Anna Cole

Artistic Director

Anna moved to New York City after participating in Occupy Wall Street as an organizer and visual artist. For almost a decade, she built a career there as an actress, designer, and teacher. Having a creative, vibrant life in New York City had been her dream since childhood, and overnight that dream became a nightmare. The last day that she worked on a costume fitting in February 2020, she said that the lockdowns currently happening in China couldn’t happen in the US “because people here would riot in the streets”. Only days later, NYC closed down and she lost everything she had in the city– her jobs, social life, apartment, boyfriend– and something indescribable but even more important than those things.

New York had represented freedom of expression and thought in years past; it had represented a place where anything was possible for people who had vision and ambition, and now she could no longer speak or act freely there. Anna’s background in Occupy Wall Street had taught her to always question everything, but it was shocking to feel attacked by old friends who could not accept her skepticism towards the lockdowns that had resulted in substance abuse, suicides, violence, societal division, profound isolation, and the largest upward transfer of wealth in history.

She conceived of the idea for Out of Lockstep in January 2022 during the process of packing to move to South Dakota for freedom and reflecting on everything that had led up to that decision.

Mary Ann Cole

Editor

There is no auto-correct feature on the form where people can submit their stories for the Portrait Room, because auto-correct can sometimes be like an over-active immune system that really prevents people from saying what they really meant. Instead, every entry is printed out and hand-edited with pen and paper by Anna’s mom, Mary Ann, who won a Golden Pen award from a local newspaper and has always had a passion for the written word. She has this to say to people who have submitted their story already or are interested in doing so:

 “You are a hero.  You did it.  You resisted and survived the most sinister, maliciously orchestrated assault against humanity that the historical record has ever witnessed.  And you did it without a clear understanding of exactly what motivations and outcomes the globalist predators had in mind for us.

The world needs you, and the world needs your stories if we are ever to have a hope of resetting to some human normalcy.

My job as editor of your submissions is to hear and understand what you have to say and to craft your stories for the "Out of Lockstep" art installation with integrity and compassion.

I have found that as I complete the editing of each entry, I am
left to meditate and ponder what each story means in the context of betrayed lives and human endurance.

Thank you for your gracious, often heart-rending sharing of your stories.  Could you see the reactions of those who read your narratives paired with artist renderings of your portraits, you would be reassured that you have greatly assisted others in reconciling what has clearly taken place in our lives, often upending our lives, without our consent and without a definitive path forward.”

Erin Pazour

Graphic Designer

Erin Pazour is one of the few people on the entire planet who truly never experienced the lockdowns (as opposed to people who did experience them but claim that nothing happened).

Born and raised in rural South Dakota, she grew up on a farm and was home schooled. Absolutely nothing about her life changed in 2020, due to the combination of South Dakota’s uniquely lax restrictions and the nature of living in a small town surrounded by extended family.

Erin has two goals in life: become a graphic designer, and go on adventures. She’s currently partaking in four different “Dungeons and Dragons” campaigns to fulfill the desire for adventure, and attending Southeast Technical Institute to learn about Digital Media.

During a 10 minute break from a class on how to use Adobe Illustrator, Anna casually mentioned that she had a prime location to display “a subversive art show at the Libertarian version of Burning Man in New Hampshire this summer” and asked Erin if she wanted to go too, like it was no big deal to drive halfway across the country (because Anna is an extrovert and that’s just how she rolls). Without really processing the idea fully, Erin enthusiastically said she wanted to go. She also offered to help turn some of the hand-drawn illustrations into digital vectors, which bought Anna enough time to maintain the last lingering threads of her sanity while preparing to debut “Out of Lockstep” at the festival.

Erin’s perception of lockdowns is filtered entirely through the lens of Anna making dark jokes about PTSD from that time period, because she seriously didn’t see anything like that happen around her. It’s like she’s interacting with refugees from the Twilight Zone. She’s not involved because she was impacted by lockdowns but because “it sounded like fun to get involved in this.”