Long Beach Airport features a pandemic-inspired art exhibit

The Long Beach Airport is featuring a coronavirus pandemic-inspired art exhibit called “We Got This: Art in the Time of the Pandemic.”

The name was inspired by a piece titled “We Got This” by artist Nuria Ortiz, also known as Ms. Yellow.

The exhibit features art pieces crafted by local women artists. According to the Long Beach Airport website, there were 135 entrees in fall 2020 and only 20 were selected to be on display at LBX to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment, women’s right to vote.

It has been a little over a year since the coronavirus pandemic, which has impacted the lives of many, from job losses to losing loved ones. This art exhibit is here to remind us: We got this.

The exhibit features an array of art styles, each portraying the artist’s frame of reference during a global pandemic, or certain figures during this time who were their muses and deserve to be painted to pay their respects.

The piece “Within the Gift” by Maddie Aub, an artist from Alameda, features the sun shining it’s bright and reassuring light to stay in the present, as it parts between the mountains of the past and the future. Further, the message, according to its description on the website, is about staying in the now.

Oftentimes, it explains, we get caught up and dwell on the past or the future, making us anxious. But when we do that, we’re missing out on everything happening in the present.

“I think staying in the present is a lot about noticing like the sensations, feelings and thoughts and emotions that I’m having right now,” Aub said.

Aub said the best gateway into the present moment is by noticing her five senses and what each are currently experiencing.

“There’s been a lot of [anger, depression and anxiety] during the pandemic for a lot of people, like a lot of grief and loss,” Aub said.

Aub likes to incorporate these emotions into her art as a way to express herself, and how others may be feeling.

Her goal is to make sure her art is relatable to others, and Aub said art is her “best friend” and a coping mechanism when a cluster of emotions get too intense for her during these daunting times of the coronavirus pandemic, and always has been when she was first introduced to art at the age of five.

Like Aub, each artist has captured different sentiments and moments to be put on display at the airport.

“Art is my way of coming into the present moment,” Aub said.

For more information, visit the Long Beach Airport website.