Lisa McLymont + Cat Sheridan
Another longer “mini” post, haha. I’m embracing the longer, deeper conversations some subjects are ready to have. Cherishing them. It’s ok to not be ok. Right now more than ever. Everything is not ok, but we will all be ok.
Lisa, left. Cat, right.
So how have you been?
Lisa: Holding steady. It was really hard at first, you know, with the shut down, but we found lots of things to get into. Lots of art making.
Are you a full-time artist?
Lisa: I have a graphic design job at CAPA [Columbus Association of Performing Arts]. So that’s been a great backbone, great foundation work. I started the job in November and then the shut down hit, so it was like…[laughter] wow.
Great timing!
Lisa: Yeah. It’s been really interesting, transitioning. Because before I started working at CAPA, I left a senior graphic design position…where it was super busy. I was trying to do art, but…I was working lots of overtime. Feeling there were lots of hoops. At CAPA there is more of a work/life balance. I've been able to slow down and focus on honing my craft, which helped me deal with life during this shutdown...In a lot of ways the shut down is a blessing, because I like being at home.
Cat: She’s a homebody.
Lisa: I get to do all the yard stuff and art stuff… For the full month leading up [to the stay-at-home order], I was very down. “What’s going to happen?” ‘Cause I work for an entertainment agency now. Nobody can go to [theaters]. And then the protests hit and my reaction was the murals. It’s kind of triggered a whole new avenue of working. It’s been really interesting.
…
With your new job you’ve gotten to focus on your art practice more?
Lisa: Yes. I had to reach for it. I feel like I constantly have to make myself. Or else I’ll sink into the couch, “Oh my god the world is doomed.” [laughter] CAPA has been supportive of the other things that I’ve been doing. I feel like I’ve lucked out with this job.
…
Lisa: Cat runs the Riffe Gallery.
How has running a gallery been in pandemic times?
Cat: You know, it’s been a lot of pivoting and trying to reshuffle. Hope for the best and manage expectations. As we’re a government agency we have to be really mindful of the safety of folks, so we can’t be open to the public. At this point we’re trying to find ways to engage, which has unlocked a lot of intention around accessibility. There are things [around accessibility] that we’ll hold onto as we come out of pandemic times. So if you can find a silver lining, that’s certainly one. We’ve had the time to really explore and research and find new ways of giving the great content. It’s been a lot of planning. And then replanning.
Is it a lot of online showing of artwork?
Cat: Yeah. We’re turning over an exhibition right now so I’m actually in the gallery for the next week. Allowing artists to pick up their work and getting the work for the next show. We’ll have a couple of instances where the gallery will be closed to the public but we’ll have artists in and we’ll record them talking about their work. We’ll record the curators taking us on a tour through the exhibition. It’ll be streamed live and we’ll have the content available on the website as well.
All online, for now. Which is good in perpetuity. But there’s nothing quite like getting close to artwork in person. Which I think is another reason why murals have proliferated. The simple fact that people don’t have access to view art in the same way [pre-pandemic].
Lisa: It’s all happening through a screen now. So it’s exciting to get in a car and drive. See all these different modes of expression right there on the street…
Cat: [It] becomes the gallery.
That’s a good analogy. Never really thought about that before…
Lisa: Definitely a reaction to the events happening, but… it’s kind of exciting.
…
Cat: I’ve been cooking.
Lisa: That is her coping. My coping is making art and being out here [gardening]. Her coping is all the baking.
Cat: Caring for people through food.
Lisa: The second we got the shut down she started her sourdough mix and it’s been non-stop.
Cat: Yeah, I jumped on. My sourdough baby was born on the 18th of March. Her name is Tina. #QuaranTina
You jumped before the sourdough trend even started!
