Bring me your tired, trash, low-effort art: UNB professors urge exhausted to be creative

Who's to say garbage can't be art? 

And who's to say being creative has to take up all your energy?

When all effort is spent on surviving a pandemic, feeding yourself and your family, and online schooling, creativity and the relief that comes with it could fall through the cracks. 

So, two University of New Brunswick professors are trying to inspire people to make art in the least labour intensive way possible, eliminating the mental barrier that art must be perfect before it can be shared.

Casey Burkholder and Sabine LeBel co-founded the Fredericton Feminist Film Collective. Since the province went into lockdown almost two weeks ago, the collective has been sharing prompts on social media for a project titled Omicron Exhaustion Art. 

The project was inspired by the duo's own exhaustion, they told Information Morning Fredericton.

"Tired and anxious and not sure what is happening with the new Omicron variant," LeBel said. "We wanted to find a way to channel some of those feelings." 

The project asks people to capture 10 seconds of dancing, draw a picture without lifting the pen off the paper, take a photo outside their window, go outside and take a video, or wear something they'd usually throw in the garbage. 

The results are slice of life photos and videos, and creatively arranged items that would otherwise have been mundane.

"[The prompts] are creating this kind of community through silly art making," Burkholder said.

Some of the prompts resulted in silly items, like LeBel's earrings made from canned-drink packaging. Others resulted in poignant letters to self. 

They asked people to write a letter excusing themselves from something they didn't want to do. One person wrote a letter allowing herself to take time to deal with grief and loss. A parent wrote a letter excusing herself for "everything" as she tries to work and look after her kids.

"They ended up really sort of like tearing at your heartstrings," Burkholder said.

Burkholder said these letters in particular showcased the guilt people carry as they're being told to "Go back to normal" while the pandemic rages on.