Colleen Leonard, Pandemic eggs
Colleen Leonard (she/her)
Pandemic eggs, May 2020
Egg shells, cyanotypes, found objects
At the beginning of the pandemic, like so many of us, I marked time through baking. As baking goods became scarce from panic-buying, I began hoarding every part of my ingredients. Soup from scraps, eggshells for the balcony garden, and of course sour dough starter to avoid finding yeast. My kitchen had always been my studio but now with everyone suddenly at home there was no space for me in our tiny apartment to be both artist and mother. I became head shopper, baker, chef, and grower. As the shells piled up and I realized I didn’t really need them for our balcony garden I couldn’t bear to waste them. Eggs had become precious. These tiny vessels that nourished our family and helped me create beautiful food to sustain us and give us one of our only pleasures during the stay-at-home restrictions. This time has forced me to reflect on what was precious to me, even an egg, and how I could live, and create, more sustainably. Pandemic eggs is a fragile time capsule of treasures collected by my child and me on our walks before the stay-at-home restrictions. What is absent nourished our bodies and what is present nourished our hearts.