Rona - This is an Iso – Stage I project made in collaboration with my mum, Marcella Costa. I sent her a few images of the Corona virus that were floating around the Internet as inspiration. This particular image was of the virus cut through the middle so you can see its innards. The pink and red colours attracted my eye.

I asked her to make whatever she felt and would decide what to do with it when I received it. She did a wonderful job and I submitted it to the @Covid 19 Quilt Project on Instagram. She crocheted and stuffed it and I provided the brooch fitting.

Canary (song) – in the words of Van Den Plastic (based in Scotland) – I was emailed about an iso musical project. They would provide the beats and I would provide the vocals/lyrics. After much thought, I decided to include my mum to speak in her mother tongue, Friulan. After she listened to the music a few times she wrote some words, quite instinctively, and then I recorded her mcing on my iPhone. I recorded my simple vocal of ‘1,2,3,19’ as a mantra; a nod to punk rock and the repetition of the lockdown days. The ideas to add canaries came from the ubiquitous bird songs heard from my parent’s backyard.

I pitched the image of the crotchet Rona as a possible artwork for the cover.

This piece would never have existed if not for the pandemic. The isolation from the elderly, including my parents, and their particular risks made me initiate the project. My mum has fabulous crocheting skills so I was keen to see what she’d came up with. The actual piece was much larger than I expected. The image ended up on the cover of another collaboration project I did with mum and two Scottish musicians, Van Den Plastic, as an online song project. The album is called Usiel and our song is Canary.