This past week, it has seemed that I am surrounded by death. None of the dead are my own loved ones, but rather people close to people I know – my dearest friend’s father, a student’s husband, a colleague’s grandfather, another colleague’s dear friend. So much death, so much love, so much grief. And so it seemed fitting that yesterday Amy and I went to the narthex of Oxnam Chapel to build the ofrenda for this year’s observance of the Day of the Dead.
As we covered an ordinary folding table with black and purple vestments; stacked open-fronted boxes to serve as niches for photographs and mementos; arranged paper flowers, electric candles, feathers, and calaveras; and set out offerings of bread and salt, I remembered doing the same thing last year at this time. Most of the objects we had gathered were the same as the ones we used before, but some were missing and others were newly offered – a life-sized Halloween skull covered with glitter, two large vases of silk flowers, and I’m not sure what else.
Last year's ofrenda
Building the ofrenda is both art-making and ritual activity, responding to the changes in ourselves, in the materials, and in the community with decisions that are both aesthetic and charged with meaning. Does the purple cloth go over the black one, or the other way around? Does this element go here or there? This space looks a little empty, shall we move this object a few inches to the right or that one to the left? As artists, our eyes are trained to look for balance, harmony, that elusive rightness that says a work is finished. As people of faith, creating a space for communal ritual, our hearts are trained to leave open spaces that others will fill in, to trust that the changes that others will make to our own collaborative effort will make it fuller, richer, more meaningful.
This year’s ofrenda is different from last year’s, and from the one that might appear next year in the same space. It is a temporary, collaborative artwork that marks a particular moment in time; a ritual space for remembering those who have died in the last year or two; and an offering into the life of the ongoing yet always changing community that is Wesley Theological Seminary.
This afternoon I spent an engaging hour with one of my colleagues, looking for artworks for her to use in her class on the construction of gender. As we thought together about what images have engraved themselves so deeply into our cultural consciousness that they serve as icons of femininity, alternately laughed and groaned at a lot of art, both good and bad.
Eventually, we settled on about a dozen sculptures and paintings that tell an abbreviated but nonetheless convincing story. Beginning with the little sculpture whose true name and function is lost, but which is known to every art student as the Venus of Willendorf; through ancient Greek depictions of the goddesses Athena and Hera, medieval and Renaissance madonnas, romantic and early modern odalisques; to Degas bathers, Duchamp's shattered Nude Descending a Staircase, Picasso's cubist Girl Before a Mirror, Tom Wessleman's Great American Nude, and Phillip Pearlstein's dispassionate, headless bodies, we reminded ourselves how much of women's self-image has been refracted through the eyes, imaginations, and needs of men.
Granted, this was a selective list, leaving out the shocking painting of Judith with the head of Holofernes by Artemesia Gentilischi, the gentle portraits of women and children by the Impressionist Mary Cassatt, and countless contemporary artworks that skilled and talented women produce daily in our time. Slowly, women are claiming the right to create our own images. But we do so in a world that already exists, against the background of thousands of years of images that defined us and told us how to look, what to wear, and how we were to function. That history is good to call to mind, so that the future does not merely repeat the past.
This morning as I arrived at work, I saw Amy and Trudi
sitting side by side on the floor, putting up the lettering for the new show.
There was something about the way they were sitting that reminded me of two
little girls, happily making some big surprise for the adults in their lives.
And, even though we are adults, that is the way that a lot of artists feel they
are treated a lot of the time—like children who are indulged and encouraged
while we play, but brushed aside when it’s time to think about serious things.
The show that Trudi has been installing for the last couple
of days invites us to think about serious things. Guest curated by printmaker
and weaver Cecilia Rossey, it carries the weighty title
BLACK.WHITE.REaD:
Nothing’s Black
Hardly White
Nearly Read
Journey Through the
Maze.
Cis has guest curated two other shows in the Dadian Gallery.
In 2009, she brought us An Artist’s
Reaction to War, in which ten artists were invited to make artworks
responding to the war in Iraq as well as the idea of war in the abstract. This
show, which first was exhibited at a gallery in Salem, NC, addressed aspects of
war including the collateral death of children, the role of money and power,
and the eternal hope for peace. A panel for Rossey’s own powerful contribution,
“War Memorial: Iraq and Afganistan”, hangs in my office, a daily reminder of
the thousands of nameless dead who are remembered only by their grieving
families.