Cat: I’ve always wanted to learn how to make bread. I have a friend who has had a starter for eight years. I was like, “That’s pretty cool. I’d like to do that.” I didn’t really realize the amount of work that went into it. I was also glad that it was that amount of work. ‘Cause I needed that distraction…
Cat: I think it was harder for you [Lisa] when there wasn’t the opportunity to be out in the yard. The first couple of months were cold.
Lisa: Oh yeah. It was awful.
Cat: Lots of depression naps. That’s a REAL thing.
Lisa: Mm-hmm. I was on the couch crying.
Yeah, you either sleep too much or don’t sleep at all.
Lisa: Yep.
Cat: Sometimes it feels like both.
Lisa: Yeah, some days. I think more anxiety is building, with being pushed to open up knowing that the numbers are not stopping.
Yes. That’s been scary.
Lisa: I feel more optimistic right now. It comes in waves. I think it’s that I got the fix of working among other artists. I got to do a group mural and there was a volunteer [mural] project. That really filled the well. [Right now] when I’m home, I don’t necessarily have the focus to do my own art projects. The murals have slowed down now, so it’s like, what’s next?
…
Cat: There are certainly good things that have come out of it for us. But those are more personal I think. We have been very, very fortunate.
Lisa: That’s where I’m optimistic. Now is a great time for us all to reset. That’s a world wide thing. Let’s talk about it, get it all out. Let’s really figure out where we’re all at and move forward into our new normal. I feel optimistic about it.
Cat: People are more willing to dig into their emotions at this point because everything is already raw.
Lisa: Yeah. Well we’re all focused on it, we might as well talk about it.
Cat: We’re living in this gray. We like to imagine that life is black and white. We’re used to living in it, even if it’s not. The fact that we are faced to accept this unknown is pushing…
Lisa: Middle gray.
Cat: It’s forcing people to really explore their emotions and confront them. You can’t not confront them when you are with yourself for so long. [Unless you’re in] complete denial.
Lisa: The majority of people are doing their own exploration whether they talk about it or not. It’s true.
Cat: I clicked into cooking. I need to feel like I’m helpful, so I will feed us. I will shop for my parents.
Lisa: I’ve been using my art talents, design talents. “You need a logo? Sure. Here you go.”
Cat: Early on I started really checking in to make sure that I connected with people that I love but don’t see or hear from very often. That’s petered out a little bit. But I went early and I went hard. “You all need to know that I love you and I don’t know if I’ll see you again!” [laughter] I was real intense about it. I was making sure I would not leave this world without people knowing that I loved them. I’m not mad about it. But I did get tired of it.
Lisa: I tell people I love them a lot. I was doing it already but I definitely do it more now, I don’t think about it as much.
Cat: I do not have any hesitation in telling people that I love them now. Where before it would be like, “Will this be weird? Awkward?” Now, “Don’t care. I love you.” [laughter] So that’s good. It’s hard not getting to hug people. I’m a hugger.
It is hard.
Cat: It’s like, “Mm, I’m gonna hug myself so hard while I’m looking at you!”
…
Cat: …I’ll be really intrigued to see what the legacy of this is.
Lisa: Especially young kids, as they age. High schoolers, middle schoolers how they age into their own lives and what drives them. Because they watched all of this panic happen… I would love to know what happens to them from here. It’s going to be a changed world in some things. A lot of them are going to [be forced to grow up overnight] because they just didn’t get the education they should have gotten.
Cat: Or will it be transferred in some other way?
L: Schools are getting the shaft right now..
Cat: I think about the countries that really heavily invest in their education and flip into productive countries within a generation.
Lisa: Yeah. It’s also really vocal people that are really aware of what’s happening in the world that care about it…
Cat: I’ll be interested to see how it moves forward with a variety of age groups. A portion of it is certainly going to be a change in communication style.
Lisa: Yeah.
Cat: We were talking about how everybody waves at the end of Zoom meetings. No one waves at the end of a meeting. But now you do! Because we don’t have to pick anything up and move out of the room. Are we going to continue that when we get back to being in-person? We might because we’re afraid to shake hands or hug. We’re going to start doing these really delightfully awkward things. Which is kind of exciting. [laughter]
Will we move to a culture that’s ok with masks regularly?
