Take-Out Only

When the COVID-19 pandemic began, the immediacy of the situation pushed aside longer-term fears about the environmental and other challenges we face. Yet when confronted with any global crisis, we struggle to make these situations understandable. When many of us began sheltering at home, an occasional walk around empty streets – masked, socially-distanced – challenged us to identify what exactly had changed.

The most visible examples of change were the scenes at nearly every restaurant, which just days earlier had eagerly welcomed visitors. Now they were places that could no longer allow guests inside, except to quickly pick up meals to take away. The visible, pragmatic reality of chairs stacked in piles or turned upside down offered a potent visualization of how a changing world can abruptly force us to rearrange our lives, as well as an opportunity to imagine ways our cities and our lives might become enduringly different after the pandemic’s end.

The series has been featured in The Drawing Room art gallery’s “Tides of Change” exhibition in February 2022 and the “COVID Cantos” exhibition at the Lindsay Dirkx Brown Gallery in February 2025.