ECVA Call For Entries: Of The Heart 2013, Open Studio

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil...
(Gerard Manley Hopkins)

As artists we often express those aspects and experiences
of faith which come from the heart and cannot be understood or described by words alone.  

For this open-studio exhibition, we invite you to submit a work which communicates some moment, or moments, in which you have experienced your heart’s recognition of the presence of Spirit or the grandeur of God.

Read the complete Call HERE.

Deadline for entries is July 1, 2013.

  

Holy Women, Holy Men Exhibition

From the Curator's Statement: Represented here are mystics and radicals and revolutionaries. Here are the stories of our faithful ones, made real in vibrant colors and textures. As these forty days come to an end, these have arrived to guide us to the joy of Resurrection. They are bridges to be crossed, who having spent their own time in darkness, know the way to the One who is the light. Let us follow them. And give thanks.
 
See the entire exhibition HERE. 

Deadline Extended for Holy Women, Holy Men Call

The deadline for entries for ECVA's exhibition: Holy Women, Holy Men
 has been extended to February 14, 2013. See entry details here.

New Exhibition: "Mary, Mother Of Our Tribe"

 

We invite you to share our newest exhibition during this season of Advent. Curator The Rt. Rev. Steven Charleston writes...

Mary is not the Mother Of Our Tribe, our human tribe, because she is some aloof figure from an artificial piety, set apart by myth and the imagined need for ritual purity. No, she is holy because she is one of us. She is our common mother, our everyday mother. She is a living person who has gone before us, a woman as human as you or I, who found a well of faith deeper and more life-giving than any we will ever discover on our own. She is grace. She is mercy. She is love: a gift to us from God, a healing presence in every culture and every time, speaking all of our languages, even if that language is silence. (Read the entire statement here.)

Call for Entries: "Mary, Mother Of Our Tribe"

Hail Mary, full of grace, Mother of our Tribe, blessed are you among women... few women have birthed a tribe as diverse as yours.

Few mothers, matriarchs of our myths, have been so confusing
to us: so powerful and so trivial; so central and so peripheral;
so mysterious and so obvious; so comforting and so disturbing. 

You are the Queen of Heaven. You are a pregnant teenager. You are seen in the sky. You are seen on pieces of toast. You are a statue of the status quo, a museum marker for a patriarchal church, but you are remembered for one of the most revolutionary statements in Scripture. You are in all cultures, in all times, in all places, so specific that you become universal. And so you are blessed, the Mother of our Tribe.  

But when all is said and done, Mary, who, exactly, are you?

Let the search for Mary continue. Let her appear and re-appear, an apparition of the arts, an endless epiphany of our own deep longing. Let us discover and re-discover her, the elusive woman who by her most human act gave birth to the most transcendent truth.  

Let us honor the Mother of our Tribe as the source of what we cannot control but on which we ultimately always depend, a love as unconditional as it is enduring.

The Rt. Rev. Steven Charleston, Choctaw

Author, Hope As Old As Fire

Curator

Artists who are members of The Artists Registry @ ECVA may submit up to three images to be considered for this exhibition. Images must be in either GIF or JPEG file format and sized so that they are at least 600 pixels (8.33 inches) wide, when displayed at a resolution of 72 pixels-per-inch (ppi).

Send your image(s) attached to an e-mail (one image per e-mail, please).  In the e-mail, provide your NAME, the TITLE of the image, and the ART MEDIA as you wish them to appear in the exhibition. You may also include a statement which relates your image to this Call, using no more than 150 words (which may be edited for length). Please include statement in the text of the e-mail, do not attach separately.

The subject line of the e-mail should contain "Mary, Mother Of Our Tribe” along with YOUR NAME. The subject line should look similar to this:

Subject: YOUR NAME: Mary, Mother Of Our Tribe

Do not use previous ECVA entry forms. All submissions must be received no later than November 1, 2012.

