of my projects.

I realized that if I’m preaching that it’s okay to explore, let go of expectations, and see what happens, this is all a part of it. It’s a part of being a community and participatory artist, of inviting people into my process. It’s just a little more public. It’s amazing to me after doing this kind of work for so many years that I need to be reminded again and again that things won’t always unfold as I expect, and that that’s okay. 

I treasure the back and forth conversations with Aimee that we’ve had since she got involved in the National Parks of Emotion. I treasure all of the ones I’m having with so many people for whom this project has really sparked something. It helps remind me that what I do really is as much about the process as the product, and that part of that process is invisible and relational. It’s about the connections I’m forming with everyone who is coming along on this ride with me. It’s about vulnerability and trust. It’s about how much I continue to learn about taking chances when I ask all of you to take chances. I guess it’s about leading, in a way. This isn’t the first time that I’ve had to sheepishly admit to everyone that we need to go a different way, and it won’t be the last. But hopefully I’ll continue to get braver about doing the u-turn.

How do you handle detours in your life—creative and otherwise? How do you know when to turn around, and what do you do to make it easier?

Uncertainty was neck and neck with anxiety, but I just ran a small workshop with students at the Orchard Lyceum School in Toronto and uncertainty pulled ahead. (As an aside, what they did was amazing—kids of course are creative and brilliant and imagine their parks in totally unexpected ways. Exhibit A is the image above, which was made by a 10-year-old. I mean, wow.) 

Of course, those two emotions go hand in hand. Uncertainty breeds anxiety, there’s no doubt about it. It will be interesting to see the similarities between those two parks as they get fleshed out. I imagine the parks as side-by-side, or maybe they overlap. I think there are probably exits from the National Park of Uncertainty that seamlessly meld with the entrance to the National Park of Anxiety, so that you don’t even realize that you’re in a new place.

What’s interesting about uncertainty to me is that anxiety doesn't have to be the only response to it (although it’s important to say that if what you’re uncertain about is whether you’ll be able to feed your family or have a roof over your head, or if you’re particularly vulnerable to the virus, or any number of circumstances that makes your situation precarious, that is a different story.) I’m talking about the kind of uncertainty that you can handle, you just don’t know what’s coming.

In so many ways the pandemic has been about practicing how to live with uncertainty. It still feels very uncomfortable, and it’s not a place I like to be. But I’ve found that despite my planning nature, I’m slightly better at dealing with it now than I was a year ago. Last spring it felt tortuous not knowing when my kids were going back to school, what bad news the next week would bring, having no idea what the summer would look like. 

Now, as I look ahead again, I still feel upset when I think about not knowing when I’m going to see my parents, friends, family again, or when things will go back to “normal,” whatever that might look like, but I’ve accepted it a little more. This extended period of uncertainty has highlighted the fact that certainty is an illusion in the first place. Very Buddhist, which is not surprising, as the whole project was inspired by a meditation.

All of this is to tell you why I started with Uncertainty as the first National Park of Emotion you can visit on its own web page. I’m using StoryMaps, a platform for digital storytelling that incorporates maps and geography:

The page is a work in progress. After all, we’re in the process of documenting and describing this park together! I’ll be adding to it when I open submissions again soon, playing with ideas and mediums there. (You’ll notice some video I made of the park, inspired by what’s come in so far. More about that soon too.) I’ll also be adding more parks on StoryMaps as I go along. It’s a fun way to share the research.

Now that I think of it, I like that I’m starting with the National Park of Uncertainty, because there’s a lot of uncertainty I have with the project itself, too. I know intellectually that uncertainty is in the nature of the creative process, but that still doesn’t make it easy. How will it evolve? How am I going to reach more people? What will work artistically? Will I be able to juggle everything? And, and…

I think I’ll get back to practicing just sitting in this park again. This bench looks good.

How have you managed the uncertainty of the pandemic? Have you adjusted to it at all? If so, what has helped?

“So much disappointment at this park. This should have been a year of making plans and centerpieces for my daughter's Bat Mitzvah. So many choices to make it a special and quirky day. Inviting family from all over to make the trip and all be in the same room for the first time.

Now I see snippets of what would have been, like a winding path I can't actually get to off in the distance. It reminds me of the Ramble in Central Park, where meandering always led you somewhere wonderful and new. But there isn't any way to get there from here.  

