Full of Grace
An Exhibition for Advent 2009
Moses Hoskins, Curator
Diane Walker, ECVA Exhibitions Director
C. Robin Janning, ECVA Communication Director, Exhibit Design

at ECVA

Featuring the work of Dick Adams, Roger M. Beattie, Edward Beckett, Kathy Bozzuti-Jones, Betty Clarke, Ferris Cook, Marilyn Dale, Gerard Di Falco, Phoebe Farris, Terrence Fine, Chuck + Peg Hoffman, Margaret A. W. Ingram, C. Robin Janning, Roberta Karstetter, Mary Melikian, Mary Jane Miller, Joseph Neiman, Elizabeth Porter, Robin Rule, Suzanne Schleck, Rara Schlitt, Howard Schroeder, Amy Bright Unfried, and Vanessa Wells.

View the exhibition online here.

On View: Bubbles by Kathy Bozzuti-Jones. Learn more about artist Kathy Bozzuti-Jones in her artist profile at The Artist Registry @ ECVA.

On the Homepage: work by Kathy Bozzuti-Jones, Betty Clarke and Marilyn Dale.

When art critic Christopher Knight said "The most challenging art always makes demands on our cozy assumptions," he was commenting on The Central Garden at The Getty Center Los Angeles, designed by artist Robert Irwin. Knight made his point well - the definition of art, or actually Art (capital 'A'), is so broad that it may (it must?) include Muhlenbergia rigens, Colocasia esculenta, and Dalechampia dioscoreifolia.

The Central Garden at the Getty further opens up our definition of art when artist Irwin describes his Getty commission as "a sculpture in the form of a garden aspiring to be art." Irwin was fully aware that in this work he was attempting to breach existing boundaries of 'Art.' And he labored through anyway, facing critics and commissioners with equal disinterest while tending to his primary task - the work of the artist. The result speaks for itself. The Getty's Central Garden succeeds in its mimesis of the sensible world, providing its audience with passive invitation into the insensible realities that mark art's finish.

When the angels of the Lord come to visit Abraham to tell him of Sarah's motherhood, Abraham is sitting in the opening of his tent. As the angels tell the old man that his elderly wife will bear a son, the Genesis story tells us that she too is sitting in this same opening of the tent, this same point of passage between the personal and the communal. I propose that this metaphoric place of entrance is shared by artists, architects, theologians and priests - all are united in that through their work they create entrance, they attempt to breach existing definitions and boundaries. They aspire to build openings within openings.

On View : various pieces from 'Full of Grace', the current exhibition at ECVA. Seen above, Here I Am, by Ferris Cook. Gold leaf and acrylic on wood. "But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven, and said, "Abraham, Abraham!" And he said, "Here am I."

Annunciation
by Mary Haddad.
Excerpted from Holiness and the Feminine Spirit The Art of Janet McKenzie; Susan Perry, editor. 28 full-color paintings by award-winning artist Janet McKenzie with accompanying reflections by leading women writers. Orbis Books 2009 Used with permission.

I have a book with the one-word title Annunciation, which contains over a hundred images of this story, of the otherworldly angel Gabriel appearing to an unsuspecting Mary in this world. The book is a survey of the images used to depict this one-word story—annunciation—–from a fifth-century mosaic to a late twentieth-century painting. Sometimes I flip through the pictures like a deck of cards and what I notice, almost without exception, is the considerable physical distance between Gabriel and Mary: distance between the divine and the human. Whether measured in inches or feet, there is a distance, an empty space between them; they never touch. In one amusing image from a fourteenth-century altarpiece, the distance is spelled out in a word balloon beamed like light from the lips of the angel Gabriel: Ave gratis plena dominus tecum (Greetings, favored one, the Lord is with you). Mary recoils and if she had a word balloon to go along with the expression on her face, it might say, “Get lost.”