Please note: Images submitted for this Call must NOT have been shown in any previous ECVA Exhibition. By submitting entries for this exhibition, you agree that we may use the images on the ECVA web site, in printed and on-line promotional material produced by ECVA; in the ECVA Newsletter; and on the Art Blog at Episcopal Cafe.

Entries must be sent to ecvaexhibitions@gmail.com. If you have questions, please send them to editor@ecva.org.

NOTE: You can always find the current Call from a link on the ECVA home page at http://ecva.org.

2012 Kalos Foundation Visual Art Prize

Ruminate Magazine's 2012 Kalos Foundation
Visual Art Prize

DEADLINE: August 15, 2012

Ruminate Magazine: Chewing on Life, Art and Faith announces the 2012 Kalos Foundation Visual Art Prize. This year's competition will be juried by award-winning artist Bruce Herman. First place winner will receive a $2500 cash prize along with publication in Issue #26 of Ruminate Magazine (set to release in mid-December 2012). Runner-up recipient will also be published in Issue #26. The prize is open to all mediums and artists of all levels; no geographical or age restrictions.

Entry Fee: $20 Entry fee also includes a complimentary copy of Ruminate Magazine, Issue #26.

TO SUBMIT: please visit our website to upload 3 images that represent a larger body of work, as well as an artist statement.  Artists must have professional quality digital images of that larger group of works available upon request.

Please visit our website for more information: http://www.ruminatemagazine.com/submit/contests/art/

Art We're Doing This Summer

a Call for something a little different...

Members of the Artists Registry @ ECVA, send an image of the art you've created this summer and the Editor will choose among the entries to post on the ArtBlog at Episcopal Café.

Send an e-mail to editor@ecva.org with your name and "Art We're Doing This Summer" in the subject line. With the e-mail, attach your image in jpeg format, sized so that it is at least 600 pixels wide at a resolution of 72 pixels-per-inch. Include the title and media of the art. If the image is posted on the Art Blog, your name, the title of your art, the media, and a link to your profile page at The Artists Registry will be included.

This Call will run from June 21, through September 21, 2012.

Intersections 2012 Open-Studio Exhibition

Intersections 2012, ECVA’s open-studio exhibition is now on display here.

From our artists came passion, poetry, paint, and pixels and the result is an exhibition that defines and re-defines our notion of “intersections.”

The exhibition can be followed by a link from ECVA’s homepage at http://ecva.org. The image linking to the exhibition is Kathy Thaden’s “Passion.”

Stations of the Cross Exhibition

STATIONS OF THE CROSS, by artist Gerard (Jerry) Di Falco is being exhibited at the Cathedral of the Dioceses of Pennsylvania, through Good Friday on April 6, 2012.  The Cathedral is located at 3723 Chestnut Streets (intersection of 38th and Ludlow near Chestnut Street) in West Philadelphia on the campuses of the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University. Viewing hours are Monday–Friday, 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., during church services, or by appointment. For more information, call 215-386-0234 or visit the Cathedral’s web site HERE.

The STATIONS OF THE CROSS serve as a meditational tool during Lent to reflect upon Christ’s suffering on Good Friday. Traditionally, fourteen scenes (or Stations) that lead up to Christ’s entombment are included in these visual works. This exhibition features assemblages on stretched canvas executed in mixed media. Some of Di Falco’s materials include wood, glass, bone, plastics, fiber, and paper; his genres include painting, photography, digital art, printmaking and relief sculpture.

Seen above: FIRST STATION OF THE CROSS – Pilot Sentences Jesus with the Death Penalty.

Mixed-media: Skull (with teeth) of a young deer; heavy-duty metallic thread; clear acrylic polymers; acrylic paint; digital photograph of an original three-dimensional Xerox of artist’s hands in latex gloves; digital photograph of type-set letters on torn paper; acid-free paper; and, stretched canvas on wood. 

Note 1: Skull was found in the Wissahickon Valley, which is a nature preserve area in the City of Philadelphia. No animals were harmed or killed to obtain natural artifacts, all of which were found in their natural state.

