Like many native New Yorkers living abroad, Tunisia-based art dealer and creative consultant Katherine Li Johnson has been anxiously watching the rise of COVID-19 cases in her hometown from afar. The stream of messages flooding her inbox from medical-worker friends in the worst-hit areas of the city—including Queens, where she was born and raised, and the Bronx, where her brother’s girlfriend works as a physician’s assistant at the Montefiore hospital—has been particularly upsetting, reports Vogue Magazine.
Almost overnight, even the most basic protective gear was in scarce supply; face masks were rationed; doctors and nurses had resorted to wearing ski goggles on the front line. “It was just so shocking to me that the basic things that we need to take care of each other just weren’t available,” says Johnson. “I kept thinking to myself, Why is the government so slow to react?”
Around that time, Johnson got wind of a friend in Tunisia who was producing plexiglass masks for local patients. An effective barrier to infection, the protective face shield was remarkably simple to make for those with access to a 3D printer. Which got Johnson thinking: What if she and her creative friends could do the same for her community back home? With the help of her former coworker Dara Krausankas, a visual merchandiser and spatial designer from Queens, and creative director and consultant Kaity Wong, Johnson started New York Calling, a collective making and supplying 3D printed face shields to hospitals in the city. “We were all just like, ‘How can we all make this happen?’” says Johnson of the group, which includes members from a diverse range of creative backgrounds, from industrial designers to virtual-reality developers.
The group started with a donation campaign on Instagram using PayPal and Venmo on April 2, quickly raising more than $5,000 in less than 20 hours. The prototype shields they produced, as a result, were then approved by an acquaintance in procurement at Montefiore Hospital. Each mask has two components: a frame that looks like a headband, which is 3D printed, and a plastic sheet that pops into the frame. It takes an hour to print each shield, the specs for which are free and available on the internet. (New York Calling uses the open-access template called 3DVerkstan.) “As long as we can provide the filaments, anyone who has a 3D printer can just use the specs, and the 3D printer can add onto the stock that we are delivering to hospitals,” says Johnson.
Since launching, New York Calling’s production capabilities have expanded thanks to numerous companies and individuals offering up their help and 3D printing equipment. Currently, the team has eight printers, all hosted by volunteers. So far, they’ve created 500 face shields and have distributed them to hospitals in Queens, Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx. Next week, they are on track to double that number and distribute to four more hospitals in the New York area. The group is planning to extend its efforts to include bouffant caps and KN95 masks that were recently approved by the FDA via a manufacturer in China. They are also in the midst of creating shield-mask prototypes for newborns. For Johnson, the motivation to help has always been homegrown. “The genesis for all this came after we were seeing our friends going into their shifts at hospitals unprepared,” she says. “Instead of just sitting at home, we had the resources and the ability to get something done.”,adds the article.
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