I recently passed the two-month mark working from home in the quarantine. I’ll admit, working from home is not the most glamorous thing in the world, but I look back at this time as a period of personal growth as an artist.

In the past two months, I’ve:

• Taught myself how to mosaic using rocks and stones
• Held Zoom sessions teaching kids how to collage
• Held Zoom sessions teaching adults how to collage
• Created a website for my art
• Collaged a gift for my neighbor
• Made my first sale to a complete stranger

While these are all small steps towards becoming the next Leonardo Da Vinci (well… maybe not quite), they have allowed me to think more critically about my interest in art, and how it can be much more than just a hobby.

Back at work, I spent most lunch breaks walking around, floor to floor, cubicle to cubicle, chit-chatting with my co-workers. Yes, I’m one of those people. When we were suddenly quarantined in mid-march, my extroverted-self hit the big red panic button. What am I going to do? Will I ever see a human being again? Well, lunch breaks became my outlet.

Every day my lunch break has become an opportunity to work on something art-related. My projects have varied from collaging, my usual go-to, to watercolor flowers, to even decorating cookies with royal icing. Shout-out to the people on those Food Network cookie bake-off shows, they make royal icing look easy.

Now that my loaner laptop has become my best friend, I have gotten much more used to spending time at the computer. Among art projects, I got familiar with digital mediums on Adobe Creative Cloud. I spent quite a bit of time on Adobe Premiere editing videos, but my next adventure is going to be Photoshop. While I have little formal experience with Adobe, it’s amazing how many tutorials there are on YouTube. So thank you Youtubers – I feel like anything is possible.

My other new thing is turning my artwork into Zoom backgrounds. I always get a kick out of displaying my Tiger King collage.

While can’t wait for the day we go back to working in the office, it has been uplifting to share the quarantine experience with others through art. We create art to express our feelings, encounter stories about people, portray the places we know or the places that are unknown, and everything in between. We can all use a little togetherness in a time we feel so alone.