Traditionally, MFA programs have been places to focus on art-making without distractions from the outside world. For local artist Natalie Bruvels, the pandemic threw that assumption asunder.
The 44.4 Mother/Artist collective member recently finished the MFA program at the University of Ottawa while supervising online school for her 10-year-old son Tomson. Together, they forged a daily routine which allowed both of them to learn.
Apt613 caught up with Bruvels to learn more about how absence of childcare amid the pandemic affected her and her son’s learning and creative process.
Apt613: Pandemic scheduling changed education completely. Your recent art production represents two kinds of schooling: your own MFA studies at uOttawa and your son’s online elementary school coursework. Were you able to keep the two educational tracks separate, or did they intersect?
Natalie Bruvels: My recent work is a melding of both Tomson’s schooling and my own—so much so that many professors have remarked how this is also Tomson’s MFA. There is one painting where he wrote his multiplication tables on the surface. For my final MFA installation, we made a giant diorama together. It was half studio and half domestic space, a place where he did his actual online schooling surrounded by a giant watercolour painting of an imaginary Google Meet classroom.
As a graduate student, I experienced a massive shift in my trajectory. My allegiance became to the moment. My central question was: how can I mark this time, in painting or otherwise?
The closures of public spaces since the start of the pandemic have translated into a great deal of time indoors, but I know that you and your son did at least one outdoor public art project during the pandemic. Where was it?
We did indeed! We made large drippy paintings along the Greenboro Pathway using homemade paint squeezed from condiment bottles. Our project was called Squeeze, and it was part of Microcosm, a City of Ottawa public art project intended to activate passive spaces during the summer of 2020. Local art supply shop Wallack’s captured photos of the projects. When I accepted the commission, I knew that Tomson and I would have to work together, because all of my childcare supports had vanished.