We will still fill the day with all the meaning we can with the small group of family we will be allowed to have there. She has been working diligently for months and I wish we could celebrate this sweet and imaginative girl with friends and family with a big old hora. So sad and disappointed we cannot give her what we have been picturing for her for years. She deserves it.”

Amy Schiff, Age 45
Scarsdale, NY

“I have been very fortunate during the pandemic in that I still manage to see friends for outdoor activities like hiking and tennis, and most of my work (management consulting and coaching) was already by videoconference, from home. While grateful in many ways, I slink into disappointment when I see so many people not taking this situation seriously and ignoring safety recommendations. We got through the summer and into the fall, our numbers were looking positive and restrictions getting lifted - and then boom – Thanksgiving and subsequent surges. The reinstituted liberties we were appreciating like never before were taken away, once again.

My hike on Disappointment Trail wanders through the California Redwoods, on a shady, dirt trail, with dead, brown leaves scattering the path. It is cool, dank and quiet and I am in solitude. Brown is a primary color amid the dark green leaves of the redwoods and sun is beyond the shelter of this path. I am disappointed and sad but hopeful. Each morning, we never know what we will wake up to, and I await the days when those surprises are uplifting rather than upsetting.”

Rhonda Gutenberg, Age 63
Sausalito, CA

I’m intrigued by how two people, on two different coasts of the United States, both picture disappointment as a trail or a winding path with brown as the dominant color. Not everyone’s parks of the same emotion look as similar as these, sometimes there are just small echoes and patterns that emerge. But it’s only by getting more submissions about each park that we can start exploring the topography of each feeling.

Of the dozens of emotions we’ve all been navigating this past year, disappointment has to be one of the most common ones. Disappointment rises up when we have an unmet expectation—and really, whose year went as they expected? So many plans changed, events canceled, opportunities gone. All the people we were looking forward to seeing and hugging in person, replaced by making do with conversations and connection through screens.

Disappointment can be a hard emotion to admit to sometimes though, when there is so much pain in the world. It’s easy to tell oneself that some disappointments are no big deal, to brush them aside, to not even recognize that we’re in the National Park of Disappointment. But like all emotions, I think it’s crucial to acknowledge when we’re wandering around there.

Among many disappointments, I had multiple trips canceled, both overseas and ones just across the US/Canadian border. I live in Canada but grew up in New York, so my entire family and tons of close friends are in the US. I usually go back many times a year, and shortly before the pandemic I moved from Toronto to Montreal. I was so excited to be much closer to New York City and Boston, and had looked forward to easy weekend trips. We also missed a family wedding that was re-planned as a small socially distanced event. I heard it was lovely, but we couldn’t go. The border feels like the Berlin wall now.

The descriptions of the National Park of Disappointment above resonate strongly, and inspire mine, in which the paths are full of dead ends. I wander down one path that’s headed for my annual family reunion at the beach, and then hit a stone wall, the sand and the sea beyond reach on the other side. Turning around, I follow a sign that says, “This way to sleepaway camp for your kids (and some freedom for the adults),” to be met by another wall. And on and on this year. The only way to lower the walls is to lower the expectations. I expect nothing right now, because getting my hopes up just keeps me in that park. 

What have been some of your pandemic-related disappointments? What does your National Park of Disappointment look like and feel like?

You can see from the word cloud some of the dominant emotions that are swirling around— loneliness, gratitude, anxiety, uncertainty, all different kinds of sadness. 

You might also wonder how I’m defining an emotion for the project. I’ll go more into depth in a future post about what I’m reading and thinking about regarding theories and definitions of emotions and what they are. I’ve been learning a ton and it’s really fascinating. 

Some people might feel that concepts like “betrayal”, “untetheredness”, or “creativity” are not emotions, but I’m taking a very broad view at this point. If it’s an emotion concept or feeling that someone in a culture somewhere (even if it’s not an English emotion word) could communicate and someone else would know what they’re talking about, then that’s fine for now. It could be a emotion word that’s consists of a mix of other emotions, that’s fine too (for example, angst is a combination of anxiety and dread). As long as you can say, “Because of the pandemic, I feel _____”, then for the purposes of this project it’s a national park of emotion that you can visit and describe, and I want to hear about it. 

I’ve realized though, that while I love hearing about all of the varieties of emotions, that for the next round of submissions, I’m going to ask people to start filling in the parks more. I still want to give people the freedom to choose an emotion, but I need multiple submissions for each park so there’s more material in each. Comparing and contrasting what your uncertainty or frustration looks like compared to mine is where it starts to get particularly interesting artistically. I’ll share an example of that in a coming post.

