Even with Winooski artist space closed, creativity endures at the Wishbone Collective

Claire, Late Summer. Photography © 2020 by Macaulay Lerman.

In Vermont, COVID-19 has both devastated and galvanized the local art scene.

Since March, Vermont artists Macaulay Lerman and Joan Mackenzie have changed their modes of production drastically. At the Wishbone Collective, a collaborative artist space and community in Winooski, gone are the days of large event photoshoots and indoor gallery showings.

A New England native, Lerman is an accomplished photographer and documentarian, and a member of the collective. Mackenzie prefers acrylic paint as a medium, with which she paints animals she has photographed in her travels.

Lerman joined the Wishbone Collective after befriending Daniel Schechner, the space’s owner and manager, at Green Mountain College. Schechner is also a photographer and the two have collaborated on multiple occasions.

The collective provides space for eight artists, whose mediums range from photography to mixed media to animation. While the artists tend to work independently, they have historically worked side by side in the communal space and provided one another support, Lerman says.

The collective often held workshops and live figure drawing classes. Since the start of the pandemic, all such events ceased. Wishbone has not participated in Zoom events. “The virtual event world can be hard to navigate,” says Lerman. “Some things are more conducive than others to that platform.”

On an individual basis, COVID-19 has majorly stunted Lerman’s client work. He has had to put a pause on social documentary work due to COVID-19, and no longer photographs large events like weddings.

Lerman says he continues to create and keep a visual diary of daily existence, but avoids applying pressure on himself to produce a quantity of work. “For my own mental health, it feels good to be working on something,” says Lerman. While he doesn’t rely on print sales for income, Lerman says he may shift more towards that sort of work.

Photography by Joan Mackenzie.

Recently, a gallery in Russia reached out to him through a publication in which he was featured, and he looks forward to participating in a virtual live show.

Unlike Lerman, Joan Mackenzie works independently as a painter in Essex Junction. She has traveled to photograph animals, and then paints from those images in acrylic.

Due to the pandemic, she can no longer travel to photograph animals. “I’ve gone to Kenya a number of times and taken photos of elephants and giraffes. I can’t go there now. I don’t know when we’ll be able to again,” says Mackenzie. She says that as an older person, she is not yet comfortable flying. However, she has found new subjects locally.

Recently, Mackenzie has found muses in South Hero’s great horned owls and Ferrisburg’s bald eagles. She has even found inspiration in hummingbirds from her backyard.

Mackenzie is adding bird series to her new website, where she hopes viewers will find solace in her work. While she is fortunate for these muses, Mackenzie says she still has trouble putting her mind into “paint” mode. She has plenty of negative forces to reckon with right now and acknowledges the difficulty of creating in a time like this.

Mackenzie is lucky not to rely on the sale of her paintings for income, she said.

“I feel badly for younger artists who are trying to make a living,” she said. She gets by, but longs for the community of in-person galleries.

Neither Lerman nor Mackenzie is in a rush to pack a crowd into a gallery in hopes of selling paintings. They do both, however, miss the society of like-minded creative people.