Georgia artist selected to design memorial honoring COVID-19 victims

Five years later, the Georgia Southern University professor is raising her daughter, Lottie, while helping create a monument to COVID-19 victims around the globe. Modeled after dandelion flowers, the Savannah resident’s soaring outdoor sculpture is expected to be unveiled in Chicago by this fall.

Her design, which was selected as part of an international contest, will memorialize the 7 million people across the world who have died with COVID-19, including 1.2 million in the United States. The disease is still killing people, though the federal government’s public health emergency declaration expired in May 2023.

Gov. Brian Kemp announced Georgia’s first death from COVID-19 on March 12, 2020. Hospitals quickly overflowed with seriously ill patients. The disease spread through nursing homes and jails. As of March of last year, when the Georgia Department of Public Health stopped updating its online count, more than 36,400 people across the state had died with the disease. The state agency has also reported more than 2.4 million cases of COVID-19 across Georgia.

Schachner is grateful her daughter is healthy and that she did not lose any relatives to COVID-19. At the same time, she recognizes she has an important responsibility to honor those who lost loved ones.

“I feel really proud to be a part of something that is going to be a place and a monument where people can go to reflect on this part of history,” she said. “It feels really important to get it right.”

Credit: Courtesy of the COVID-19 Monument Commission

Credit: Courtesy of the COVID-19 Monument Commission

‘A cultural landmark’

A volunteer-led panel called the COVID-19 Monument Commission is overseeing efforts to memorialize those who have passed away and to recognize the five-year anniversary of the pandemic’s beginning.

The commission has raised more than half its goal of $1 million in donations for the monument and related expenses, said Sally Metzler, an art historian who serves as the panel’s chairperson.

The donations have come from individuals and organizations. Among the biggest sponsors is Pfizer, a drugmaker that developed a COVID-19 vaccine with German immunotherapy company BioNTech. Metzler serves as a trustee for another major sponsor, the Hektoen Institute of Medicine, a nonprofit health service and research organization.

“It is a cultural landmark that we are building,” Metzler said. “It is a monument really for the world and for the collective experience of the pandemic.”

Metzler emphasized the monument will also honor front line workers who performed bravely during the pandemic, including doctors and nurses. It is fitting, she said, that it will be located in the Illinois Medical District, which is home to hospitals, research facilities and thousands of health care workers.

“This is really just celebrating and honoring the resilience of those who fought on our behalf during the pandemic,” said Allyson Hansen, a former Atlanta-area resident who leads the medical district. “This is about the beauty of what we were able to do as a nation.”

Credit: RON REHANA

Credit: RON REHANA

‘Everybody has a COVID story’

The oldest of three children, Schachner was born in Rockledge, Florida, and raised in coastal South Carolina. She completed undergraduate and graduate fine arts degrees at Baylor and Montana universities, respectively, and has exhibited her artwork internationally.

In 2011, she served as an artist in residence at the University of Georgia’s Lamar Dodd School of Art in Cortona, Italy. She now teaches three-dimensional art design, ceramics and sculpture classes on Georgia Southern’s Savannah campus.

The monument design contest she won was open to artists around the world. As she dreamed up her idea, Schachner studied images of the coronavirus and noticed how its spiky, plantlike design resembles a dandelion flower. It resonated with her that some people associate dandelions with healing.

Dandelion greens are an edible source of vitamin A, according to the U.S. National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Related to daisies, the weedy plants have been used to treat liver and kidney diseases and spleen problems, though the center says there is “no compelling scientific evidence for using dandelions as a treatment for any medical condition.”

Juxtaposing dandelions with the coronavirus, Schachner said, felt “symbolic but also multilayered and not too on the nose, which is important to me.”

In November 2023, the COVID-19 Monument Commission announced Schachner as the winner of its design contest, which featured a $20,000 prize.

The monument will likely be built of steel and fiberglass and could reach up to 30 feet high, but those decisions have not been finalized. Schachner is consulting with the commission, as well as an architect and an engineering team, about where the monument will be fabricated and how it could respond to Chicago’s winds.

Conversations about her project, Schachner said, prompt people to share their own pandemic-related experiences with her. Some have told her about loved ones they lost.

“Everybody has a COVID story,” she said. “It has been really inspiring — sometimes sad, sometimes healing — to hear people tell their stories.”

“Usually, it becomes this kind of processing moment,” she added. “Art has proved to be very therapeutic in a number of ways.”

Schachner, meanwhile, is enjoying watching her daughter flourish. Lottie, she said, adores Disney characters, including Elsa and Moana. She competes in a recreation soccer program. And she is taking swimming lessons.

“She is a healthy and vibrant and fun little girl,” Schachner said. “We are just so thrilled to have her in our lives.”

Lottie will turn 5 on Oct. 1.

Credit: Stephen B. Morton for The Atlanta Journal Constitution

Credit: Stephen B. Morton for The Atlanta Journal Constitution