Last March, the School of Visual Arts, where I teach, switched from in-person to online on the 11th. On March 12, as I waited for my wife to fly back to New York from a trip, I packed the car with art supplies and a portfolio of more than 30 unfinished drawings for my latest print series, as well my graphic novel-in-progress, Belfaust.

As soon as my wife arrived from the airport, we drove to our place in the Catskills, where we stayed put for the next 13 months. Our decision to move upstate was based on the fact that my usual workplaces—my city studio and the school's printshop—were both closed, at least for the foreseeable future. Plus, with SVA switching to Zoom classes, I needed better internet than what our East Village apartment's antiquated dial-up connection could provide.

To prepare for immediate remote teaching, I had to teach myself the finer points of Zoom and a number of other applications to facilitate distance learning. I made dozens of how-to videos for silkscreen printmaking and book arts, and experimented with techniques that would work for students stuck at home or in dorms, without access to darkrooms and power sprayers, etc. I think we all learned a lot! 

When I wasn't improvising silkscreening hacks (top), I worked on my own stuff. I painted up a storm. I finished all the works for my current show at Owen James Gallery (below), which opened in early April and runs until early June. I worked on my graphic novel and did some comics for Rotland Press. 

I also finished up the drawings and separations for three large silkscreen books, ready to edition as soon as printmaking facilities in the city reopen. One of the more fun projects I did was a beer label (below) for our local alehouse, Upward Brewery, in Livingston Manor, New York.

Throughout the isolation that the Covid quarantine enforced, and a long, snowy Catskills winter, I kept in touch with my friends and students via Zoom, Instagram, and other social media. The main things we missed were socializing over dinner and wine with close friends and hanging with our son, who stayed in Brooklyn for most of the year. Personally, the isolation was fine with me. I was able to concentrate and got a lot of work done. I've heard the same thing from a number of my friends...I think it's the natural state for a lot of artists.

David Sandlin: Belfaust, continues through June 5th at Owen James Gallery, 59 Wooster Street, NY, NY.

David Sandlin was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 1956, and has lived in the United States since 1972. He has been painting, printmaking, and creating installations professionally since moving to New York City in 1980. He is also a teacher at the School of Visual Arts. His paintings, prints, books, and installations have been exhibited extensively in the U.S., Europe, Japan, and Australia. His work has also been published in the Best American Comics 2012 and 2009, New Yorker, New York Times, RAW, and other publications. 

A recipient of a 2014 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, Sandlin has also received numerous grants and honors, including a fellowship with New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers and the Lamar Dodd Chair of Art at the University of Georgia. He has also received awards from the Penny McCall Foundation, the Swann Foundation for Caricature and Cartoon, New York Foundation for the Arts, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, and other institutions.

Since he began his professional career as an artist in the 1980s, visual narrative, usually nonlinear, has been a core component of Sandlin’s work. He uses it as a structural device to build content and express ideas while experimenting with form. This focus on narrative has led him, as a printmaker and painter, to make a lot of books, including his seven-volume series A Sinner’s Progress, recently acquired by the Library of Congress. 

Currently, David Sandlin’s projects include Belfaust, a graphic novel, and 76 Manifestations of American Destiny, a cycle of prints and paintings depicting the American pantheon—both historical characters and events and those in the realm of legend. The new series of works will represent American heroes and villains of fact and fiction and iconic occurrences and folktales in a fresh context. “I do believe America is fast moving beyond the models it has followed for the past three hundred years, and these ghosts of history will eventually be put to rest. In some cases this may be a sad thing, but overall it won’t be a bad thing,” says Sandlin.