In 2010, Rossey
gathered prints, paintings, and sculptures under the rubric Food and Form, inviting us to think
about the symbolic nature of food, eating, and the body. In her statement about
the idea behind the show, she wrote:
Acknowledged as the foundation of physical and
emotional nourishment, artists probe the impact of food in contemporary
society. Through myriad images and various media, artists highlight the beauty
of food as form as well as food creating form.
Food and Form
spans contemplation of nature’s tempting designs for human ingestion to the
corporate deviation from those original compositions to fatten profits. To ward
off a national obesity epidemic, food activists wish to provoke a debate
concerning basic nutrition, fitness and health.
BLACK.WHITE.REaD
is just as serious as Rossey’s other shows. Reminding us that nothing is black,
hardly anything is white, and very little is actually read, the works in this
exhibition explore love and hate, faith and unbelief, fate and chance, and the many
ambiguities of life. As Rossey writes,
The concept for the B.W.R exhibit began as a simple
appreciation of graphic design: the stark contrast of black and white, subtle
grays achieved in skillful etchings, red striking a bold emphasis. Over the
year, this concept became a metaphor for life’s experiences. . . Often we hear
“It's black and white,” “You knew what you married,” “You signed the contract.”
These comments isolate rather than protect delicate personalities.
As Trudi and Amy applied the stark, red letters to the
window outside the gallery, carefully making sure that everything lined up and
that no air bubbles marred the clean lines and simple forms, I thought about
the seriousness with which artists take their work of making the invisible
visible. Although what we do may look like child’s play, we know that what we are
really doing is creating worlds of meaning for others to inhabit. And that is
no trivial task.
Architects are often called upon to provide buildings for
religious communities. At some point in every congregation’s life there is the
opportunity to build a new building or to renovate an old one. Last Friday, I
was privileged to participate in a jury that looked at student projects in the
Sacred Space and Cultural Studies concentration of the Catholic UniversitySchool of Architecture, a place where students are encouraged to consider what
makes a space seem sacred.
As the invited outside voice in a group that otherwise
consisted of members of the School of Architecture faculty, I felt awkward at
first, not knowing the rules and customs in this field that is part art, part
engineering, part faith. Soon, however, I realized that, just as in any art
school critique, the tools of the jury are careful observation, metaphorical
thinking, and concern for the teachable moment. My own voice as an artist and a
liturgical scholar added one more note to the already wide and deep
conversation.
The students had spent the previous three weeks responding
to a brief to design a small monastery for twelve monks. Under the direction of
Associate Professor Julio Bermudez and master architect and guest lecturer AlbertoCampo Baeza, the students looked at the site, thought about voluntary
simplicity, beauty, and monastic buildings from earlier times. Given a mere
5000 square feet to accommodate a chapel, a library, dining room, dormitory,
and utility spaces, the students made preliminary sketches, concept models,
plans, elevations, and presentation models of their visions of sacred space.
In the twenty minutes
allotted to each group’s presentation, only some of the issues raised by
cardboard models, site photographs, and a variety of plans and elevations could
be addressed. Still, I was struck by the variety of questions. Where do people
enter the building? What is the relationship between the building, the nearby
river, and the surrounding trees? What does the building look like when it is
lit at night? How does the arrangement of open and closed exterior surfaces
speak about the space enclosed within? What is that door made of? What happens
when the river rises? What is the story you want to tell?
In the end, it is the story, whether told in concrete and
glass, wood and stone, or paint or words. These compositions in cardboard and
glue tell stories of procession and pilgrimage, of contemplation and
recreation, of eating and sleeping and studying in a place of where the natural
world intersects the human-made. In a few months, some of these elegant
explorations into light and form will be on exhibit in the Dadian Gallery, in
an exhibition called “A Box of Miracles.”
The
Paper People are leaving the gallery today, making way for an
invitational group show, BLACK.WHITE.REaD: Journey Through the Maze, guest curated by Cecilia Rossey.But I couldn’t let all of
Rosemary Markowski’s remarkable papier-mâché sculptures get away, so At the
Table 2 - Tea with Kali is now
installed on top of my filing cabinet, where I can see it out of the corner of
my eye as I sit at my desk.
At a mere 12.5h x 12.5w x 5d,
the piece occupies a psychic space that is much larger than its objective
dimensions. A very proper-looking woman with cropped, brown hair and a sad yet
quizzical expression on her face sits on a rickety chair, holding a red tea
cup. At the other end of the table sits another woman, this one with blue skin,
long unkempt hair, and four arms. Between them, the table, spread with a
patterned cloth, holds a teapot, another cup, a plate of cookies, and a
somewhat bewildered-looking male head. Kali’s tongue, which sticks out of her
mouth nearly to her chin, is the same bright red as the tea cups, her eyes
glare fiercely beneath glowering brows, and her necklace of skulls glitters
against her bare, blue skin. One of her hands rests lightly on the head, two
others brandish a sword, a spear, and the fourth makes a gesture which might be
a fist but might also be a sign of blessing.
