Finding Hope in the Backyard

05/03/20

By Naomi Hawksley

Through this pandemic, time and space feels  like it’s expanding and contracting multiple times a day. There’s so much to do, but with no foreseeable future I’ve got all the time in the world. I’m finding sanity in putting my body into perspective. That my body on this strange Earth is not the only one, that my body is only human and there are so many other human and non-human bodies that must exist. 

I’ve been going on frequent walks around my neighborhood, and it has been very exciting to see the urban flora and fauna slowly creep back into people’s front yards, and the cracks in the sidewalk. It reminds me that my body is so small, that there’s much more life beyond it and beyond the apartment where I’ve been spending most of every day. It reminds me that there’s hope beyond me too, that the world will keep going whether or not I exist in it. But that we as people will survive this and creep back into life as we knew it.

These drawings look for hope in tiny flowers and getting silly at home.

Naomi Hawksley is currently attending the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is originally from the Bay Area. She is a painter and printmaker and member of the Co-Prosperity Programming Council.

Naomi Hawksley worked on this piece with Stella Brown, the Quarantine Times Sunday editor. Each week, Stella Brown works with a member of the Co-Prosperity Programming Council to present original works in response to the quarantine.