Baltimore County Wants Your Poem To Be Featured On New COVID-19 Memorial

BALTIMORE COUNTY - Over the next one-and-a-half weeks, Baltimore County will be soliciting community input on a new COVID-19 memorial in the Mt. Washington area.

The "mending wall" will honor the more than 2,000 Baltimore County residents who have died from the disease since March 2020. Residents can send in poems or messages honoring the fallen that will be inscribed on the wall. The memorial will be located just north of the Lake Roland dam, near Paw Point Dog Park.

Credit: Lake Roland Nature Council

The county looked at more than 70 proposals for the memorial before eventually settling on a design by California artist James Dinh of studiofolia.

Preliminary renderings of the memorial depict a stone semi-circle with a bench. According to Lake Roland Nature Council, the monument is estimated to cost around $120,000.

Studiofolia described the memorial as a symbol of continuity and wholeness.

"With no beginning or end, the circle is a non-hierarchical shape often used as a symbol for continuity, wholeness, the cycles of life, the earth, among others. By extension, it can represent community or family. The COVID-19 pandemic in many ways fractured these 'circles' by taking lives, separating families, and causing barriers to be put in place both physically and psychologically, out of necessity and fear. The design will not only acknowledge the pandemic's toll but also proclaim life's precious continuity by creating an inclusive space that will welcome people of all backgrounds and abilities to come to rest, contemplate, or engage..."

Baltimore County residents can email their inscription submissions to publicart@baltimorecountymd.gov, with "COVID-19 Art" as the subject.

Submissions will be accepted until 4:30 p.m. on Feb. 3. The poem/inscription can be included in the email body or an attached PDF. Include your name, contact information, title(s) of piece(s) & word count in the email.