Helping us heal

Home Care supervisor’s art exhibition captures pandemic resilience

Lead Home Care Supervisor Rebecca Goulder-Greig has another life as an artist. We introduced you to her work a year ago when she began painting watercolors of volunteer mask sewers. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, painting the small portraits was her way of responding to the anxiety of the pandemic and honoring the generosity of volunteers.

Rebecca’s work received an honor itself earlier this year when it was chosen to be part of an art exhibit at Rebecca’s alma mater, Central Michigan University, where she is working towards degrees in photography and sculpture and a minor in art history.

Entitled “Pandemic,” the exhibit at the university’s art gallery featured works in in painting, photography, fiber, installation, sculpture, video and printmaking.

Gallery Director Anne Gochenour said she found Rebecca’s watercolors on Facebook and invited her to be part of the exhibit.

“(Rebecca) is very much a community builder and I saw this project as more evidence of this,” Anne said. “My students have to write response papers to exhibitions. For the ‘Pandemic’ exhibition they often compared the large Grieving Gown made by Denise Whitebread Fanning and Rebecca’s portraits of mask makers. They talked about the grief they were experiencing with the pandemic but then spoke about Rebecca’s focusing on the good work and community that the mask makers were displaying.”

The show was especially meaningful to Rebecca.

“Anne was a great mentor,” Rebecca said. “She taught me a lot, and like my other professors at CMU, was very kind and supportive. It was really great to be able to show there again. The pandemic show was my first gallery show since I left (campus), so it was really special for me to be able to take part for so many reasons.”

Grieving Gown in the foreground, leading to the mask portraits.

Rebecca has created a web site: https://www.rlgoulderart.com/mask-makers to display her works and encourage support of the CDC Foundation, a nonprofit organization created by Congress to mobilize philanthropic and private-sector resources to support the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.