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COVID-19 interrupts Fallbrook art exhibits but not the artists

Catching up with Fallbrook artist BJ Lane since Save Our Forest's Art Bench Auction to support Fallbrook's elementary schools' environmental education programs, Nov. 2, 2019l, has not been easy.

A favorite at community events and gatherings, Lane is known for her commitment to Fallbrook's Wine & a Bite events, the downtown art scene and presenting local art talks about the creative process.

Recently, she was fixing her rain-damaged studio, when the roof caved in and black mold was discovered which required immediate removal. Lane reclaimed the storage space to protect 40 years of artwork, while completing several art commissions and carrying on with her metal sculpture pourings and "in-progress" welding projects.

Lane said life changed following her January art installation, which was interspersed with short poems and titled "Memoirs of the Heart," when the coronavirus pandemic hit and the Vista Public Library closed. This "highly personal" exhibit would have remained open 90 days and include professional portrait workshops geared to all ages and levels of artistic ability, plus opening and closing receptions.

Lane created "Memoirs of the Heart" to reach a new audience, outside the artist's usual reached in Los Angeles, Oceanside and Fallbrook. The artistic departure from architecture, freeway scenes, classic cars, floral or ballet exhibited Lane's personal journey as artist, wife and mother.

Some images were a single portrait, colorized, manipulated, printed on different medium or altered creating entirely different works.

Lane said "Memoirs of the Heart" was created while living life without a planned exhibition. Some of the paintings include "an imagined future husband," self-portraits and images documenting domestic life: pictorial memories through time of changing roles from sibling to artist to wife and mother, from mother to home-school teacher.

Lane said she lamented how "our world changed March 17 and the Vista Library closed its doors, so the exhibit had to come down.

"Along with the rest of the world we were on lockdown and everything came to a screeching halt," Lane said.

The hardest adjustment of all for Lane has been revisiting the role of mother, she said. The pandemic shut down the exhibition and the day programs which support disabled individuals that daughter Tammy Kostyk was adapt to. The transition was difficult, she said, chosing to make the experience as positive a change as possible. She began to work on a daily gratitude journal and a 40-foot-long daily art collaboration to involve her daughter.

Lane said she "grabbed a Sharpie" and began sketching her daughter Tammy, adding quotes and eventually having to "roll the butcher roll of paper all the way into my living room, dining room and hallway."

The small art book with poetry served as a companion to the show and was meant to debut at the final reception at the end of March. Lane posted the book for sale at http://www.bjlaneartgallery.com/.

 

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