Dave Loewenstein

I’m feeling

my sense of time collapse. The self-imposed isolation of my youth met with the mandated isolation of now. The uncertainty of my 20s when I didn’t know if I’d ever make a living as an artist met with the renewed uncertainty if I ever will again. The stories and discoveries of my childhood gloriously revisited with my three-year-old son.

I’m waiting

for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance.

I’m looking

for the visible signs of an invisible force. Like the energy we can detect being gobbled up around a collapsed star, I am searching for evidence along the periphery.

I’m wondering

how my mom is, since I haven’t been able to visit her in four months.

I’m making

adjustments, additions, subtractions, enhancements and tributes to mark the time and hopefully bring some joy and interest to passersby.

I’m reading

a book about forgetting by Lewis Hyde.

I’m trying

to forget.

I’m hoping

that we have the courage and will to make things better.

I’m working

on Between the Rock and a Hard Place, a mural on an old movie theater in Nebraska and an essay about the East 9th St. ArtPlace Project for a new book about creative placemaking.

I’m cutting

my own hair.

I’m growing

lots of vegetables and flowers.

And, I’m grateful

for my friends and family, for the opportunity to continue making art and for the many brave healthcare and other essential workers carrying us upon their shoulders.

Dave Loewenstein is a muralist, printmaker, and community organizer based in Lawrence, Kansas. His murals can be found across the United States and in Northern Ireland, South Korea, and Brazil. Loewenstein’s prints, which focus on social justice issues, are exhibited internationally and are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Yale University, and the Center for the Study of Political Graphics in Los Angeles. He is the co-author of Kansas Murals: A Traveler’s Guide and is the subject of Called to Walls, a feature-length documentary that premiered in 2016. In 2014, he was named one of the founding Cultural Agents for the new U.S. Department of Arts and Culture. Loewenstein collaborated with the Spencer Museum to create beloved murals in downtown Lawrence, Pollinators (2007), and Return of the Pollinators (2017), with the help of a community design team and hundreds of volunteers.