I find in this physical distance between the angel and the girl a paradoxical metaphor for the overarching role of women in the telling of our story about God coming near and dwelling among us. On the one hand, there is the unwitting importance and centrality of Mary, theotokos, the God-bearer, whose consent was a pretty big deal in making this story happen. On the other hand, there is the unconscionable marginalization of women by the institutional church, the oldest boys’ club of them all. They put Mary on a pedestal and made her a perpetual virgin; in other words, perpetually untouchable, safely out of reach, and cut off from positions of power and leadership in the world that God so loves.
~Mary Haddad
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About the writer, Mary Haddad
The Rev. Canon Mary Haddad was ordained to the priesthood of The Episcopal Church in 2001. In January 2007 she was called to the position of Canon Pastor of Grace Cathedral, San Francisco. The Vestry of All Saints Episcopal Church Beverly Hills has called Haddad to serve as Interim Pastor commencing January 2010.
________

About the book, Holiness and the Feminine Spirit
Holiness and the Feminine Spirit The Art of Janet McKenzie by Susan Perry. 28 full-color paintings by award-winning artist Janet McKenzie with accompanying reflections by leading women writers. Orbis Books 2009 Download a PDF.

This beautiful book explores how holiness can empower women and how empowered women work to bring about the reign of God. The paintings of Janet McKenzie and the accompanying reflections follow the life of Jesus through the women who gave him birth and carried his message to the world. The form and color of the images astound and the words of the text inspire!

The 28 contributors include well-known writers such as Joyce Rupp, Joan Chittister, and Diane Butler Bass, theologian Elizabeth A. Johnson, art critic Sr. Wendy Beckett, best-selling novelist Ann Patchett, social activist and writer Helen Prejean, feminist Chung Hyun Kyung, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori of the American Episcopal Church, and many others.

________

About the artist, Janet McKenzie
Artist Janet McKenzie has committed her life's work to creating inclusive art celebrating women. Ms. McKenzie's image of Jesus, “Jesus of the People”, was selected winner of the National Catholic Reporter's "Jesus 2000” competition, by judge Sister Wendy Beckett. She lives and works in Vermont. Seen above, Annunciation by Janet McKenzie.

Annunciation - Part 2
by Mary Haddad.
Excerpted from Holiness and the Feminine Spirit The Art of Janet McKenzie; Susan Perry, editor. 28 full-color paintings by award-winning artist Janet McKenzie with accompanying reflections by leading women writers. Orbis Books 2009 Used with permission.

By whatever means—we cannot know—Mary knew how to recognize an angel when she saw one. Maybe she’d seen one before. But something within her—call it faith, call it trust, call it risk, call it her ticket out of Galilee—something within her said, “Go for broke.” In a world where young girls like her had no say in anything, Mary now had all the say in the world. This is no small thing for someone who was more possession than person in her patriarchal world. Hope was in the air in her world. As mother of Jesus of the people, Mary is mother of all possibilities, poised to take her story on the road.
~Mary Haddad
________

About the writer, Mary Haddad
The Rev. Canon Mary Haddad was ordained to the priesthood of The Episcopal Church in 2001. In January 2007 she was called to the position of Canon Pastor of Grace Cathedral, San Francisco. The Vestry of All Saints Episcopal Church Beverly Hills has called Haddad to serve as Interim Pastor commencing January 2010.
________

About the book, Holiness and the Feminine Spirit
Holiness and the Feminine Spirit The Art of Janet McKenzie by Susan Perry. 28 full-color paintings by award-winning artist Janet McKenzie with accompanying reflections by leading women writers. Orbis Books 2009 Download a PDF.

This beautiful book explores how holiness can empower women and how empowered women work to bring about the reign of God. The paintings of Janet McKenzie and the accompanying reflections follow the life of Jesus through the women who gave him birth and carried his message to the world. The form and color of the images astound and the words of the text inspire!

The 28 contributors include well-known writers such as Joyce Rupp, Joan Chittister, and Diane Butler Bass, theologian Elizabeth A. Johnson, art critic Sr. Wendy Beckett, best-selling novelist Ann Patchett, social activist and writer Helen Prejean, feminist Chung Hyun Kyung, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori of the American Episcopal Church, and many others.

________

About the artist, Janet McKenzie
Artist Janet McKenzie has committed her life's work to creating inclusive art celebrating women. Ms. McKenzie's image of Jesus, “Jesus of the People”, was selected winner of the National Catholic Reporter's "Jesus 2000” competition, by judge Sister Wendy Beckett. She lives and works in Vermont. Seen above, Sacred Madonna and Child by Janet McKenzie.