Draw Together / Wendy MacNaughton
THE NEW YORK TIMES
In Case of Emergency, Make Art
Hand a kid colored pencils and the trepidation and confusion of the coronavirus pandemic transmutes into striped penguins.
I was a firefighter for many years. But because it was more than a decade ago, it often seems like another person wore those turnout boots, cinched that ax belt, and ran into burning buildings. Yet when the Covid-19 pandemic hit a few months ago, my old first-responder instincts rose up.
I wanted to be of use. But I’d let my E.M.T. certification lapse, so the only thing I was really good for was staying at home. This was important, of course, but as someone trained to spring into action in the face of death and destruction, it also left me restless and dispirited. I became that annoying friend who harangued you about food supplies early on and inserted the numbers of daily deaths and projected casualties into every conversation so that even my own family told me that I made them anxious and that they wouldn’t speak to me unless I stopped.
Once schools started to close, my wife, the illustrator Wendy MacNaughton, wondered whether we could offer a free live drawing class for kids. For a week, she said, a half-hour every school day. Why not, I thought. It wasn’t the front lines. But it would be a nice distraction. It would be a service to the harried parents. Besides I was the only other human in the house. Someone had to hold the camera.