Meanwhile, I would love your help and feedback about the following two questions:

• Which National Parks of Emotion would you like to see that I don’t have yet?

• Which ones should I gather more stories about, that feel crucial to include as part of our collective emotional pandemic experience?

It’s a deep valley and I’m at the very bottom, waiting to get out. I’ve been here since March. There are times when it feels like I have climbed for so long and I’m nearly out, nearly at the top. Like there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. When I reach the top, I will get to see my family that I have been so desperately missing for 9 months—the US-Canada border keeping us apart.

But then the camera pans back out, and I see that I’ve still got a long way to go. The cases keep rising, the lockdowns continue, the border remains shut. I long to be reunited with my family. I think of how magical it will be when I see them again. 

I’ve experienced a particularly intense loss of a loved one before, so I am not completely unfamiliar with these feelings of missing and yearning and longing.

I yearn to be close to them, to hear my niece laugh again, to hold my nephew in my arms for the first time, to embrace my mother, to hear my dad tell a bad joke. We connect nearly every day virtually, but I yearn for real connection again.

— Anonymous, age 28

Yearning is an interesting emotion—given the current circumstances, I instantly think of it as an unpleasant feeling, but one of the participants wrote to me about how it can also be a pleasant feeling of longing. Maybe it’s a mixed emotion, in some cases, or perhaps it depends on what you’re yearning for, and why.

It’s been about a month since the last National Parks of Emotion Art Lab. So many of you have told me that you’re eager to hear about what’s happening with the project since then, and I’m eager to share. I’ll tell you what’s happening over the next while, as a series of Art Lab reports.

Meanwhile, what are you yearning for? Is it a pleasant or unpleasant feeling for you?

The onset of the Covid-19 pandemic brought on dark and unsettled feelings. The multiple uncertainties of how long we would be at home, if we would get ill, when we would see our families and friends, and the loss of work and income, felt grey and heavy. I was lucky to be confined with my two teenage children, and their company and our closeness brought a sense of solace and groundedness. We settled into a slow, fluid routine which included very late-night walks with my 15-year-old son and our toy poodle, Lili. In March and April, when the weather was still cold, these walks - usually close to midnight when our neighbourhood was almost completely still - took on a magical quality. We had vibrant, in-depth talks, sometimes absurd, often bursting into laughter. The barren, otherwise silent streets became the National Park of Delight. Buds appeared suddenly on bushes, hinting at something hopeful and new. Early spring flowers glimmered white under the bright street lamps. A number of young, new trees seemed to have been mysteriously air-dropped out of nowhere, lounging beguilingly on the newly-revealed grass as they waited patiently to be planted. Our sprightly little dog trotted along, sniffing the sharp air. Out of a bleak moment in time came shimmers of brightness, heightening our senses.

Shira Gilbert
Montreal, Quebec

This story is a selection from National Parks of Emotion, an evolving participatory art project documenting people’s emotional experience during the Covid-19 pandemic. All images and writing are by each participant. Writing edited by David Goldstein, photos edited by Mindy Stricke.

I am mired in the National Park of Envy. It is only a small garden park among the great national parks of emotion and it is very crowded. Everyone wanting. Me, wanting. All around are green things—bushes and leaves and moss in the wet areas. I slosh through them, creating footfalls and faint sounds. I get covered in muck. I want more. I want. I want the rainbow—the colours that will move me along the moody paths. I want the tunnel, gaping, lit, alluring in that rainbow, calling me from envy. I have. That is the conundrum: the have. In this quarantine-time haves are significant—a husband or friend, my sons and their children, other friends, ready and responsive and loving. Haves like a computer, a cell phone, a smart TV. Haves like a terrace, a great apartment, plants, food, books, subscriptions to the New York Times and Netflix. Haves like projects to finish. Haves like the colors each evening that promise another morning.

But there are the things I have not, and they are bigger than me. I want what those others must have—the yard, the pool, the live-in child, the guarantee that I will be around to want more. I envy those who have confidence that they will get through this; who gallivant—masked, yes, but still go without fear into the colourful tunnel. I envy. I envy. In the distance, maybe there is the pathway out. I also wait. 

