IRISH ARTIST

 

IMOGEN STUART is a German-Irish sculptor. She is one of Ireland's best known sculptors with work in public and private collections throughout Europe and the U.S.

She was awarded the Mary McAuley medal in 2010 by President Mary McAleese, who paid tribute to her "genius", crafting "a canon of work that synthesizes our complex past, present images and possible futures...as an intrinsic part of the narrative of modern Irish art, of Ireland."

Born Imogen Werner in Berlin in 1927, she is the daughter of the art critic and author Bruno E. Werner. She grew up in wartime Berlin, where she took up drawing and sculpting at a young age, encouraged by her father who played an important role in providing a forum for Bauhaus artists through his cultural magazine die neue linie, and after the war as Cultural Attache for the Federal Republic of Germany in Washington DC. Imogen knew very little about her Jewish origins until after the war.

In 1945 Imogen began studying under Otto Hitzberger, who taught her modelling, carving, and relief work using different materials. She met her future husband, the Irishman Ian Stuart, grandson of Maud Gonne, who was also studying under Hitzberger, in 1948, and in 1949 the two moved to Ireland. They married in 1951 and took up residence in Laragh Castle nearGlendalough.  

Her works are  in wood, bronze, stone, steel, clay and terracotta and as the most prolific sculptor for both Roman Catholic and Church of Ireland churches her works are found across the country.

Her best-known sculptures include the monumental sculpture of Pope  St. John Paul II in St. Patrick's College, Maynooth and the carved altar in the Honan Chapel in Cork.

Her work, however,  extends well beyond the Church, including a commissioned bust of ex-President Mary Robinson which sits in the presidential residence in Dublin, the Flame Of Human Dignity at the Centre Culturel Irelandais, Paris.

 "Within the sharply defined limits of material, subject, space, size and money given, I learned to develop within myself a great freedom of expression. My life is full of gifts or minor miracles. I never intellectualize – the eyes and senses dictate my hands directly. Once the work has been completed a symbolism becomes so obviously and profoundly evident that I have to regard it as supernatural.” – Imogen Stuart (Notes On The Life Of A Sculptor, Milltown                                                                                                     Studies 22 (1988) 92–94.

The Sisters of Mercy commissioned three major pieces from her in 1958. Since then further pieces have been added to the College collection where 15 pieces of Imogen's artwork are on display.

BORN AN ARTIST

 

Among Catholic artists, of course, are many religious-  some more known than others.

SISTER MARY THOMASITA FESSLER O.S.F. was an American artist  whose work consisted of paintings, sculptures and designs for stained-glass windows.

She was born as in 1912 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the granddaughter of the prominent architect Erhard Brielmaier. She joined the Sisters of St. Francis when she was seventeen years of age and went on to graduate from University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

One of the most publicly known artists within the Brielmaier artist family, she was profiled by Life magazine in a 1953 feature story written by Jaqueline Mitchard. Prior to the publication, Sister Thomasita was being asked by the Church to reconsider whether she should remain in the convent due to what the church hierarchy was 'seeing' in her artwork. 

Sister founded the Art Department at Cardinal Stritch College, becoming the chair of the Art Department and founding the Studio San Damiano art gallery and studio for artists and education, which were based on her philosophy of, "Nature is God's art and art is man's nature", as well as the Brielmaier tradition of, "A child who learns to create will not destroy."

She did the mural "Mary, the Queen”  in Memorial Library at Marquette University

This mural depicts Mary's Queenship over all heaven and earth.

Sister Thomasita created over 600 paintings, most of which are now held in private collections, some within art galleries or museums such as the Haggerty Museum at Marquette University.

 Two of her large sculptures made of precious woods are featured on the second and fourth floor walls of the Marquette University library.

 

The two murals, "Christ the King" and "Mary, Queen," are made from over one thousand individually cut pieces of precious wood. These woods are cut in geometric and amoeba-like shapes and placed in mosaic-like fashion forming positive and negative areas. Each piece was cut separately from an original template of the large cartoon and range in size from a quarter of an inch to about six inches in the larger panels.

This mosaic-like construction made necessary the individual beveling of each piece of wood. The nature-colored hard woods, coming from various parts of the world, are listed below. Each piece of wood was evaluated carefully for color and grain in order to bring out the desired result in symbol as well as design.

The  13 different woods came from across the globe – white holly from the USA, ebony from Africa, Rosewood, India, etc.

Her hand-carved 16-foot crucifix, altar sculptures, or stone carvings are found in churches throughout the United States. Her Studio San Damiano, where she worked for decades with artist Irene Kilmurry, closed on April 14, 2004.

