KELSEY BIRSA uses detailed rendering and abstract marks to explore everyday moments of her communities. She combines traditional oil painting techniques with the contemporary use of mixed media to reflect on the human experience and the desire to feel connected. Through her paintings, Birsa explores experiences of the pandemic and the feelings of anxiety and depression that it has created in herself and many others. In the current installation, ‘Living Room’, Birsa employs interior design elements like furniture and a hand painted mural wallpaper to set a domestic environment. The hand painted mural background features plants from the garden surrounding the Stevens-Crawford Heritage House. Experiencing outdoor spaces with friends and family, such as the colorful garden outside, has become one of the few social interactions that felt safe and normal during the pandemic. The past year has been a rollercoaster of information overload, loneliness, compassion, frustration, hope, confusion, and more. While we each experienced last year a little differently, in her paintings of these unique experiences, Birsa’s highlights that we are together in our loneliness.