Note 2: SPQR, Senatus Populatus que Romani, translates from the Latin as “the Senate and the Roman People."

Size: 20” high by 10” wide by 3.5” deep.

Word In Season

“The Word in Season” is the title of a new art exhibit by Linda Witte Henke in the Saint Meinrad Archabbey Library Gallery, St. Meinrad, IN. An exhibition expressive of the Christian liturgical seasons, it will be shown through April 15, 2012. For more information, click HERE.

Walking the Way of the Cross

A reflection on Jesus’ Passion by the Rev. Thomas Faulkner will be shown at Trinity Cathedral, Cleveland, OH through Good Friday, April 6, 2012.

The Fourteen Stations Of The Cross Project was commissioned by the national Episcopal Church for its 2003 General Convention. The Rev. Faulkner, an Episcopal priest and sculptor, spent eight months as the Red Cross Officer in charge of the 60 chaplains ministering at the temporary morgue at Ground Zero following the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center. He and the chaplains blessed all human remains removed from the site and offered prayer and counseling for workers. Walking the Way of the Cross was inspired by that ministry. In addition to referencing 9/11, the stunning and provocative representations also examine the war in Iraq, the battle at Little Bighorn. and other atrocities and tragedies. The artist uses ordinary, contemporary objects—suitcases, television sets, ironing boards, cameras—to tell Christ’s story.

For more information about the exhibition, click HERE. 

A podcast of the Rev. Faulkner’s guided walk is available HERE. 

The Rev. Thomas Faulkner is Vicar at Christ Church in Sparkill, N.Y. To learn more about him, click HERE. 

"Jesus Our Brother" Exhibition at ECVA

We invite you to share our newest exhibition during this season of Lent. Curator Diane Walker writes...

As we begin the long slow walk through the 40 days of Lent, who is this Christ who has promised to walk with us? Inspired by thoughts of Jesus as brother, the artists whose work appears in this exhibition responded with a variety of images, some traditional and some less so.

Spending prayerful time with each of the pieces in this exhibition, I felt faith and hope shine through, and found myself thinking of the words of Mother Teresa, as she looked upon the faces of those whom she served: “Each one of them is Jesus in disguise.” Each of these images, in its own way, offers a gentle reassurance — that wherever we may find ourselves, our brother Jesus is with us, just as the sun and the rain continue to feed, support, and nurture us, helping us to grow into what we are called by God and Christ to become.

Click HERE to visit the "Jesus Our Brother" exhibition.

A Call From Whitestone Gallery

An organization in the Baltimore area needs to replace a solo exhibit spot for January through February.  You need to have a full exhibit ready to go and able to be transported to Baltimore by January.  A reception will be provided by the organization. If you are interested, email info@whitestonegallery.com with a few images from your full exhibit.  We will not share the organization's name to keep them from being bombarded with artists contacting them.  If your work is selected, of course we will share their information with you.  It is a beautiful space specifically for art exhibits in the headquarters of an international non-profit organization. This is a last minute call.  You must move fast.

Call For Entries: "Jesus Our Brother"

Someone told him, "Your mother and brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you." He replied to him, "Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?" And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers!" (Matthew 12:47)

We speak often of Jesus as Savior, Teacher, Messiah, Lord, and King. But we who are his disciples and followers can also call him Brother: the relationship we have with Jesus has the potential to become infinitely more personal.
 

This is a particular gift as we head into the season of Lent. It is no coincidence that Lent takes place in spring, when the seeds that have lain dormant over the winter are first struggling to break through the hard shell of being and the rough embrace of earth.

The sturdy seedling with arched body comes
Shouldering its way and shedding the earth crumbs.
(Robert Frost: Putting in the Seed)

If we understand Lent as an opportunity to deepen our relationship with Christ, then the struggles we endure with whatever discipline we might be led to take on during this period of germination are struggles he shares with us. Our desert is his desert; our challenges his challenges.See the complete Call for Entries HERE.

New Exhibition for Advent

We invite you to share our newest exhibition during this season of Advent.