Lisa: I hope so.
Cat: I hope it’ll be like seatbelts. It becomes normalized behavior. That’s exciting to think about. Experiencing it in the front end and being able to mark in your mind on that timeline. That’s kind of amazing.
Lisa: I’m very excited about the shift of how we work. Especially after advocating so hard to have remote days or off days. Flex days. A real flex schedule where you can choose, “I worked 10 hours [these days], so I can have this day off.” [I have advocated for this in past jobs] and was always shot down. And now we HAVE to work this way. So we’ve proven that we can do the work…I’m excited to see how many variations in a work day we can come up with.
Cat: How does that change the landscape of a city? If you no longer have to have an exorbitant amount of office buildings. That’s an interesting idea. Will it shift?
Lisa: I really hope it does. There are a lot of people that want it to go back to the way it was.
Cat: It’s not sustainable though.
Lisa: I really hope that people are more vocal and fight for more healthy ways of work and life.
Cat: …I’m excited to see how that shifts and breaks for people. To hopefully allow for flexibility. There’s this weird idea that, like you said, someone asking for more flexibility is somehow trying to cheat the system. When you’re at [the lower] levels that’s what [is perceived]. When you’re raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars to have flexibility in your schedule is assumed. No one questions that. What happens when we allow for that to be a part of everyday life? There are some roles where that’s not possible right? But maybe that’s narrow minded too, you know?
Lisa: That’s what the shut down has proven is that there is a way. There’s always a way, ultimately. Do we have the resources?
Cat: Do we care enough about people and their wellbeing to figure it out?
Yeah. It’s going to be interesting going forward because it’s going to really show who cares about their employees and who just wants to get back to ‘normal’ as quickly as possible.
I really hope that people continue to take time and space for themselves. They continue to make a point of sitting with themselves and connecting with themselves, connecting with their thoughts and needs. I really hope that THAT continues.
Lisa: People are sleeping better, exercising, having family time. So many good things happening for so many people.
Cat: Recognizing that. Self recognition. Identifying what your needs truly are.
Lisa: And then advocating for them.
Cat: Yes. That’s exciting. To imagine a place where this is happening. You know another thing I would love to see from this? Is free internet for everyone. What if that was just a standard? … If we’re saying that communication is the backbone of our interaction as citizens, I know this sounds super socialist, but seriously? What if we had great internet and could communicate with each other? That would be a game changer. Total game changer.
There are cities that have decent wifi in their city centers. There’s not a ton of them.
Lisa: I wonder if it’s advocating to the cable companies to pitch for that or is it a city pitch?
Cat: Well [the cable companies] would still want to be paid right? It has the break the system. I mean it’s breaking the educational system. Something good has to come of this. It makes me think about the beginning of education, the single classroom…
Lisa: Oh we’re going back to that, people are not sending their kids back to school into this. They’re homeschooling in their little pods.
Cat: But that’s only for the affluent. That doesn’t work for everyone. So. Still broken. My hope is that people will recognize and advocate for supporting them more. And it’ll take people being vocal about it, right? But we’re living in the dystopian nightmare right now.
Lisa: It’s hard to choose what to go for first. Ultimately we need to go for all of it. We tease it out, “Let’s get this! And then this!” It’s all connected!
Cat: It is all connected, you can’t pull one thread without having so many others…
Lisa: It’s a really tight knot. And that’s why people get so exhausted and don’t want to think about it.
Cat: They do get exhausted, but that’s the thing if we have more people stepping up. That’s something about John Lewis passing away, a giant has passed. But what that void creates is a call for so many more people to step up and continue that work. If you just have that monolith there, you think that person will do that work for you. Not sayings I am not sad about John Lewis passing, but I see [his life] as a gift. His light goes forward… People need to see themselves empowered.