Goodbye to All That

This is, I promise, the last that you'll be hearing about my solo exhibit that closed on Saturday at the Alaska State Museum.  The exhibit has been taken down, the icons are being returned to those who so generously loaned them and the museum staff is readying the gallery for the next exhibit. 

I'm grateful for it all -- the work of preparation, the exhibit itself, everyone involved from start to finish.

A couple of thoughts.  First, I've been surprised at how tired I've been at the end of each day helping to take down the exhibit.  Which is, I suppose, a reminder that I'm just about a month and a half away from my 64th birthday.  I used to manhandle that 6'x3' icon (above)by myself, which the museum staff is taking down with a lift.  Twelve years later, I don't think I could pick it up by myself - I'm no longer strong enough (that, and my back!)

Secondly, as the show was coming down, it occurred to me that I won't be doing anything quite like this again.  It was a retrospective exhibit, which occurs at the end of one's career as an artist.  I may exhibit again but most likely nothing like this.  This particular chapter of my life has come to a close.

Which is alright, as it is an inevitable part of life and growing older.  An exhibit is relatively easy to say goodbye to.  Not being attached to your body, to your strength, to your various abilities and skills, to the illusion that your life somehow belongs to you, well, there's a challenge.

In the end, I think, it is gratitude that allows one to say goodbye with thanksgiving and equinimity.

"Windows Into Heaven" Final Week

This is the final week of "Windows Into Heaven", my retrospective solo exhibit at the Alaska State Museum in Juneau, Alaska, which closes on Saturday, April 28th.

I'm grateful to all of the churches and individuals who generously loaned icons for the exhibit, to museum curators Jackie Manning and Aaron Elmore without whom this exhibit would never have come together and who did a beautiful and sensitive job arranging and hanging the work and the exhibit labels.  Thanks as well to all of the other museum staff for their many kindnesses and assistance throughout the entire exhibit, especially Brian Wallace who created a panoramic photograph of the entire exhibit.

Many thanks also to the Juneau Council of the Knights of Columbus for supporting the publication of the booklet that accompanied the exhibit.

The One Thing Necessary

In this age of Skype and Facetime, I suppose its somewhat behind the times for me to have carried on a twenty-five year long correspondence with a friend whom I have never met in person (and who, this side of heaven), I probably won't have the opportunity to meet face-to-face. (Although I hope to someday!)  My friend is a Carthusian monk (and a fellow iconographer) now living in a Charterhouse (Carthusian monastery) in Spain.  Letters from him are few and far between -- I'm pretty sure that the number of personal letters he is permitted to write in the course of a year are limited -- but always welcome.

The Carthusians live a semi-eremetical life.  Each choir monk lives in complete solitude and silence, joining with the other monks twice daily, for the night office and the conventual Mass.  Each week they come together for Sunday Mass, a shared meal and a period of recreation (which involves talking to each other).  Periodically their rule requires them to join in a day long cross-country hike outside the monastery.

Its an austere and demanding way of life and few are truly called to their unique vocation to prayer, solitude and silence. Nonetheless, their life together is a reminder of the one thing necessary, to create space and time and stillness in one's own life for the encounter with God.

On this feast of St. Bruno, the 11th century founder of the Carthusians,   I'm grateful for their challenging example and reminded to continue to hold my friend and his companions in prayer.

Solo Exhibit Artists Chosen

 

I received the news this afternoon that I'm one of eight Alaskan artists selected by the Alaska State Museum for a solo exhibit sometime in 2017/2018.  No other details yet -- who the other artists are, for example, but I'm sure I'll learn more soon.

In the meantime I'm honored and humbled that my work has been chosen.

Natural Icons

Today is the last day of summer -- fall officially begins tomorrow with the equinox, but summer ended last week in Douglas when it began to rain (so far, without letup). My studio has a metal roof so that the drimbeat of rain is a constant rhythm when I am out there.
I am grateful for that reminder of the natural world when I pray and work there (grateful as I am to be in a dry and warm studio!). For the same reason I keep objects like rocks and shells and fossils in my little prayer corner, alongside the icons and prayerbooks. I like to keep before me a visible reminder of the infinitely varied, intricate and ancient order of creation ( a kind of natural icon) A densely black piece of shale picked up on the rocky beach, which may be 300 million years old helps me to remember and appreciate the immensity of geological time, measured in millions of years and my own, our own brief time in life, measured in decades, days and minutes.

God is beyond and behind time, yet i marvel that God invites me, invites us, to participate in his own eternal life (which is beyond comprehension) except with a loving, grateful heart, which, he generously provides and offers us.

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