WHEN | TONI ROSS + SARA SALAWAY, IN COLLABORATION | DRIVE-BY-ART

WHEN, 2020 photo by Dianne Blell
WHEN, 2020
WHEN, 2020 In process
WHEN, 2020 detail: April 5 chair along roadway Phillip Cheng Photography
WHEN, 2020 The chairs culminated in a heap of Yesterdays, Todays, and Tomorrows. Phillip Cheng Photography
WHEN, 2020
WHEN, 2020 In the exhibition, DRIVE-BY-ART, viewers encountered art works while driving by in their cars and bikes to ensure appropriate social distancing.
WHEN, 2020 The chairs were stenciled with specific dates, days, and months, each representing the sense of an endless quarantine across the country. The chairs eventually culminated in a pile of Yesterdays, Todays, and Tomorrows, signifying our fear of eternal confusion while we navigated the COVID-19 pandemic. Phillip Cheng Photography
WHEN, 2020 65 hand-stenciled, metal folding chairs spanning a 450 ft stretch of roadway in Wainscott, NY. This view faces south, toward the Atlantic shoreline. Phillip Cheng Photography

DRIVE-BY-ART (Public Art in This Time of Social Distancing)
organized by Warren Neidich with locations across Long Island’s East End; May 9 through June 28, 2020
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The installation consists of 65 metal folding chairs, each one hand-stenciled with dates relating to the COVID-19 quarantine that began in New York on March 15, 2020 and continued onward. Each chair is placed at a 6 ft distance from the others. As the days and dates pass and accumulate, they touch on aspects of our confusion and the altered sense of time and place we have experienced. Toward the end, the text is reduced to simply read Today, Tomorrow, and Yesterday, a reflection on the sense of endless isolation within the pandemic response. In its entirety, the piece spans a length of 450 ft, ending just before the Atlantic shoreline in Wainscott, New York.

WHEN video documentation
(c) Studio Toni Ross
video editing Ivan Salcedo

“The conversations I had with viewers – each of us masked and talking at a distance – were remarkable. In a way, we have all been in a state of shock, seeking fellowship and an antidote, even for a moment, to the isolation and fear surrounding us. The interaction with the work provoked and intimacy and joy in the visceral experience of art that I will never forget.”

Toni Ross

PRESS

Drive By Art2020 Kambhampaty, Anna Purna, The Pandemic Closed Art Galleries’ Doors, TIME Magazine, June 11
2020 Neidich, Warren, Quarantine Chronicles, MUSEE Magazine, May 26
2020 Leroy, Bridget, Where and When and Why, The Independent, May 19
2020 Fox, Alex, Drive-By Art Exhibition Provides Socially Distanced Dose of Culture, Smithsonian, May 14
2020 Stowe, Stacy, A Drive By Art Show Turns Lawns and Garages Into Galleries, New York Times, May 11
2020 Ludel, Wallace, See Art From Your Car at “Drive-By” Group Show in Long Island, The Art Newspaper, May 4
2020 Landes, Jennifer, Visual Art Gets Real Again on the South Fork, East Hampton Star, May 7