Judith Veder, 77
Bronx, NY

This story is a selection from National Parks of Emotion, an evolving participatory art project documenting people’s emotional experience during the Covid-19 pandemic. Writing edited by David Goldstein, photos edited by Mindy Stricke.

I am in the National Park of Fear. A few weeks ago, my next-door neighbour suddenly passed away of a heart attack. We weren't friends, but we were friendly. At first I felt disoriented. Later that day I thought of a podcast I had recently listened to (Sugar Calling, episode 1.) The guest was talking about how people experience trauma. He said that we all live on the back of a tiger, and every once in a while the tiger wakes up. I thought it was a powerful metaphor about how we live our lives, believing we are in control. Whenever something terrible happens, we wake up to the realization that there is so much we can't control, and so much we don't know. I started to think of all my fears regardless of whether they had anything to do with the pandemic, and wondered which one would materialize next. There was the fear of dying, of getting sick, of losing someone, of losing my job, of my life never returning to normal. After a while, the various fears became a single mass, and I was enveloped in it. I felt like a particle on the back of a tiger.  

The place I'm in is monochrome, musty, and completely quiet. The terrain is bumpy and slippery. It looks as if it is covered with exposed tree roots. They are giant and look like unfriendly hills and valleys. In the valleys, it is dark and I can't see what is beyond the next hill. When I get to the top of a hill, I look around, and the place goes on forever. It is hard to know what is the way out because all directions look the same. Going forward is scary, because I may not like what I find behind the next hill. But staying put is also uncomfortable. I dread the feelings I am going to have once I confront the "thing" on the other side of each hill.

Julia Grozdanova, 48
Toronto, Canada

This story is a selection from National Parks of Emotion, an evolving participatory art project documenting people’s emotional experience during the Covid-19 pandemic. Writing edited by David Goldstein, photos edited by Mindy Stricke.

I have been contentedly married for over five decades. As in any marriage, there’s been frustration, and our union has featured lots of bickering and arguing, usually about petty issues and housekeeping chores. Although these squabbles were irritating, we usually developed a kind of amnesia afterwards—so much so that often we joked about some of the sillier dustups. After one fight, I wrote down some of our most ridiculous recurrent topics: a hard rain vs. a steady rain, taking I-95 or the Florida Turnpike, full vs. stuffed. and whether Eva Braun was really in love with Hitler. Once on a long drive, I mentioned a conflict close friends were having in which the husband discouraged his wife from driving. I took her side and my husband took the husband’s. Our fight lasted almost 50 miles.

Unfortunately, frustrations have increased in this time of isolation. There’s a daily round of arguing about keeping the house clean, shopping for food, and controlling the television. These arguments can reach a fever pitch. Once, early in the lockdown, we argued because my husband felt that leaving the house to buy lox and bagels counted as an emergency errand. Like many a skirmish, these squabbles are very passionate. But unlike a world war, the battle is soon forgotten and all is well. 

When I enter the National Park of Frustration it is dark, and difficult to find my way. The inky and stormy atmosphere impairs my vision and my judgement. Through the darkness I see neon signs pointing the way to a narrow path. After I take a few hesitant and insecure steps, the storm clears and the path gets safer and wider. After I enjoy the lush scenery for a few miles, the path again narrows, the clouds darken, and the wind picks up. I have visited this park many, many times. When I get caught in its gloom and irritation, I understand that soon there will be calm and beauty. But around the next bend, darkness and frustration will return, over and over and over and over again.
 

Sara Gootblatt, 78
Boynton Beach, FL

This story is a selection from National Parks of Emotion, an evolving participatory art project documenting people’s emotional experience during the Covid-19 pandemic. Writing edited by David Goldstein, photos edited by Mindy Stricke.

I love to knit. When I pick a ball of yarn it speaks to me. It tells me what it wants to be transformed into—a sweater, or maybe a dress, or maybe a blouse. I think of a pattern that the yarn would love to be and I get to work. I find the count of stitches very relaxing; it takes my mind off the worry, anxiety, and sadness that I sometimes feel right now. When I knit, I am in the National Park of Peace. It is always restful and quiet. There is nobody around and I can roam wherever I like. I am happy and free. It is woolly-warm and fuzzy, soft and calming, never-ending.

Daria Malave, Age 38
Corona, New York City, NY

This story is a selection from National Parks of Emotion, an evolving participatory art project documenting people’s emotional experience during the Covid-19 pandemic. Writing edited by David Goldstein, photos edited by Mindy Stricke.

