COURTNEY STOCK : RAY
301 Gallery, Montserrat College of Art
301 Cabot Street
Beverly, MA 01915
Gallery Hours
Street side, on view 24/7
Dates
January 25–February 19, 2021
COVID-19 has claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people across the United States and millions of people worldwide. Numbers of this size can feel abstract, transforming a large group of individuals into an anonymous conglomerate. Through Ray I seek to commemorate the people who have died as a result of the coronavirus as well as translate the unending data into visual form.
Ray is not a traditional or austere memorial and instead full of light and color. Long strands of faceted beads speak to our interconnectedness and the lasting impact each human has on the world around them. Each bead represents a person who has been lost to COVID-19 within the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. As of January 19, 2021, when this statement was completed, the state’s official death count was 13,705. The true death toll from the disease is widely understood to be much higher.
While Ray commemorates those lost, it is also an offering to their survivors, intended as a site for mourning, reflecting, and remembering. I utilized materials that conduct color and light in the service of cultivating beauty, wonder, and pleasure, a visual panacea for this tragic moment in our collective history