One day Jeannie Connolly was out walking with a friend – at a safe distance – and during their conversation they started talking about ways they could remember what life was like during the coronavirus pandemic.
Connolly, who is an art integration coordinator for the eight elementary schools in the ConVal School District, almost immediately thought about doing a sketch book. She had done one previously for a few months and enjoyed the process.
So she found a small 5 inch by 4 inch sketch book and began searching for things in her daily life that brought her joy.
On April 1, Connolly began doing a daily sketch and every day since has been on the lookout for things that catch her eye.
“The whole idea is to find something that is delightful and positive,” she said. “So you’re looking for those things all the time.”
While Connolly doesn’t sketch every single day – sometimes she just jots down notes and does a few at once – she has one for every day since the beginning of April. And she plans to do it until her little sketch book is full.
“At least till the end of May,” Connolly said.
She has all kinds of things in her book, from a wine bottle with a label created for Hilltop Golf Course after doing a drive through pickup one night to fiddleheads coming out of the ground to the fireplace at her family cabin in Franconia. There’s even a few of her 8-month-old grandson and others of Zoom meetings with family and friends.
“I’m not a terribly good artist, but I can do little sketches,” she said.
While she is unable to physically see her students in elementary schools across the region and is adhering to stay at home orders, Connolly can’t help but feel grateful for the life she has.
“I live where I can be outside,” she said. “So I keep thinking how lucky and fortunate I am.”
In the aftermath of the ice storm in 2008, Connolly had her then-third graders do an illustration about something they remembered during that time. She put all the illustrations together in a book and gave it to the Monadnock Center for History and Culture. She hopes to do the something similar for the pandemic.
“I’m trying to encourage kids to use art as a way to remember what they’ve been going through,” Connolly said.
One thing she has done with her students is asked them to send a letter to a resident of RiverMead, Scott-Farrar or Summerhill “to someones who needs a smile,” she said.
Connolly said she gets inspiration at various points in the day, not just on her daily walks.
“I don’t try to anticipate what it’s going to be,” she said.
She doesn’t spend too much time looking over her previous sketches, but one day thinks it will be a nice reminder.
“It doesn’t happen so much now. It will next year,” she said.
Connolly said she spends at most a half hour on her sketches and has even used Google images for inspiration to capture exactly what she has in her head.
And she is curious if others may follow suit.
“That’s what I would hope, if nothing else, that it inspires people to look at things that make us happy,” Connolly said.