Big losses are layered with small ones now. One of mine has been not being able to go swimming, as the community centres and outdoor public pools are closed and unlikely to re-open soon. As the weather gets warmer, I feel frustrated that swimming won’t be part of my summer and I can feel a sense of sadness creeping in. I miss the casual conversations in the changing room, the walk through tiled hallways to reach the pool, and the effortless way the water holds my body and allows my limbs to float weightless in space. It is a moment of refuge from the noise of the world and of solitude among the other swimmers. All of this hit me the other day as I walked by a neighbourhood apartment building and looked in through streaked dirty windows to the pool area. The pool was empty, drained, a canyon in the midst of a dark quiet room. The tiles at the bottom of the pool (usually underwater) were sky blue and there were lounge chairs on the side of the deck waiting for people to return.

Seeing the empty pool made me realize I’ve been carrying an undercurrent of sadness for all the things that have changed. In the context of larger losses that COVID has brought - health, employment and lives - this seems trivial. But the empty swimming pool is a stark reminder of how I long for the pleasures of everyday life that I thought would always be there. The National Park of Sadness is an empty space devoid of activity or sound. There is a haunted quality to it - as if it has been suddenly abandoned and there are only the faint echoes of previous human life now. If one looks closely there are also glimpses of beauty and reminders of the way things used to be, and could be once again.

Karen Gold, Age 58
Toronto, ON

This story is a selection from National Parks of Emotion, an evolving participatory art project documenting people’s emotional experience during the Covid-19 pandemic. Writing edited by David Goldstein, photos edited by Mindy Stricke.

“It’s the pandemic,” random voices chime. “Thank God for families! Where would I be without my mother? Who would want to be left alone at a time like this?”

My sons have lives of their own. Communicating with them is problematic. And recently, in one way or another, a number of my closest friends have moved on. I face the unknown future alone.

Enveloped in my own thoughts, I struggle to find a reality to latch onto. Is this really a pandemic? Conspiracy? The wrath of an angry God? Am I simply crazy?

When out in public I paste an ironic grin under my mask. “Don’t let them see your hollow underbelly!” I say to myself. “Who would want to be with a loser like you?”

I retreat into my National Park of the Lonely. Here I can cry by myself. I sit on the Pity Pots and survey the landscape. To my left is the Cave of Silent Echoes, above me the Ridge of the Frozen Future. I search the Dry Wash of Yesterdays for nuggets of friendship possibly buried there. But my stiff exterior remains. I relegate my furtive visits here to times of darkness, moments of secrecy. Isn’t that the only time for Lonely?

Ann Metlay, Age 74
Clarkdale, AZ

This story is a selection from National Park of Emotions, an evolving participatory art project documenting people’s emotional experience during the Covid-19 pandemic. Writing edited by David Goldstein, photos edited by Mindy Stricke.

As my final year of secondary school comes to a close, I’ve been revisiting my camera roll from the past four years. Because our school required us to have iPads, my friends and I have documented a lot of our experiences—school trips, restaurants, parks, birthdays, etc. I decided to make my friends a slide show of all the pictures I'd taken, and to score it to the song “Time Adventure,” from my favourite tv show, Adventure Time. As I edited the slideshow, I was overcome with intense nostalgia for all the happy memories that I'd shared. Making the slideshow took hours, so I listened to the lyrics, “Will happen, happening, happened,/And we’ll happen again and again,/ ‘Cause you and I will always be back then,” until late into the night, revisiting all these experiences as if I was living them for the first time. Because it's difficult during these times of isolation to make new memories, it's easier to look behind than ahead. Nostalgia is a complicated emotion to describe; that mix of fondness and sadness, with underlying tones of regret, has often crept up on me. But I don't think I've felt it as intensely as I did that midnight at the beginning of June.

You enter the National Park of Nostalgia through a lake in which you can breathe perfectly. Your first view of the park is from below, through the distorted surface of the lake. The park can be visited in any season—sometimes it is covered in snow, sometimes in wildflowers. Everything is smaller in the park, and warped, as if you were looking at something stuck in a snow globe. You may choose to wander the small paths that go on and on, or you can visit the caves that are only ever as big as a bedroom. It is always twilight in the park, and it is always body temperature, even if you visit in the middle of winter. It is neither easy nor hard to leave this park—in fact it seems like it slowly fades away before your eyes. 

