Pink Poppy & Embracing Friendship By Dancing With Our Own Shadows - Jo Ellen Thompson

It must have been 2014, the year I met Jo, that she made Pink Poppy. Mostly Jo had been felting wearables - hats, booties, scarves, and her “magic duality” carpets. “Then,” says Jo, "this empty frame asked for an exotic flower to embrace." When she was initially struck by the idea, Jo did not know whether pink poppies existed in Nature, but Google helped her to learn, and she proceeded with creating Poppy, a unique work of art.

Jo is a part of my Santa Fe dance community. We have been accustomed to gathering as a group for as long as many of us can remember. The dance studio is a safe container that existed pre-pandemic every Sunday in the liminal two hours between breakfast and lunch. It was always a place where inhibitions fell away as if they were layers of onion skin, and something of our authentic selves was allowed to bubble to the surface. During our dancing, we sweated, shrieked for joy, and cried together. We touched each other. The dance floor is another country with its own language, a language you can only get the drift of if you dare to move with intuition, surrender, and courage, allowing the animal mind within yourself to flow as hot, fluidly, and flexibly as the magma within Earth herself. Friendships develop without words, through sheer recognition and appreciation of each other's body vox.

While Pink Poppy does not overtly meet the suggested guidelines for the Art Under Quarantine project, we include it here because to many of us, the forced isolation of the Covid-19 pandemic means we want to extend a hand, reaching out to an invisible universe. When physical togetherness in a world gone off the rails is not feasible, we grasp for psychic connection by what means are possible. To me, the message of Jo’s beautiful, sensitively-crafted Pink Poppy is this - the bonds of friendship nurtured and cultivated through space-time are constant. Even in, and perhaps because of chaotic days when we cannot join sensually, we remain with each other spiritually, dancing with our own shadows as if they were our missed and beloved friends.

Words: Jada Griffin

Art Under Quarantine is a global, multi-media platform for creatives. We are diverse and inclusive, and we welcome your offering. If you’d like to join the conversation, email SOUL

Jo Ellen Thompson, Shadow Dancer - 2020 Isolation Under Covid-19 Pandemic

Pink Poppy, felted wool art made in 2014 by Jo Ellen Thompson