 

Curator Ana Hernandez writes...

 

"Shining light on the issues that disrupt our love and bringing our most loving selves to the community is the work of becoming the serenity and peace we seek. In his book Music and Imagination, Aaron Copland writes: This never ending flow of music forces us to use our imaginations, for music is in a continual state of becoming."

"Our becoming is made possible by our experience and our quiet, patient work with the spirit. ...May we look deeply, confident in the gifts we have, and not let fear keep us from stepping out of our comfort zones, saying Yes! in our dialogues. May we see ourselves as the encouraging angels we are."

Image above by Linda Witte Henke, "Adonai" (from the Great O Antiphons).

Janet McKenzie: Holiness and the Feminine Spirit

Holiness and the Feminine Spirit:The Art of Janet McKenzie, an exhibition of 21 paintings depicting Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and additional inclusive interpretations continues at Loyola University Museum of Art (LUMA) through October 23, 2011. 

Janet McKenzie has created masterful paintings that celebrate all people, and in particular, women and people of color. She challenges the predominant western interpretation of the Holy Family as blue-eyed and fair-skinned, suggesting that viewers of her work reconsider this standard. Since her “Jesus of the People” won the National Catholic Reporter’s competition for a new image of Jesus in 1999, we have seen the Holy Family and Saints emerge from her spiritual mastery of canvas and paint and we observe how these “transformed” images transform our own views of the world in which we live.

The Most Rev. Dr. Katharine Jefferts Schori, the twenty-sixth Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church states in her essay "Epiphany," from the book Holiness and the Feminine Spirit, that Janet McKenzie has "invited us into yet another awareness of what it means that Jesus was born of the whole world."

Pamela Ambrose, Director of LUMA, stresses the emotional impact of these paintings. "For a city like Chicago, with a large international population, the paintings are reminders that we cannot be ethnocentric in thinking about the icons of the Christian faith."

The exhibition can be viewed at LUMA, 820 N. Michigan Avenue.

Also at LUMA on Tuesday, October 18, 2011, Janet McKenzie will lead a tour through her exhibition and give an informal talk, sharing insights into her paintings. She will discuss the ongoing journey with Jesus of the People, a work that has proven to be controversial. McKenzie will also sign copies of her book, Holiness and the Feminine Spirit: The Art of Janet McKenzie, which will be on sale in LUMA's museum shop.

LUMA is located in historic Lewis Towers on the Magnificent Mile, the heart of Chicago's cultural and shopping district.

 

Loyola University Museum of Art  

820 North Michigan Avenue
Chicago, IL 60611
312.915.7600 

Image above: "Woman Offered #5" by Janet McKenzie

A Stand For Peace

Bishop Paul Jones is commemorated on September 4 in Holy Women, Holy Men: Calendar of Saints. Born in 1880 and following graduating from Yale University and the Episcopal Divinity School Paul Jones accepted a call to serve a mission in Logan, UT. In 1914 he was appointed Archdeacon of the Missionary District of Utah and, later that year, he was elected its Bishop.

His stand that “war is unchristian” and the accompanying reaction caused a commission of the House of Bishops to investigate and eventually recommend that Bishop Jones resign.
 
“It was after much prayerful thought, imagination and contemplation” that The Rev. Robert Two Bulls (Oglala Lakota) created an Icon honoring Bishop Paul Jones as a peace maker.  Inscribed around the Icon’s halo are the words from Bishop Paul Jones’ farewell speech “Where I serve the Church is of small importance, so long as I can make my life count in the cause of Christ.”

The Icon created by The Rev. Two Bulls is featured on the Episcopal Peace Fellowship web site.

ECVA Call For Entries: Imaging The Sacred Art Of Chant

God speaks the light into being. Day! Night! As a musician, I put great stock in the tools of the trade; listening, practicing, singing or playing alone or with others. Many of my artist friends have told me that they listen to music, specifically chant, while they work. I can't imagine such a thing, because although God might be able to create the earth while the wind is sweeping over the face of the waters, I need quiet in order to hear a new chant into being. However, I see the possibilities, in the chants I sing repeatedly year after year, when I look through the lens of my camera and glimpse what I think the composition wants to be, where the parts might come together to create consonance, or dissonance, or when I really see the colors of a particular vista at a certain time of day.