"We are all born creators and artists. There is uniqueness in each one of us."

THE ARTIST WHO MADE A VOW

Another modern Catholic artist with a fascinating life was  ADAM KOSSOWSKI, (1905 - 1986) a Polish artist, born in  Nowy Sącz, notable for his works for the Catholic Church in England. He arrived  there in 1943 as a refugee from Soviet labor camps and was invited in 1944 to join the Guild of Catholic Artists and Craftsmen.

In 1923, uncertain about a career as a painter, Adam began architecture studies at Warsaw Technical University. But after two years there, he turned to painting and was accepted into the  Cracow Academy of Fine Arts. During his time in Cracow he worked on the restoration of paintings at Wawel Castle.

In 1929 he returned to Warsaw and its  Academy of Fine Arts. Travelling on a government grant, Adam experienced Italian art in Rome, studying tempera painting techniques, and later in Florence, Naples and Sicily.

In 1938, he married Stefania Szurlej, whom he had met in Rome. He was named "senior assistant" at the Warsaw Academy of Art and won first prize in a competition to create interior sgraffito work at Warsaw's Central Railway Station. But this project was abandoned after Germany invaded Poland in September 1939. His wife fled with her parents while Adam went east, where he was arrested by invading Russian troops in November 1939.

He was first imprisoned at Skole and then at Kharkov, both in present Ukraine. He told Fr. Martin Sankey, "In prison I stayed about a year. Later we received sentences. I got five years of hard labor camp and was sent to the part of the Gulag which is called Peczlag, on the river Peczora which runs into the Polar Sea and I stayed there till 1942."

At this time Adam  began to pray, " … because when I was so deep in this calamity and nearly dead I promised myself that if I came out of this subhuman land I would tender my thanks to God. I hesitate to call it a vow, it was rather a promise to myself but later I used to think that it was my obligation …"

He went on to describe his release with other Polish prisoners in order to form the Polish 2nd Corps under General Władysław Anders:

From the camp on the river Amu-Daria - where I was sent from the North - I was evacuated finally with other Poles to the banks of the Caspian Sea from where we went to Pahlevi on the Persian coast. There the Polish ex-prisoners gradually received English uniforms, our old rags infected with all sorts of disease and insects being burned, and we started the journey towards Teheran and from there to Palestine.

After several months of recuperation in Palestine, Adam, through the efforts of his wife in London, travelled to Scotland. In 1943 he joined the Polish Ministry of Information in London, where he worked throughout the war.

Working from a studio in  Hampstead, Adam composed work for his first show in London, entitled "A Polish Soldier's Journey", which opened in 1944, consisting of new drawings, some of which he had made during his difficult sojourn in the Ukraine and on through to Palestine. In a brief note on the show, The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs observed:

The drawings produced in the course of the three years of the artist's life thus absorbed, are notable for showing, apart from a real power of interpreting the local character of each scene, a rare sense of the dramatic, the gift of effective silhouetting being particularly characteristic. We see here well exemplified the profit which the artist (who long taught mural painting at Warsaw Academy) derived from his protracted studies of the frescoes in Rome and Assisi. Figure-drawing, of a very incisive kind, inevitably comes much to the fore in scenes which succeed each other on the walls of the exhibition, but many of the impressions of landscape, here displayed, will also remain impressed upon the spectator's memory. Altogether, this is an art very much in the best Polish tradition, and with an individual note definitely its own.

After winning a prize for the oil painting "Jesus Bearing the Cross"  (also known as Veronica) in 1944, Adam was invited to join the Guild of Catholic Artists by its chairman, sculptor Philip Lindsey Clark

This connection, in turn, led to Adam's first major commission from Fr. Malachy Lynch, prior of the Carmelite Friars at Aylesford, Kent: the seven-panel History of the Carmelites of Aylesford in tempera.

 Adam's first large ceramic project, a  Rosary Way, also came as an Aylesford commission. When the artist suggested that he may not be "the man who should do that", Fr. Malachy replied, "Adam, I am sure Our Lady has sent you here for that purpose."

 Adam later commented on this project:

Looking at these Mysteries now, and remembering the agonies, the frenzies and delights of this spontaneous work, I think my inexperience and technical near-impudence contributed much to the freshness and simplicity of these works which, I hope, redeem some of the shortcomings.

