In the film"Who Does She Think She Is?", Director Pamela T Boll brings together the stories of "five fierce women who refuse to choose" between motherhood and working, between partnering and independence, between economics and art.

An interactive website provides all kinds of access to a film synopsis, behind the scenes photos, a 'Fan Map' that is very cool, and more.

Screenings of "Who Does She Think She Is?" are happening around the country. A special web page shows the schedule here.

To schedule a screening at your cathedral or your campus, shoot an email to the co-producers here.

Oh, and the title of this blog post - Can you name 5 women artists? well, can you?

"Making art is the highest form of hope" is how artist Chuck Hoffman describes his work with Genesis Art Studio.

On creating the work on view, Borderless World, Peg Carlson-Hoffman writes: "Inspired by the Creation story in Genesis and the New Jerusalem images in The Book of Revelation, I became aware of what falls “in-between”. Not only the books in the Bible, but what goes on in the “in-between” spaces of my life. My work of late reflects those Holy spaces, where distance between God and me thins, or narrows, and where my relationships become precious and transparent. Exploring the Alpha and Omega in paint becomes a form of prayer and meditation, that in-between place where I go to meet God."

Her collaborator Chuck Hoffman adds : "I believe community creates a space where it is possible to engage truth. Community also presents for those who dare the possibility to become transparent and to interact with each other. This spiritual dimension in turn brings us to Holy ground where we encounter each other, beginning a dialog between the Divine, the artist and the viewer. In this creative, prayerful dialogue I not only connect with creation, but find out about who I am in it, and who I am in relationship to others. For me, making art becomes the highest form of hope. "

He and his partner Peg Carlson-Hoffman are exhibiting artists in 'Gifts 2009', an open-studio exhibition of The Artists Registry. The exhibition was organized by Jan Neal. ECVA Communications Director C. Robin Janning designed and published the online show. Episcopal Life Online carries an informative article by Julia Fleming here.

On View: Borderless World by Chuck and Peg Hoffman. Acrylic on canvas, Sept 2008, 30 x 30 inches.

The Disappeared/Los Desaparecidos

"The word "disappeared" was redefined during the mid-20th Century in Latin America. "Disappeared" evolved into a noun used to identify people who were kidnapped, tortured and killed by their own governments in the latter decades of the twentieth century in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay and Venezuela. Colombia with its fifty-year civil war and Guatemala with its own thirty-seven-year civil war further expanded the meanings and uses of "disappeared."

"The exhibition contains work by more than fifteen contemporary artists from these countries, who over the course of the last thirty years have made art about the disappeared. These artists have lived through the horrors of the military dictatorships that rocked their countries in the mid-decades of the twentieth century. Some worked in the resistance; some had parents or siblings who were disappeared; others were forced into exile. The youngest were born into the aftermath of those dictatorships. And still others have lived in countries maimed by endless civil war.

"This traveling exhibition, curated by the North Dakota Museum of Art, will be exhibited jointly by the Stanlee and Gerald Rubin Center for the Visual Arts, the Centennial Museum and the Union Gallery, all on the UTEP campus. Campus departments and bi-national community arts organizations will participate in collaborative programming over the course of the exhibition, inviting broad community dialogue on the issues presented. Funded in part by the Lannan Foundation. " Text courtesy of the Rubin and L Galleries and Project Space, University of Texas at El Paso Dept. of Art.

"These artists have lived through the horrors of the military dictatorships that rocked their countries in the mid-decades of the twentieth century. Some worked in the resistance; some had parents or siblings who were disappeared; others were forced into exile. The youngest were born into the aftermath of those dictatorships. And still others live in countries maimed by endless civil war. Disappearance was inevitably linked to torture. Laurel Reuter, curator of the exhibition and director of the North Dakota Museum of Art, was struck by the timelessness and truthfulness of the art. For example, when Identidad, a collaborative installation made by thirteen Argentinean artists, opened in Buenos Aires, three people discovered their long-hidden identities. They had been taken at birth from those who opposed the government and adopted into military families. Through their art, these artists fight amnesia in their own countries as a stay against such atrocities happening again." Text courtesy of the original exhibition website at the North Dakota Museum of Art.