In his book "Music and Imagination," Aaron Copland says, "This never ending flow of music forces us to use our imaginations, for music is in a continual state of becoming." So are we in a continual state of becoming, and I use chanting to help me to become the most loving and compassionate person I am capable of becoming.

The pianist Glenn Gould put it a little differently: "The purpose of art is not the release of a momentary ejection of adrenaline, but is, rather, the lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity." When I look at the masters of Chinese brush painting and see the skill with which one line can be rendered, in addition to the brevity (which I admire), I see healing, spirit, wonder, and serenity — I think of it as a melody, like the ones I'm sure have been with us since the first setting and dawning.

Chanting is to me what I imagine a well-executed brush stroke must be for a painter: a line we return to our entire life, always the same yet never the same, by turns supple, solid, rendered in haste or patience, best when we pay enough attention to honor the energy of the material, alive when we don't over think it. It's as if we find our voice and become who we are meant to be line-by-line, tune-by-tune. This process of becoming and knowing ourselves may take us over familiar ground, but then we are never the same person we were when first we began.

I invite you to select a piece of music, in whole or in part, and with line or camera or collage, bring us a construction of "wonder and serenity" or passion or peace. And to begin this construction, I offer a chant called "Om Namah Shivaya" (I honor the divine within). To hear this chant, click HERE.

Ana Hernandez, Musician
Curator, Imaging the Sacred Art of Chant

To see the complete Call for Entries, click HERE. 

Deadline for entries is October 24, 2011.

Ruminate Visual Art Prize

Ruminate magazine announces that they are accepting entries for the first annual Ruminate Visual Art Prize. The entry deadline has been extended to Midnight September 1, 2011. The finalist juror for the prize is award-winning artist Sandra Bowden.

Guidelines:

• The submission deadline for the visual art contest is midnight August 26th, 2011.
• The entry fee is $15 (includes a free copy of the Winter 2011/2012 Issue).
• You may submit up to three images per entry fee--please submit a sampling of images from a larger body of work.

Complete details are HERE.

Art, Prayer, and Meditation

Wednesday, August 17, 2011 7:00 - 8:30 p.m.
Christ Episcopal Church, 503 E. Walworth Ave., Delavan, WI
Interactive Assemblage Art Show with Prayer & Meditation

  

Roberta Karstetter uses found objects in ways that create sacred spaces, and offers art as a meditative prayer, in a conscious connection to the Creator. In so doing, she offers new and unique ways to discover the divine.

In an "Art as Prayer" interactive meditation evening, you are invited to experience God, in art, scripture, prayer, and meditation as Roberta shares how God has inspired the art assemblages she creates. (Assemblage: A 3-dimensional artistic, often eclectic, composition made from putting together found objects.)

 

Bring a friend! For more info and to register call Christ Church at 262-728-5292 or email us at christchurch@pensys.com with your name, address, and phone number. ALL are Welcome!!

Digital Art and the Worshipping Community

Visual art is a vehicle in which ordinary observation can lead to personal insight. In Christian community gathered for prayer and worship, visual art can support a reading of the Word, seeing with the eyes, listening with the heart, and responding in prayer and in action. Can these relationships continue when the art is transmitted in digital form and the community is facing a stadium-sized projection screen?

This was precisely the challenge when ECVA was asked to use art in the main convention hall of the Anaheim Convention Center as a sanctification for 10 days of Episcopal worship. The worship committee of the 76th General Convention included the Rev Canon Carol Wade, the Rev Frank Wade, the Rev Gabri Ferrar, and ECVA Board member Mel Ahlborn.

