Email this article
Printable version
Devotion to sacred art
Fourth annual Icon Art Exhibit makes the spiritual visible
Arts & Entertainment Editor
Click image to enlarge
Photo by JERRY McBRIDE/Herald photos
Ann Smith's watercolor "Comfort" won Best of Show at the fourth annual Icon Art Exhibit, part of the Sacred Arts Festival showing at St. Mark's Episcopal Church.
Photo by JERRY McBRIDE/Herald photos
Ann Smith's watercolor "Comfort" won Best of Show at the fourth annual Icon Art Exhibit, part of the Sacred Arts Festival showing at St. Mark's Episcopal Church.
"Curiously Strong Icon" by C. Scott Hagler, $475, is a meditation on the Virgin of Guadalupe. The piece is made of Altoid tins and Andy Warhol-like laser prints.
Photo by JERRY McBRIDE/Herald
"She Loved Her Shoes" by Sara Swift, $600, is an altar piece for a hospice patient of Montezuma County. The chair is studded with all the things the dead woman loved, such as pearls and beer.
If you go
The Icon Art Exhibit, part of the fourth annual Sacred Arts Festival, is running through Nov. 3 at St. Mark's Episcopal Church, 910 East Third Ave., 247-1129. It is free.
This means the show is bursting with ideas and creative ways to communicate events that are often - inconveniently for the artists - invisible.
This year's juror is local artist, teacher and journalist Jules Masterjohn, who selected many of the same artists who showed last year.
In her juror's statement, Masterjohn said, "The nature of a community art exhibit invites a juror to be generous in spirit, so I have included works that may not suit my personal taste." Ouch. That can't be cheering for the artists.
She has made a fine choice in her Best of Show award, picking "Comfort," a transparent watercolor by Ann Smith, who has recently moved from Farmington to Durango.
Smith has long been an accomplished painter of flowers, but she shifted to figures. As she explained in her artist's statement: "Soon after a catastrophic natural disaster occurred on the other side of the world, these figures gradually began to emerge in my painting. ... Sometimes the simple act of allowing discovered imagery to appear in my work feels sacred."
One wonders whether Smith, with her dimly seen figures, refers to spiritual traditions that posit humans do "night work," showing compassion and help for people in need.
C. Scott Hagler, a musician who organizes the festival, turned up with an engaging surprise in his mixed-media sculpture, "Curiously Strong Icon." It's likely that Hagler admired Andy Warhol's colorways earlier in his life and has applied them to the Virgin of Guadalupe. He's put her inside 20 Altoid tins, all open, their lids covered on the outside with segments of a larger version of the print, and inside with a print of small-scale black-and-white roses. It's encouraging to see artists making bold changes like moving from music to sculpture.
Judith Reynolds came up with an intriguing treatment of "Jacob and the Angel," a tempera dating from this year. The angel is wresting with itself.
Sara Swift's "She Loved Her Shoes" would win the exuberance award if there were one. She should take double honors because her fun-loving take is on death. Swift has taken a chair that belonged to a hospice patient and made it into a roadside shrine studded with all the things the dead woman loved, such as pearls and beer, with tiny Mexican skeletons frolicking around.
In her statement, Masterjohn also said, "Of primary interest was to mount a cohesive showing that speaks of and to a breadth of spiritual perspectives."
She and the artists have accomplished just that.
pahmiller@durangoherald.com
advertisement
35 acre parcels overlooking the Animas Valley and surrounding cliffs. Enjoy skiing at Durango Mountain Resort or golf at one of two golf courses, Glacier Club or Dalton Ranch; all just 10 minutes away. Underground utilities in place. Gated for enhanced privacy and paved for year road access. Level building site for your dream mountain home. Call for price.