The fearsome Kali is a Hindu
deity that is sometimes referred to as the Dark Mother. As she sits across the
table from her bemused companion, she seems to me to be the embodiment of that
part of myself that sometimes gets out of control with anger. It is said that
Kali was trying to kill the forces of evil, but got so carried away that she
almost didn’t notice that she was destroying everything around her. When her
consort Shiva threw himself under her feet, she was so astonished that she
stuck out her tongue and stopped her rampage.
I don’t really know Rosemary
Markowski, having only met her once when she came to the gallery to give and
artist’s talk, so I can’t really say if this sculpture is autobiographical.
What I can say is that she knows a lot about human nature, and about the need
we all have to make peace with the unpredictable wildness that dwells within
even the most mild-mannered exterior. As I look at this small sculpture, it reminds
me to welcome the passion that fuels my life, even though it sometimes feels
dangerous. To have Tea with Kali is
to welcome her to my table, to recognize that Kali’s upraised hand is not a threat,
but rather a gesture that says, “Do not be afraid.”
I continue to think about the boundaries between art, ritual, and ordinary life. When does ordinary walking turn into a procession? When does a friendly wave turn into a dance? What is the difference between my solitary breakfast, dinner with friends, and Holy Communion? Can art that seems to mock religion nonetheless be holy?
In the Temple of Confessions, performance artists Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Roberto Sifuentes turned an art gallery into a place where people confessed their darkest fears about race, ethnicity, identity, and gender. Using American flags, images and objects derived from popular culture, and symbols evoking both Catholic worship and shamanistic practice, they created a space that was at once sacred and profane. Within that space, they and their collaborators enacted rituals with over-the-top theatricality, using costumes and props that were meant to disturb and provoke unwary gallery-goers into thinking about such loaded subjects as immigration, bigotry, and exploitation.
In a scenario called “Eating the Last Immigrant,” Gómez-Peña and his collaborators invite gallery-goers to eat a life-sized effigy made of gelatin. In this parody of the communion rite, the effects of political borders on everything from economic prospects to family relationships and personal identity are brought into sharp relief. In the video documenting the event at the Corcoran Gallery, one can see people shaking their heads when offered a small dish of dessert, unsure whether eating the dessert implicates them further as clueless devourers of another culture’s goods, or brings them into communion with Gómez-Peña and his group of holy fools.
Exploring of the edges where art, ritual, and everyday life coincide raises questions for me about how changing our rituals might change our relationship with one another, with the world in which we live, even with God. What if we didn’t keep Communion safely within the boundaries of our churches, but brought it out into the wildness of our everyday lives? What if we began every meal with remembering what Jesus said to his friends as he broke bread and passed a cup of wine from hand to hand? What if every time we ate and drank, we did so in remembrance of the One who calls us to be the living Body of Christ on earth?
This morning dawned clear and cool. The sky was the same
bright, clear blue that it was on that morning eleven years ago, when we were
all shocked out of our morning routines by death and destruction. On that
terrible morning, I was unable to think about art. All I could think about was
the horror of the moment, as I sat watching the same awful images being played
over and over on the television.
Today in chapel, we remembered together. We prayed for those
whose lives were forever changed, sang of God’s healing power, and received the
bread and cup as tangible tokens of the love of Christ. In the readings from
Scripture and in the sermon, we were reminded that death and destruction have
always been part of the human story, that God has seen it all before.
Later, in my class on art, ritual, and symbol, we enacted a
ritual described by Ronald Grimes in his book, Rite out of Place: Ritual, Media, and the Arts. At first, the
students seemed a bit self-conscious, as if we were just play-acting rather
than participating in something real. Very quickly, however, they entered into
what had become a space made sacred by a lighted candle, a dish of small
stones, a vial of clear water, and a single, white rose. One student lifted the
rose towards the group as he read the verse,
This is living. . . but not for long
may its short life
and ours
enliven the planet.
As he finished speaking, he pulled off a petal, allowing it
to drop gently onto the cloth that defined the make-shift shrine. The
unexpected snap as the petal broke off from its stem seemed very loud in the
silence, underscoring the fragility of all life.