Seven Palmer Artists Open EDOT Show

Palmer Memorial Episcopal Church’s Creative Artists’ Community opened a group show at EDOT (Episcopal Diocese of Texas) Gallery for seven artists on May 10, 2011. The show features an eclectic mix of paintings and quilted fabric art; fresh watercolor still lifes; edgy and contemporary portraits; cut-paper collages inspired by nature; and exuberant landscapes reminiscent of outer space and inner peace.

 

Palmer’s artistic community, organized only recently, has illuminated many gifts and much talent from members of the congregation. Featured artists include: Patricia Hinojosa, Sherry and Randy Byrd, Jacquelyn Campbell, Kelly Bourgeois, Kaytee Esser (seen above, "Bottom Feeder"), and Fran Wallis.
 

ECVA Call For Entries: Under Abraham's Tent

Abraham… sat at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day.  He looked up and saw three men standing near him.  When he saw them, he ran from the tent entrance to meet them, and bowed down to the ground. (Genesis 18:1-2)

Abraham, first named Abram—called Ibrahim in Arabic—is considered the Father of monotheism and of three great religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. God made a covenant with Abraham saying: I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. (Genesis 12:2)

Abraham argued with God over the fate of Sodom, and he radically obeyed God, offering his son Isaac to be a sacrifice. He traveled all over the Middle East (through an area that includes modern-day Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Israel, Palestinian Territories, and Egypt) with his wife, Sarah, and extended family (Lot, Hagar, Ishmael, Isaac, Keturah, and others). Abraham encountered all manner of people (from pharaohs and priests, to angels and armies) in each place where he pitched his tent.

Today, four millennia after his journeys, more than fifty percent of the world’s people are affiliated with religions that trace their roots to this man of faith—Abraham.

Understanding that we live in an increasingly interconnected world, this ECVA exhibition asks: When have you been touched by the realization that we share a common father, Abraham? When have you run out of your tent to meet the strangers sent by God? As you turn to make art that answers these questions, we invite you to consider:

Travels to the places where Abraham pitched his own tent, or anywhere the spiritual descendants of Abraham worship God today.

Encounters with another Abrahamic faith through a person, a sacred object, experiences in your own faith journey, etc.

Abraham and/or his descendants as reflected upon in the Torah, the New Testament, or the Koran.

Bowie Snodgrass, Curator
Executive Director
Faith House Manhattan

This exhibition is open to artists who are members of The Artists Registry @ ECVA.

You may submit up to three (3) images for consideration by the Curator this exhibition. These images must be in either GIF or JPEG file format and sized so that they are at least 600 pixels (8.33 inches) on the SHORTEST side, when displayed at a resolution of 72 pixels-per-inch (ppi).

DEADLINE FOR ENTRIES IS JULY 17, 2011

Complete details are HERE.

ECVA's Open Studio 2011 Is Now Online

Click HERE to visit ECVA's Open Studio 2011 exhibition. 

Note: As always, in addition to the links in this newsletter, you can find a link to the Current Exhibition on our home page at http://ecva.org. Previous exhibitions are archived HERE.

The Heavens: Art at the Cathedral, Call for Artists

Art at the Cathedral Call for Artists 
THE HEAVENS: Meditative Spaces 

Date: Sep 4--Oct 23, 2011

Gallery Hop Reception: Friday, Sep. 16, 2011

www.ccclex.org

 

Art at the Catheral, a gallery at Christ Church Cathedral in Lexington, Kentucky, opens the exhibit to water color artists responding to the theme: "The Heavens: Meditative Spaces, under the direction of Cindy Flora. See more here: http://www.ccclex.org/Art/CallsforArtists/tabid/164/language/en-US/Default.aspx  

For artists outside the Lexington area who will be shipping, there is no entry fee. You must send digital images no later than August 3, 2011 for selection into the exhibit. This will give you time to prepare shipment to 166 Market Street, Lexington KY 40507. Select shipping date so that art will arrive by Wednesday, August 31, 2011 The return shipment of unsold items will be by November 2, 2011. 

Contact jespmark@insightbb.com for additional information.