Arwen, Age 17
Montreal, QC

This story is a selection from National Parks of Emotion, an evolving participatory art project documenting people’s emotional experience during the Covid-19 pandemic. Writing edited by David Goldstein, photos edited by Mindy Stricke.

This past weekend my family of four, including our dog, visited a state park in Northern Minnesota. Beautiful woods, long hikes, rock formations, waterfalls, tents, smores, campfires. It was a great way to recharge and get away from Covid-19 and the unrest in Minneapolis. When I returned home and started looking at my pictures, I was suddenly struck by how much time I’ve spent staring at screens during the pandemic. And how little they have given me. A weekend in the woods had actually nourished my soul. But these small colorful images on my phone were lacking in anything natural or nourishing. My digital devices had become the oppressors. The Netflix show, the Zoom call, the online yoga class. I had just experienced real outdoor freedom, and the stuff on my screen was a pale substitute.

I felt a rage rising up in me. I’d been brainwashed into this reality. And living my life through a tiny screen, when the world is so open and inspiring, is nuts. 

“Rage Against the Machine” National Park is not a fun or beautiful park, though it’s expansive, with rivers, forests, and mountains. It’s tired and worn down. It promised so much when it first opened. But the pathways are all too far from actual nature. The forest is always just up that hill, the mountain is a little too far to get to, the animals are always absent. You get to “enjoy” it on giant iPads with awesome billboard-sized infographics, and video screens with bird’s eye view drone footage, and great facts about the park’s flora and fauna. There are many long winding sidewalks with informational signs. There’s always someone asking you to download an app for the park so you can really embrace the experience. And everywhere there are people taking selfies or making TikTok videos. There’s really no fucking park to enjoy. It’s just a place to take our phones out for a walk.

David MacGillivray, Age 56
Minneapolis, MN

This story is a selection from National Parks of Emotion, an evolving participatory art project documenting people’s emotional experience during the Covid-19 pandemic. Writing edited by David Goldstein, photos edited by Mindy Stricke.

Living in a busy household with a lot of competing needs while working at a demanding job makes every day a marathon—a marathon being undertaken while juggling knives. My list of things to do each day is mythic, laughable, and bears little relationship to what actually gets done. I am the mediator of big feelings (for both the children and adults of this home), and as a result, my own feelings get stifled, squashed into the smallest possible space. I am desperate for time alone, time to breathe and think and process, but at the same time I have never been more lonely, more starved for substantive connection.

The Park of Overwhelm is huge and crowded with both human-made and natural objects. There are plenty of enticing things, but if you pay attention haphazardly, you may be in danger. Constant vigilance is required, leaving little time for rest or engagement. It's crowded, dangerous, noisy, frantic, exciting, sensual, rich, and stifling.

Anonymous, 44
Toronto, ON

This story is a selection from National Parks of Emotion, an evolving participatory art project documenting people’s emotional experience during the Covid-19 pandemic. Writing edited by David Goldstein, photos edited by Mindy Stricke.

I work as a child and family therapist in an intensive in-home and out-of-home program. I began working with a family with complex needs in early 2019. After COVID-19 hit, the family’s wraparound supports were reduced to virtual bi-weekly “check-in’s.” As the family remained quarantined together, tension escalated and risk of family breakdown increased. Recently, I coordinated a meeting with the family and service providers. During the meeting, a few comments were made about why I wasn’t “doing more” to “fix” the child. In this moment, I felt an overwhelming sense of angst, which I describe as a mixture of anxiety and fear. I began questioning my own competence. What if I don’t do enough and the risk increases? What if the family blames me if the child gets hospitalized? What if I’m the reason they don’t progress in their treatment? I felt like a small ant navigating through a forest of weeds, uncertain of how I got in or how to get out. 

My National Park of Angst is a dense, overgrown natural forest, full of shadows and rough terrain. It is dusk, midsummer, and the humidity makes it uncomfortable to breathe deeply, like a veil I cannot push off my face. The air leaves a film of sweat and moisture on my skin, and smells of rotting natural debris, leaves and bark. Large roots grow out of a hard soil littered with rocks, fallen leaves, and broken branches. The vague path is cluttered with low brush that scratches at my legs and low-hanging branches that poke at my head and shoulders. In the distance I can see fading sunlight through the treetops. I can hear birds calling and the scuttering sounds of critters but I can’t see them in the shadows. As I navigate through the forest, I occasionally come across a small clearing where the air is less dense and the path more visible. Walking through the park feels like both an exploration and a search for an exit.

