African-American life in the late 20th century is the focus of artist Kerry James Marshall, recipient of the 2009 Award of Merit in Art from The American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Marshall records the details of the African-American life the he knows. He poses his subjects carefully, drawing from a perspective acquired through years of personal observation. In Marshall's own words, "You can’t be born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1955 and grow up in South Central [Los Angeles] near the Black Panthers headquarters, and not feel like you’ve got some kind of social responsibility." This is apparent in the work on view in The Art Blog at Episcopal Cafe. In "Watts 1963," Marshall bases each figure on someone that he knows. The figures are fixed, frozen mid-breath within the larger panorama of a canvas that seems to move through time and decay oblivious to the presence of its human inhabitants.

In "Souvenir II" the artist populates a family living room with everyday heroes, personal, civic, social, and musical. Clouds filled with personal saints hover above a sole woman bringing flowers to honor memories and keep vigil over the past. Marshall preserves this moment in time for the future. Marshall brings the audience's attention to what is important to him: the older woman (grandmother?) keeping memories alive, the champions and martyrs of the cvil rights movements, and the nameless faces known only to him in the depths of his own heart.

On View above and on the homepage in the masthead: "Souvenir II", 1997. Acrylic, paper, collage, and glitter on unstretched canvas, 108 x 120 inches. Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts. Image courtesy Jack Shainman Gallery, New York and Art:21 PBS.

On View above and on the homepage in the above Daily Episcopalian and Speaking to the Soul: "Watts 1963", 1995. Acrylic and collage on unstretched canvas, 114 x 135 inches. St. Louis Museum of Ar, Museum Minority Artists Purchase Fund. Courtesy Jack Shainman Gallery, New York and Art:21 PBS.

Image courtesy of the United States Department of Veterans Affairs, Office of Public and Intergovernmental Affairs, online Poster Gallery.

Icons visualize origin. They multitask as history books, anthropological guides, and sacred aesthetics. Icons point to the root of a people's existence, keeping record of what is held in common.

It is said that icons are 'written', not 'painted', a nod to the narrative timeline that exists within each one. Something that is 'written' has an author, a story-teller. And the stories that are told through icons, all icons without exception, are universal stories of reconciliation between the Seen and the Unseen.

This week The Art Blog brings its readers images from the exhibition 'Icons of the Desert.' The icons here are aboriginal paintings from Papunya (Australia), most from a brief project in the 1970's headed up by teacher Geoffrey Bardon. Bardon's own interests lay in the process of providing a generation of aboriginal students and elders with art supplies and a simple suggestion that they paint from their own experience and spiritual teachings. Bardon's genuine compassion for displaced Aboriginal students in urban settings evolved into what has become known as the Australian Aboriginal Art Movement. Read more here.

I cannot help but wonder what the outcome of a similar project within The Episcopal Church would be. Give paint and brushes to Episcopalians, with the suggestion that that they paint from their own experience and spiritual teachings. What do TEC members hold in common and what would it look like if it were written iconically?

On View: Above, Mystery Sand Mosaic, by Shorty Lungkarta Tjungurrayi. Acryllic on board, 1974. In the homepage masthead, left, Mystery Sand Mosaic, by Shorty Lungkarta Tjungurrayi; center, an untitled work by Turkey Tolson Tjupurrula, 1973; right, Pintupi Women's Bush Tucker Dreaming, by Johnny Scobie Tjapanangka, 1972.
This show has been touring throughout the United States this year, and it is currently open at New York University's Grey Art Gallery.

It is our duty as men and women to proceed as though the limits of our abilities do not exist, wrote Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. The Jesuit priest might as well have been addressing artists directly.

If the artist’s idea begins with a desire to create perfect Beauty as a visual metaphor for God, and if they are not careful, they will be trapped into creating from their own, non-divine ideas of what perfect beauty is. The artist who seeks instead to point to perfect Beauty also faces the handicap of seeking through their own, if merciful, eyes. For both artists, the source of the authentic and the source of the original are the same - perfect Beauty echoing itself within their own heart, seeding an impulse to create. The door to perfect Beauty lies within the artist and the pathway that leads to the door is prayer.

Movements in the art world and the aesthetic choices of the 20th century institutional church have served as often to blur as to clarify the origin of beauty in the divine. In 2009, artists have no clear path to follow in order to build a carreer in sacred fine art or liturgical art that will be self-sustaining. Art schools and academies teach color theory and form as though it occurs in isolation from the human soul. If this will change, if art will see more widespread inclusion in the 21st century church, it will be because the reader has brought about that change.

On View in the homepage masthead and above: High Falls (2008) by Ferris Cook.
2008 Winner of "Gold Prize" Turner Acrylic Paint Competition, Kobe, Japan
Acrylic paint on 3-d wood structure (reverse perspective), 16" x 44" x 6"

On View in the Daily Episcopalian header: Day Dreaming by Patrick Hughes 120 x 248 x 28 cm
On View in the Speaking to the Soul header: Internity by Patrick Hughes, 81 x 190 x 30 cm

At the community level, art participates in securing society's heritage for future generations. It does so by contributing to the ongoing remembrance of the near and distant past, and through current practitioners' re-interpretation of community memory into their own original works. That which a community values most is often memorialized through monument, ritual, and public display.

For the individual within a community, art offers a means of recognition and self-identification within a larger body. On a global scale, art offers a visual language for cross-cultural appreciation of the varied expressions of religious devotion and piety in our current global narrative.

Formation programs that intentionally increase the use of visual arts assist participants in developing a visual sensitivity to what they see, both inside and outside of their local church community. Potential intelligences that develop from arts-inclusive programming include:
1) recognizing the elements and principles of design;
2) building a visual vocabulary that relates to inter-personal relationships, scripture, worship, and spirituality;
3) inquiring about the life and times of artists and the circumstances within which a particular piece of art was created;
4) developing personal preference that is distinct from community;
5) exercising the right to choose whether they like or do not like a piece of art; and,
6) developing a personal approach to extracting meaning from a piece of art through meditation, journaling, discussion, and other methods of appreciative inquiry.

Considering the growth of media into contemporary society, the pastoral implications of visual literacy upon community membership are indisputable. The best arts programming is local and organic. If you have an arts program in your area, the Art Blog would like to hear about it. Send us a note about what's working, what isn't, what's hoped for, and what's planned. We'll feature a selection in upcoming posts in 2010. Write to mahlborn@ecva.org

On View: The paintings of Ruth Councell. Above, Fear Not, 2008. Oil on canvas, 36" x 36".

About the Artist: Ruth Councell has been a freelance artist for over thirty years. She studied art at the University of Redlands, California, and at the College of Creative Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara. She has worked in graphic design, and is the illustrator of six books for children, several of which earned national honors. She is currently co-chair of the New Jersey Chapter of The Episcopal Church and Visual Arts, and this fall will be teaching at Paul Robeson Center for the Arts in Princeton.