International artist Joni Zavitsanos was quoted and pictured in a Reuters’ piece U.S. COVID-19 deaths cross painful 600,000 milestone as country reopens.
In a story about the pain American families have suffered because of CoVid, the news service discusses the amazing memorial Ms. Zavitsanos has developed to honor the Houston area dead.
“In Houston, artist Joni Zavitsanos started looking up obituaries of people in Southeast Texas who had died in the pandemic’s early days, reading their stories and creating mixed-media memorials displaying their names and photographs. Around each person she painted a halo using gold leaf, an homage to the Byzantine art of the Greek Orthodox church she attends,” the story states
“Zavitsanos has now created about 575 images, and plans to keep going, making as many as she can, each portrait on an eight-by-eight-inch piece of wood to be mounted together to form an installation. Her brother and three adult children contracted COVID-19 and recovered. A very close friend nearly died and is still struggling with rehabilitation,” the Reuters story says.
Ms. Zavitsanos is featured in a video with the written story. “They live among us and they are with us. I want people to believe and to feel,” Ms. Zavitsanos told Reuters.
Ms. Zavitsanos’ “LIVING ICONS: A Commemoration of the Victims of Houston’s Covid-19 Pandemic” will be on display this October 2021 – February 2022 at the John P. McGovern Museum of Health & Medical Science in Houston.