Carmen Chui, Age 35
Guelph, ON

This story is a selection from National Parks of Emotion, an evolving participatory art project documenting people’s emotional experience during the Covid-19 pandemic. Writing edited by David Goldstein, photos edited by Mindy Stricke.

Sequestered, and with my son away camping with his father, I've had the house to myself. My iPhone and the skin of my palm have nearly sealed together. The day's rhythms have nothing to do with me. 3 am is the new 11 pm. I’m dating online in the midst of Covid-19 and the uprising against police brutality/growing fascism in the wake of public lynching of George Floyd. The usual loneliness and yearning have taken a new shape.

Welcome to The National Park of Helplessness. There’s no map and no signs to orient visitors, so I don’t know whether I am near, or miles from, an exit. It’s possible that there is only one exit, and there is no point in looking for it. There are a thousand entrances. The park has been blanched of color. Everything appears in shades of muted blues and greys. I walk along a very narrow path buttressed by glass walls. The only thing there is to touch beyond my own body is the cool, flat wall. It is windy on the other side, yet nothing stirs. I look for cracks. In the distance, the usual structures—the visitor’s center, food court, bathrooms—are boarded up. One mouse, the only thing that moves in this park and the only other sentient being, scurries outside the food court. There is nothing left for it to find. The mouse does not know that it is doomed.

Jordana Jacobs, 48
Brooklyn, NY

This story is a selection from National Parks of Emotion, an evolving participatory art project documenting people’s emotional experience during the Covid-19 pandemic. Writing edited by David Goldstein, photos edited by Mindy Stricke.

I’m excited to announce that I won a short-term artist fellowship at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC! I’ll be spending a month diving into their archives, researching perceptions of women’s sexual pleasure in the Renaissance through midwifery manuals and medical texts from the period. I'll be rephotographing and transforming text and images from the manuals as part of my larger Erospace project. 

In Erospace, I’m investigating the nature of eros, starting with a focus on women’s desire. I’m interested in questioning larger assumptions about what women want, the nature of our desires, and the continued devaluing of women’s sexual pleasure. And I think it’s really interesting to compare and contrast how women’s sexuality is perceived now with other time periods, and to consider how cultural context affects how we see ourselves.

There is a lot more to share, and I’ll reveal more as I get deeper into my research. I'm also still developing ways to involve the public, the way I always do. So stay tuned...

Play Passages came to life on Monday afternoon and it was magical—just what I pictured, but different of course because kids will always play in interesting, surprising, and beautiful ways. I created a space with the fabric images of the play memories, wood, bamboo and rope, but the kids brought it to life. For the adults in attendance, listening to the immersive play memories while watching the children, it was a good reminder of the importance of keeping in touch with play far beyond childhood.

I wanted to share some of the beautiful photos that came out of the event taken by my friend and gifted photographer Melanie Gordon, as well as a link to all of the final images and audio stories in the project, which you can view and listen to here.

Make sure to listen with headphones to get the full immersive experience, and if you have a chance, listen to them while you watch children play. Part of the fun is having the sounds in the stories and the sounds in real life bleed into each other.

The photo above is of my daughter—both of my kids and their friends played for hours in the installation. She is 9, almost 10. I felt immense joy seeing everything come together after thinking about the idea for many years, and developing it for a year and a half. She only has a couple of more years of childhood; I feel grateful I was able to make this project while she still wanted to play in it. But of course, I hope she never stops playing. I certainly haven’t.

It’s my birthday today! And I have a small gift for you—an audio preview from Play Passages, which debuts in less than a week, on Sunday, June 24th from 1-5pm at Trinity Bellwoods Park in Toronto.

It’s my play memory of discovering a hidden rope swing, augmented by an immersive soundscape I created to go with the story. Make sure you listen with headphones, or you won’t get the full experience. I recorded the background sounds in binaural audio, which creates a three dimensional effect. It’s really cool, and was fun to do. I’ve been wearing microphones in my ears for the past few weeks going around recording all sorts of sounds to use in the background of the stories. It’s felt a little like I’ve been painting with sound. 

Enjoy the story, and if you live in Toronto, I hope to see you on Sunday! If you don’t live here, stay tuned after the installation, as I’ll be sharing how it all unfolded.