About the archive
Despite warnings of a future pandemic, hospitals hadn’t stocked sufficient PPE–putting healthcare workers and their patients at risk.
High levels of exposure and inadequate protection meant workers lived in constant fear of transmitting CoVid to patients or bringing it home to loved ones.
Many were forced to live apart from their families with nothing but FaceTime contact for months at a time. Those providing direct care for prolonged times—aides and RNs– are a higher concentration of BIPOC and were placed at the highest risk.
Community members and healthcare workers scrambled to fill the holes where systems failed–sewing masks and head coverings by the dozens and leaving them at employee entrances and in break rooms.
Amy Ponteri–a mental health therapist working in the emergency department in Clackamas, Oregon–was both appalled by the hospitals' lack of preparedness and deeply moved by the community's concern.
As an artist, she was struck by how the bright colors and patterns were in sharp contrast to the fool’s errand of shielding healthcare workers from a fatal virus. She began taking photos of coworkers with her phone and later painted portraits that featured the homemade PPE.
Healthcare workers’ individual identities had quickly dissolved into a sea of faceless heroes. But under those masks were humans with lives and families and hopes and fears.
The portraits ask the viewer to slow down like healthcare workers had to. To see the vulnerable human under the PPE.
This site seeks to continue and expand this conversation about how the pandemic changed us.
To shine a light on the harsh reality healthcare workers faced and to create a space for them to tell their untold stories and for us to bear witness to them.
This archive is an invitation for each of us to reflect upon who we were, how we showed up, and the sacrifices we were all forced to make. An opportunity for healthcare workers and the general public to collectively slow down, see each other, and heal.
In October of 2022, Amy installed these portraits in her studio in Portland, Oregon and invited the community–sparking dialogue between healthcare workers and the general public.
About
the curator
Amy Ponteri, LPC, LCAT, ATR-BC is an artist and art therapist with a private practice and studio in Portland, Oregon. Amy worked as an emergency department mental health therapist in Clackamas, OR for 16 years until 2022. During that time she developed a profound respect and admiration for healthcare workers, which only deepened during the pandemic. She feels passionately about helping the public see healthcare workers’ sacrifices, struggles, humanity, and courage in helping these workers tell their untold stories.
Lost & Found in CoVid-19 is funded in part by the Regional Arts & Culture Council