Current show curated by Laurel Reuter
June 18 - September 11, 2009
Rubin and L Galleries and Project Space
University of Texas at El Paso Dept. of Art
500 W. University, El Paso, Texas

On View, Homepage Masthead: Empty Shirt, 1997 diptych by Luis Gonzáles Palma, (Guatemala, lives in Argentina).
One frame contains the frontal image of a Mayan woman, the second, an empty white shirt which stands in for the disappeared husband. Image courtesy of the North Dakota Museum of Art.

On View, Homepage Daily Episcopalian: Luis Camnitzer, (Uruguay, lives in New York). Image courtesy of the North Dakota Museum of Art

On View: Homepage Speaking to the Soul: Luis Camnitzer, (Uruguay, lives in New York) Image courtesy of the North Dakota Museum of Art.

Artist/iconographer William McNichols dedicated this icon of Matthew Shephard to the memory of the near 1500 gay and lesbian youth who commit suicide each year, and to the countless others who are harmed or murdered for their sexual orientation.

It is common when painting/writing icons for the artist to use a historic model for reference, as Luiz Coelho has written in a two-part series for Daily Episcopalian this week. Without an historic model, McNichols turned to the reports from police who found Shephard bound to a fence post, left for dead, covered in blood, save for the white trails on his cheeks where his tears had fallen.

Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am in distress;
my eye is wasted with grief, my soul and body also.
Strong, as I am, I stumble because of my inequality,
and my bones waste away.
I am the scorn of my adversaries, a horror to my
neighbors, an object of dread to my
acquaintances; when they see me in the street
they turn quickly away.
1 have passed out of mind like one who is dead; I have
come to be like something lost.
Yea, 1 hear many whispering -terror on every side! -as
they scheme together against me, to take my life.
But 1 trust in thee, O Lord, I say, "Thou art my God."
Rescue me from those who persecute me!
I will rejoice and be glad for thy unfailing love,
because thou hast cared for me in my distress
and thou hast not abandoned me
but hast set me free. ~ A Rereading From Psalm XXXI (RSV/NE/SE)

Shephard's tragic story has received consistent attention from the press in the 10 years since the vicious hate crime that took his life erupted the quiet veneer of the Wyoming plain. Episcopal Cafe writer Ann Fontaine has her own reflections on the person of Matthew Shephard, before and after his death here. Fontaine's questions lead me to my own questions about the appropriateness of titling this icon 'The Passion of Matthew Shephard' - simply because of the title's stark similarity to the Passion of Christ. Surely Christ's Passion was quite different from this young man's. Or was it? My inability to measure the suffering of another answers my own questions. And I conclude, for myself, that this use of the word 'Passion' is appropriate when it broadens our collective memory for all those who suffer for the truth of their own identities, regardless of how long that suffering endures.

On View:
Above and Homepage Masthead: The Passion of Matthew Shephard, icon by Fr. William Hart McNichols.
Homepage Daily Episcopalian: Beato Fra Angelico, Patron of Artists, icon by Fr. William Hart McNichols.
Homepage Speaking to the Soul: Jesus Christ Extreme Humility, icon by Fr. William Hart McNichols.

About the Artist: William Hart McNichols has been "drawing and coloring in his room" since he was five years old. In September 1990, he moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico to study the technique, history and spirituality of icon painting (technically "icon writing") with Russian-American master, Robert Lentz. He has also been assisting with sacremental ministry in the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Father Bill lives with his cat, Nino and hens, Rose and Catherine. In January 2007, Father Bill began to work on the Publication Ministry of the Icons. Artist representative and director of daily communications of the ministry is Pamela Scalora.

Read Luiz Coelho's articles, The Sinai Pantocrator: Iconography 101 here and here.