On a rather bleak January morning, I have been looking at the art that has been submitted for this beautiful and poignant expression of suffering in our world today. I have read the stories the artists have shared; why each was led to create the work that he or she shared with this exhibition. In each piece of art, I see the universal longing and anguish that we all share in our own incarnation experience. Just a few days after the death of American poet, Mary Oliver, I realize her words ring true: “It is a serious thing//just to be alive//on this fresh morning//in this broken world.” (Mary Oliver, Red Bird Poems, 2008)
Throughout Advent and Christmastide, I was not only celebrating the seasons with their own mixture of joy and sadness that always comes at that time of the year, but I was daily receiving new art work from fellow ECVA members who were sharing their stories through art. I became keenly aware of how this pattern of light to darkness and then out of darkness into the light is the pattern of our lives.
Several pieces of art that are a part of the exhibition portray Mary as she lived her roles of daughter, wife, mother, widow. We see her anguish in Ruth Councell’s Mother of All Sorrows; in Jack Pachuta’s Mary With Handcuffs, in Mel Ahlborn’s Addiction Mary. And we are reminded of her intense suffering in Mary’s Dream by Anne Cutri and Sabat Mater by Linda Henke.
There are personal stories of suffering in the art of Erin Ferrell McGee in her work, Breast Cancer, and in her painting, Loneliness. The beautiful work by Jeanne Weaver Harris, September 9, 2010, portrays that moment in time when the military chaplain came to tell her of her son’s death.
We see the stories of suffering that are all around us in Lucy Janjigian’s work, Poverty; in Paula Wallace’s work, Joseph Grieves. We weep for our country with the photography of Kathy Bozzuti-Jones, Hurt People, and Chuck Kirshner, Yearning to Be Free.
Then, with the beautiful landscapes of Karen Bennett, Kelly Bourgeois, Elizabeth de Sherbinin , and Geraldine Benfante, we are reminded that we will be given peace in our time. The beautiful photography of Bill Livingston, Old Lamp and Rest A While, remind us that if we can, like Mary, let it be, then the light will shine in the darkness.
In the Call to Artists for this exhibition, the artists were asked to tell their stories of suffering through their art. We recalled the words of St. John of the Cross: “And I saw the River over which every soul must pass to reach the Kingdom of Heaven, and the name of the River was Suffering - and I saw the Boat which carries souls across the River, and the name of that Boat was -- Love.”
To paraphrase Richard Rohr: Love is like a prayer—it is not an action that we do—but a dialogue---that already flows through us---and is ready to be expressed in the whole of creation (The Divine Dance, Richard Rohr). In this exhibition, these artists entered into this dialogue with their art and we ask you to enter into this dialogue with us.
-- Joy Jennings, Curator
As you enter the exhibition--
Blessing
(John O’Donohue, Anam Cara)
On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders,
and you stumble,
May the clay dance
to balance you.
And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green,
and azure blue,
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.
Bio: Joy Jennings is an oil painter who is represented by several galleries in Mississippi and Louisiana. As a former dancer, she writes “I am very aware of line, movement, and color as I work, as if I am creating and choreographing a dance on canvas.” She enjoys promoting the arts through workshops and community involvement and enjoys teaching workshops on art and spirituality. She currently serves as a member of ECVA’s Board of Directors.
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