February 8 – April 9, 2021
Stichweh Gallery

This exhibition previews Nicholas Hill’s The Pandemic Portraits project, which since March 2020 has seen the artist enter into a daily regime of creating portraits on saved news pages from the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal daily papers. Hill selected pages that headlined an ever changing and frightening narrative about a virus that threatened the global, human population. As the number of infections skyrocketed around the world, he began responding to the daily loss of human life from the COVID-19 pandemic by drawing individual portraits as visual headlines. To determine how to represent the faces behind the overwhelming statistics, Hill scanned the daily editions of both papers for “accidental subjects,” the passers-by or people who appear in the background, who were not the intended subjects of the news photos. Like the victims of the disease, the “found” photographs were of individuals, people with families and friends. If they were to die, they would be mourned. As the pandemic took hold in the United States, an early news article stated that one American was dying every five minutes. The artist used the statistic to guide his process, limiting himself to a maximum of five minutes for each portrait. From March 2020 to mid-February 2020, Hill has created over 3,500 Pandemic Portraits. His process continues today.

Meet the Artist in the Gallery
Nicholas Hill, will be available in person in the Stichweh Gallery to discuss the exhibition and answer questions.  Registration is required; see link below. 

Wednesday, Feb 24, 11-12pm
Tuesday, March 2, 12-1pm
Friday, March 12, 1-2pm

 https://www.signupgenius.com/go/10c0d4daba72aabf9c16-thepandemic

Recording of public webinar held on February 11, 2021