Selkie Sillhouettes

Prior to the 2020 covid virus arrival to NYC, I was teaching disabled seniors how to make a colorful "gelatin" prints - immersed in color and narratives, and learning a lot myself in this new medium. I was unprepared for a world pandemic or using the mediou for my own work.

I had recently left my career as a NYC museum administrator, and was wondering how to return to the working/teaching artist practice. I built a small studio an anticipated returning to color, form, and space- rather than staff, budgets, and writing museum aggreements. I needed to make extra money as a teaching artist and sell work to keep the bills paid, but was loving the hands-on work of a printmaker and craftsperson again. It was heaven.

At the same time, I was a swimmer and tried to get to the local YMCA pool a few times a week. Swimming had always helped me through the stresses of work, motherhood, and becoming a young widow with kids a decade earlier. Like art work, the pool was my retreat, and it helped to have a repetitive physical activity- akin to the labor of printmaking - to meditate underwater.

Suddenly it all stopped. The virus raged, and my senior students were in dire danger. The city shut down. What now?

I was left to figure out how to continue my new "Merfolk" art grant. It was a small project funded to create new monoprints about selkies, mermaids, and other myths from the sea. I planned to use a press at a local museum and offer workshops to teens and adults. Typically, my work features natural history, especially animals, to tell stories and connect the dots between human experience and the natural world. That intersection of science and art, where I study and observe, seemed the only place I could go during this lockdown, but I also needed physical and mental immersion - somehow.

Ironically, I was left adrift on Staten Island- with no pools or gyms to access. Though an island, replete with sandy beaches, ships, and harbor seals, almost no one swims in the swift and changable currents these days. I needed to find a safe way to circumnavigate this block to the water. By April I had decided the course of action: find a swimming partner, buy a wet suit, and start swimming. The notion seemed to defy the covid dread that permiated the world. Within a week, I found another "game" woman artist and we dove into cold waters of the Lower New York Bay. It was great. Next I created videos and explored the habitat with my camera - free for the taking. Most people thought I was mad; but I was saved.

I grabbed inspiration from the environment, and with a new confidence, created my own gelatin prints at home using fine cut masks and stencils. The patterns and sillhuettes of the Atlantic Ocean and the flora and fauna fit my theme, and I dove in. I ran socially-distanced outdoor workshops for adults on my rear deck. The students were weary of being stuck in their homes, and ecstatic to be creating and experimenting. We created many successful monoprints with the cutting and masking techniques, using a colorful and exhuberant pallette. I led workshops for teenagers too- printing, cutting and collaging "altered books" with a merfolk theme. The joys of this work have been boundless, and led me to a mindset of taking chances, pushing my body and my art.

While creating in the studio- my openwater swim group called Swimmers of Anarchy was established. Today over 114 people have "joined" my facebook and Discord group, 10-16 people meet 3-4 times a week, all year long. All are over 45, most over 60. We swim races, clean the beach, connect to kayakers, and communicate with openwater swim groups from all over the world. We share our art, poetry, advice, and revel in the ephoric liberty inherent to wildswimming.

As I continue to cut and create in my studio, with scissors, paper, and ink, I look for relationships that spark curiosity, but demand I come out of my comfort zone every day.

See more images and videos at https://www.matyasart.com https://www.facebook.com/dianematyasArtist/

https://www.instagram.com/dmatyasart/?hl=en

and videos of swimming and workshops at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSNozbf84MJzjn35dV6b9V57L5aWIJh_5

https://www.facebook.com/groups/379600059866697/?multi_permalinks=541393720353996&notif_id=1623245006438705&notif_t=feedback_reaction_generic_tagged&ref=notif