Tahoe Weekly Listens to Paula Chung’s ‘Requiem’

As a gesture of regret, mourning, and commemoration, Tahoe area fabric artist Paula Chung is in the process of creating a piece titled “Requiem” occasioned by the COVID death toll, and she talks about the project with Tahoe Weekly’s Kayla Anderson. Chung is stitching 600,000 coin-sized spirals onto unryu (silk fortified rice paper, a type sometimes called “cloud dragon”). When Chung is finished with her approximately 3,000 hours of work, her scroll will be one mile long. 

“Requiem” can be seen in “Lockdown,” a show by Chung, Nancy Raven and Ted Rips, as a project for the Capital City Arts Initiative at the Bristlecone Gallery at Carson City’s Western Nevada College. Tahoe Weekly’s Kayla Anderson says Chung did the piece as a way of coping with the fury of watching the epidemic proceed: the artist cites the spur of the piece as “anger, defiance, and profound sadness.”

“Lockdown” is on view through Dec. 22 at the Bristlecone Gallery in Carson City, Nev. Read more on TheTahoeWeekly.com.