It was late March 2020. Katy Beiner had just found out she would not be going back to Daniel Hand High School (DHHS) for the indefinite future as the strange new COVID-19 virus began sweeping across the country. Rather than hunker down to spend the next few months playing video games or browsing her phone after her remote classes, she decided she wanted to find something positive and engaging to do for her community.

At the same time, Steve Pynn was also acclimating to a very different world, albeit from another vantage point. A semi-retired educator whose passion has always been empowering young minds, he decided that it would be important to reach out to local teens, who he knew were likely frightened and isolated as the pandemic settled in.

Both Pynn and Beiner came across a new “pen pals” program run by the Madison Senior Center meant to connect teens and older folks during the lockdowns, and both signed up thinking they would be doing a sort of civic service for a lonely or struggling person on the other side of what would likely be a rather large generation gap.

The connection forged through this yearlong almost entirely virtual relationship was much more important and inspiring than either Beiner or Pynn ever expected. One tangible result of it will be offered to the community next month in the form of a special, collaborative art project featuring portraits of female leaders painted by Pynn, alongside testimonials from young DHHS women.

But the story is also much more than a single art project. Separated not just by the pandemic but by 50 years of life experience, Pynn and Beiner still found an abundance of value, wisdom, passion, understanding, integrity, and strength in each other.

In a time so filled with division and fear, they concluded there is something starkly and urgently important in realizing the power of reaching across generational divides.

The partnership works because of “this idea of how a community works, and how young people and senior citizens can work together on things that benefit both of them,” Pynn said. “Young people have something that has tremendous value for older people, and older people have something of tremendous value for young people.”

It was a spark in a subject that they both approached with the same kind of dedication and interest that grew into the art project, named Adopted Sisters and opening at the Clinton Art Gallery, 20 East Main Street, Clinton on Thursday, July 1.

As they shared thoughts, daily life experiences, and other details about their lives and histories through letters, Beiner said she and Pynn coalesced naturally around one subject.

“We started talking about what we were passionate about and I started to talk about what I’m involved in, in our community,” said Beiner. “That was something that really stood out about Steve, that he was so clearly a feminist.”

Beiner, who leads the Girls United club at DHHS, began sharing the names and stories of women who inspired her—everyone from actor Katherine Hepburn to political organizer Stacey Abrams to former Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to gun control activist X Gonzalez, who recently came out as gender non-binary.

Though he had already started a series of paintings called “Courageous Women,” Pynn began working on portraits of the people they discussed, inspired by her political acumen, passion, and desire to seek out role models among the women making change in the world today. Most directly, he said it was Beiner’s clear, sincere desire to learn and develop leadership through learning the stories of these women that pushed him to paint.

“In the complexities of today, growing up and who you become has to be a deliberate process,” he said.

Both acknowledged that their shared passion and the art project are political in nature. Pynn said he was “very conscious of maintaining boundaries” early on in their pen pal conversations and was careful not to bring up anything political to avoid seeming like he was trying to influence her in any way.

But Beiner added it was truly natural how the two of them, at very different stages of their lives, ended up sharing inspiration and connections to the same type of leaders, and saw the world in a similar way- something that maybe people wouldn’t expect given the generation gap.

“He was somebody that would always listen, and just wanted to amplify what we had to say,” she said.

The idea to share this with the community is something that grew naturally, Beiner said, as she brought in her Girls United classmates to share quotes and testimonials from these leaders, spliced together with Pynn’s portraits into a short film.

“This shouldn’t just be something I’m growing and learning from; I want other girls to be able to see...that there are guys out there who are feminists and totally want to help us,” said Beiner. “And also that intergenerational piece. I wanted other people to recognize how valuable it is to learn from people who have a lifetime of experience to share with us.”

The project is a way to emphasize this kind of influence, itself including both women from Pynn’s generation as well as leaders from Beiner’s. Beiner said the idea is that girls will be exposed to more figures, stories, and faces of leadership, and will hopefully be inspired to take up causes and advocacy themselves.

“Any of us can do that,” she said.

Bringing friends together and using the portraits as a jumping-off point to let her classmates probe their own ideas was “the coolest thing,” Beiner said, and girls “spoke from their hearts” as they participated in the project. They were especially excited at the background and learning about Pynn and his involvement, according to Beiner, and Pynn actually added some portraits to the series because of input from Girls United club members.

Pynn said he hopes schools pick up the project and it “can become a resource locally and elsewhere,” helping more girls to learn about the women who have shaped, or are shaping their world, saying he believes women are “the great hope of the world.”

He added that getting to know Beiner and the other local teens has helped him see where Madison can use more female leadership and opportunity.

“There are things that have come through these conversations that I want to help shape,” he said.

A Generational Moment

The powerful female leaders featured in the film and the portraits are really only a part of what Beiner and Pynn discovered through meeting each other. Beiner made it clear that it wasn’t just her teaching Pynn about the leaders he was painting, many of whom are closer to her generation than his, and that she learned new things about some of her heroes from him.

“We forget that we are not that different,” Beiner said. “I think that was something we learned from this project.”

Both Beiner and Pynn spoke about realizing as they got to know each other that what they were doing wasn’t some kind of community service; it was a friendship that was changing their perceptions about each other’s generation.

Pynn and Beiner have only met three times in the 16 months since they became pen pals—the first time occurring purely by accident at a “political mixer” in town.

“I was certainly excited to meet her, and she seemed genuinely excited to meet me,” Pynn said, laughing.

Beiner also described that meeting as very fun and lighthearted, but also that it highlighted another problem of the generational gap locally. While she regularly attends political functions here in Madison, Beiner said that town leaders have little appetite for listening to young people.

“There’s a lot of adults who say they want youth input, but there’s not a lot of people who are really willing to listen,” she said.

Simultaneously, young people simply aren’t that involved in most local issues, in part because they aren’t being listened to, according to Beiner. Part of the art project is a response to that, with Beiner pointing out that many of the women highlighted started small or locally before growing to affect broader changes in the world.

Meeting Pynn was a vitally important moment for her, Beiner said, as the first real connection she had with someone outside of her immediate family who was older, but also totally open to her perspective and encouraging to her ideas.

For his part, Pynn described Beiner as one of the most insightful, capable, and “special” people he has ever met.

“She wants to help her community, wants to help her world, and believes that putting her energy into it...is important,” he said.

Speaking for his generation, Pynn said that seniors are “fertile ground” for young people to learn from, but added that his relationship with Beiner has been eye-opening as far as what Madison is missing by not truly incorporating youth voices—and the issues of young women in particular—into its priorities.

“Young women still struggle in this community,” he said.

Pynn said he is planning to run for a Board of Education seat, seeing this as maybe the most direct way to begin working toward a solution to these issues, inspired to a large degree by Beiner—not just what she has said, but who she is.

Pynn and Beiner are both taking what they learned from each other and carrying it out into the world to fight for the kind of changes they have already been working on for their whole lives, whether that is 70 years or 17. About a dozen portraits that Pynn created will be part of the art show, and the hope is that they will inspire women and girls all over the community to lead on issues that are important to them.

But Pynn said he painted one more portrait that he gifted to his pen pal, one which won’t be displayed publicly in any gallery or show even though it depicts a woman who has definitely proved deeply inspirational to him.

That painting is of Beiner herself.