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Introduction
Ultimately we all seek a relationship with God, our
Father and our Creator.
Matt Baumgardner states that we
are all spiritual creatures who have a deep longing for
a perfect world but find ourselves in a sinful world:
“We want to do things we would like but rarely can. . .
. We want people to help us but they often don’t and
hardly ever the way we would like them to. We want to be
totally trusted and to trust others and ourselves but in
fact we cannot.” He quotes C.S. Lewis: “If I find in
myself a desire which no experience in this world can
satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was
made for another world.” Baumgardner explores his
longing for the perfect world and God in Burning Desire
#8, a beautiful medley of powdered pigment, Golden’s
Acrylic, Golden’s Extra Heavy Gel, gypsum, Lascaux
varnish, graphite and Pearl Iridescent pigment on canvas
over luan.
Sandra Bowden, referring to her work
Neither Silver nor
Gold, writes of living in a material world and of how
“materialism thrusts its ugly head at every corner and
we are taken in without much thought unless we consider
how the scriptures remind us that ‘neither silver nor
gold’ will count in the end. Our treasures are spiritual
and eternal. . . . This artist book was a thick small
book, permanently fixed in an open position to create a
kind of painted sculpture. An intense red underlayment
of color was applied to the book, and then half was
gilded with 24 carat gold leaf, with pure silver on the
other portion.”
Mary Melikian finds God in her quiet time at the
computer: “It is my insistence on creativity no matter
how – so I listen actively again and pray that the Holy
Spirit will guide me in all truth. I pray that I will be
a good servant of my Lord Jesus Christ, an obedient
disciple, a person who not only can make beautiful art
but can touch people with the beauty and love of
Christ.” Her computer image Sails is a prayer that
“the Holy Spirit will put the wind in my sails and move
me into joyful service.”And another computer image, New
Day, reminds her that “every morning, there is newness
of life, for ‘New Every Morning is the Love.’ ”
Ned Bustard in
The Square Fellow explores self will as
opposed to God’s will: “The yellow box harkens to
medieval art where the sky would be in gold to show the
nearness of heaven – the spiritual is all around the
figure in the center. This piece address why God would
send people to hell. In this painting we see this person
chooses to go there willingly.”
God’s embrace is expressed in Our Father’s Loving
Embrace by
Ruth Tietjen Councell. She writes: “My
father and I always had a strong and loving
relationship. But when I was in my late twenties, my
mother died and my father remarried. Our life changed
dramatically. His new wife put up barriers between my
father and his grown children, and we became estranged
from our father. I felt devastated, abandoned, and
betrayed. During that dark time I had occasion to visit
the National Cathedral. In the Bishop’s Garden there is
a sculpture by Heinz Warnecke of the prodigal son being
embraced by his father. Though the circumstances in our
two stories were different, the essential element was
the same: a painful separation between father and child.
The image of a grown child in his father’s embrace moved
me to tears. How I longed for that embrace!”
Gary Gorby states that “the Celtic Christians claim
special locations or events as thin spaces; spaces where
heaven and earth merge uniting their souls with God.” In
his photograph Tio Leo, the smile of the old woman
from Medina, Spain, becomes a welcoming angel of God on
our journey. The Pilgrimage to Chimayo depicts the
pilgrimage church in the mountains of New Mexico: “The
ancient doors are open to receive the thousands of
pilgrims on their journey to enlightenment and healing.”
Erin McGee Ferrell shows the motherly love of God: “The
paintings of Mother With Child and Mother With Child
By Window are reflective of my years nursing. . . . The
image of God as nursing mother, nurturing me . . .
cradling me to God’s breast takes on new meaning; God as
comforter, provider, and bosom. My feelings of love and
empathy have grown beyond what I could have imagined, as
well as my capacity for fear and anger. The paintings
are self portraits as well as the image of mothers
everywhere struggling with joy and fear.”
George Wingate provides a poem to complement his digital
photographs made at the Church of the Advent in Boston:
my art isn’t an epiphany
it isn’t religion
it is an image sometime made at church
it is what it is
(I don’t know how otherwise to find GOD)
Constance Skinner, painter of the icon
John the
Baptist, experiences the presence of God in a special
way through painting an icon. She writes: “I was raised
with statues, holy cards, and other depictions of the
saints. I find comfort in the lives of those who brought
Christ to us.”
Several of the artists have been wrestling with the
broken world: with death, sickness, divorce . . .
Barbara Desrosiers in
Soaring Gothic, Journey of the
Soul and Cathedral of the Interior shares her
experience of exploring her art and faith in the
traumatic times of losing loved ones: “I was weighed
down with the power of death and life . . . I found
myself drawn to cathedrals, and especially their
ceilings . . . The simple action of looking up drew my
spirit higher . . . There, with my camera, I found a
peace which I could find nowhere else . . . I had to
turn to God and the solitude of my own soul . . . The
lines and colors became the shadowy movement of light on
cathedral walls . . . The presence of the Holy has
become part and parcel of my working atmosphere. It is
to God, through my paints, my camera, and my computer,
that I turn for solace. He has never failed to appear
and to sooth my soul and enrich my life with the gift of
image.”
Kathy T. Hettinga writes of her digital images
Concrete
Cross and White Cross/Embedded Red: “Widowed at a
young age, I found comfort in the cemeteries in the San
Luis Valley where I grew up. I found that the historic
Christian images, from simple crosses to figures in
niche, were able to contain the profound content of life
and death and faith in a tangible physical form. These
grave images present the abstract, the intangible, the
invisible in a physical form that comforts and speaks to
us even now. The gray adobe color of this concrete
cruciform shape blends into the mountain desert
landscape and at once speaks to us of belonging in place
and unashamedly of the passing of time, reminding us of
our own temporality.”
The Rev. Frank Logue’s Polaroid emulsion transfer
Phileo is closely connected to the death by AIDS of
his brother Michael: “The day before I photographed
these flowers I had had what each of us knew was very
likely to be our last visit together. It was hard to
leave, and due to work commitments, impossible to stay.
The next day, I found myself attracted to these flowers
in the median of the highway in North Carolina. When
taking a closer look with a camera, I saw these two
blooms – one vibrant, the other dying – interlocked,
each affecting the other. It was not simply a photograph
of my brother and me, but a statement of the
interconnectedness of the living and the dying, life and
death, and in some way touched on the communion of
saints. My brother died two days later. After the
funeral I took the slide and copied it onto Polaroid
film. I heated and then flash cooled the print to remove
the emulsion from the paper backing. Then still working
in water, I caught the emulsion on a pie |
