Editor’s note: For Dallas Arts Month in April, this is one of a series of stories from The Dallas Morning News examining how North Texas artists and arts groups are coping and moving forward one year after the start of the pandemic.
— To see more from our Art and the City 2021 collection, click/tap here.
Debora Hunter (photographer)
Debora Hunter was looking over old film negatives in the early days of the pandemic last year when she rediscovered a 1989 image. It hadn’t meant much before. But now, similar photographs were showing up everywhere. Like on the front page of The Dallas Morning News, where an April 1 story about nursing homes showed a mother and daughter. “Waving through a window,” read the headline. Patients like the mother, the story said, “are particularly vulnerable to the new coronavirus.”
Hunter sent her decades-older photo to The News’ Arts & Life section around the same time, and we published it along with works by more than 100 other artists as part of our April 5, 2020 “Art and the City” issue. It was strangely predictive, a sign that artists’ work — old and new — would have a lot to tell us amid crisis.
For Hunter, who retired from teaching at Southern Methodist University four years ago, “it’s been a year of gratitude.” Gratitude, she says, “for the things I have and the things that I don’t have.” Chief among the things she has are her health and her loved ones. What she doesn’t have anymore are the daily distractions that used to pull her out of the studio: openings, appointments and so on. After 2020, “I know that my life can be good without those,” she says. What’s left is the possibility of “working totally for yourself, and that’s been really wonderful.”
Not that she doesn’t plan to see anyone anymore. Having been fully vaccinated, she threw a small party last Saturday with nine friends, all of whom also had their shots. Fellow photographer Kent Barker said it was “like a religious experience to get together with everybody.”
But she’s being picky with her time. Recently, her son asked if she wanted to travel this summer. “And I actually thought, I really — even though it’s Dallas heat and all that — I really have got my projects on the go. And I just want to, you know, unbelievably, say, probably, ‘No.’”
Vicki Meek (visual artist)
“I tell people I’m ashamed to say this, but I’ve been living my best life during the pandemic,” says Vicki Meek. “Oh, my goodness, I mean, I’ve had so many wonderful things happening around my art practice.” Although she has been sequestered, “as a matter of fact, that helped, as far as me being able to really stay focused on my work.”
Earlier this year, she opened a major installation at the Nasher Sculpture Center, Stony the Road We Trod: A Shrine to Black America. She’s now curating an exhibition for the Austin gallery Women & Their Work, with other projects humming along, too.
“So it’s been good,” Meek says, “other than the horror of not being able to see anybody.”
But what about not being able to see art?
Actually, she has seen plenty of art by taking advantage of the appointment-only visitor policies at galleries. “And that’s been a good thing. Because, you know, I do kind of need that in my life.”
As for not being able to see any people, that’s not quite the case either. Living with her family means there’s company around. For her youngest grandchild, who was born in July, that company is everything. “He’s only seen us,” she says, “he doesn’t know the world outside of his family.”
Allison Pistorius (actor)
Allison Pistorius hasn’t acted since 2019 and she doesn’t see that changing anytime soon. “I don’t imagine I’ll get back to work on any sort of a regular basis for at least another year,” she says.
The problem is the same for all members of Actors’ Equity, the national union for live theatrical performance. Equity won’t give members the go-ahead for shows without strict safety protocols in place. With almost all stage work frozen in the U.S. over the past year, actors are increasingly frustrated.
“Whenever really high-quality and responsible organizations create safety plans, in so many cases, the union just tells them no, especially if they’re not in New York,” says Pistorius. That means theater has yet to come back to life across the country in the way that some museums, orchestras and other arts groups have.
For Pistorius, it has meant losing the role she’d been promised in a “dream project” that’s now moving ahead with non-union actors. Without acting work, she also lost her previous health insurance coverage.
Personal tragedy has only made things harder. Last Saturday, her father died after suffering from an illness diagnosed years ago.
The small silver linings have been raising her triplet toddlers, which she calls “wonderful and exhausting,” with her husband, actor Chris Hury. Teaching at Southern Methodist University ranks highly for her, too. What’s it like leading a group of young actors when the world of theater is upside-down? “I think the only way to do it is to talk about how to make this work right now,” she says. That means on-camera performance is part of the syllabus. As is honesty with her students about the uncertain future.
Sammy Rios (musician, visual and performing artist)
Sammy Rios left Dallas for Portland right before the beginning of the pandemic and isn’t so sure if she’s coming back. “I don’t make huge plans in advance,” she says. “We live month to month, our lease. So it’s always up in the air.”
Despite the new scenery, which she says has been a balm, Rios is now wrestling with the grief of having lost someone close to her family to COVID-19 last month.
The actor, musician and performing artist has been caught up mostly with commercial work, as well as a few virtual engagements with Dallas’ Theatre Three. And she’s been trying not to force anything. “I think I’ve given myself a lot more grace this year,” she says. “Just figuring out what my purpose is and how I can best serve our community.
“So it’s just this kind of a shift on what I want from myself and what I want my art to be,” she says.
Find more Arts & Entertainment stories from The Dallas Morning News here.