 After an exhibition in 1952, a brief notice in The Tablet stated:

Mr. Adam Kossowski comes from Southern Poland, where East and West meet. He studied mural painting in Italy, taught in Warsaw and suffered for two and a half years in Russian prisons and labour camps. This rich experience of nationality, training and suffering is obvious in all his work. He is thoroughly mature artist of great vitality and exuberance but with the necessary discipline to harness these forces.

From 1953 to 1970, Adam completed many commissions for large murals and reliefs. He died in London on 31 March 1986, aged 80, and is buried at Aylesford, Kent.

He is considered one of the greatest and most prolific religious artists in twentieth-century. Benedict Read notes in “Adam Kossowski: Murals and Paintings”  that in Britain after the war the Church was ‘a vital artistic culture,’ and that ‘the thirty years after 1945 witnessed for the Catholic Church in particular in this country an almost unprecedented campaign of church building and decoration, with the new cathedrals in Liverpool, Cardiff and Bristol just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.’ 

SACRED HEART

 

Wednesday,  Pope Francis  encouraged busy Catholics to say the “Jesus Prayer” throughout the day.

This short prayer is at the heart of Eastern Christianity’s mystical tradition, and is a perfect way to celebrate the feast of the SACRED HEART of JESUS.

 The classical form of the Jesus Prayer is,  "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner."

The actual words of this short prayers can vary:

 "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me."

 "Lord Jesus, have mercy."

 Or simply  repeating  the name of Jesus.

 The history of the Jesus Prayer goes back to the early sixth century, with Diadochos, who taught that repetition of the prayer leads to inner stillness.

Even earlier John Cassian recommended this type of prayer. In the fourth century Egypt, in Nitria, short "arrow" prayers were practiced.

 Abba Macarius of Egypt said there is no need to waste time with words. It is enough to hold out your hands and say, "Lord, according to your desire and your wisdom, have mercy."

The Holy Father  said to repeat the words out loud, saying that it was a prayer “that, little by little, adapts itself to the rhythm of breath and extends throughout the day.”

 “Indeed, the breath never stops, not even while we sleep; and prayer is the breath of life,” he said.

The devotion to the Sacred Heart  of Jesus, (Sacratissimum Cor Iesu in Latin) is one of the most widely practiced and well-known Catholic devotions, wherein the Heart of Jesus is viewed as a symbol of "God's boundless and passionate love for mankind". 

The devotion is especially concerned with what the Church deems to be the long-suffering love and compassion of the Heart of Christ towards humanity. The popularization of this devotion in its modern form is derived from a  nun from France, St Margaret Mary Alacoque, who said she learned the devotion from Jesus during a series of apparitions to her between 1673 and 1675.

Later, in the 19th century, there were mystical revelations of another Catholic nun in Portugal, Blessed Mary of the Divine Heart Droste zu Vischering, a religious of the Good Shepherd, who requested in the name of Christ that Pope Leo XIII consecrate the entire world to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. 

Predecessors to the modern devotion arose unmistakably in the Middle Ages in various facets of Catholic mysticism, particularly with that mystic Benedictine saint, Gertrude the Great.

This great feast is an extension of the new feast of Divine Mercy, for it is His life-giving gift of His mercy and love which flows from His Sacred Heart

  Sacred  Heart images by artist  Jose Luis Castrillo-  Spain

PAINTER of the DIVINE

Someone recently commented on my use of so much modern/contemporary art in my Blogs.  They were not complaining,  just saying how much it opens them to better prayer. I could ask for no more!

In his address to artists in 2009, Pope Benedict XVI said: “the experience of beauty does not remove us from reality, on the contrary, it leads to a direct encounter with the daily reality of our lives, liberating it from darkness, transfiguring it, making it radiant and beautiful.”

 “You are the custodians of beauty … you yourselves are to be heralds and witnesses of hope for humanity!”

The Catholic artist whose imagination is kindled by the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist presents a transforming faith in the chaos of the world today. Art has great potential to reach people in the midst of their differences with the Body of Christ. No matter the culture, nationality good art touches the depths of our soul.

One Catholic artist who dedicated his life to creating such art was the Mexican artist, EFREN ORDONEZ,  who created paintings, sculptures and stained glass. His work often focused on religious themes and he has been called 'the painter of the divine'.

Efren was born in Chihuahua in 1927, but moved to Monterrey at the age of two and retained close links with that city for the rest of his life. After attending Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education, he joined the School of Law and Social Sciences at the Autonomous University of Nuevo Leon, but switched to architecture.

In the early 1950's, the city of Monterrey was almost completely barren of art galleries or institutions to promote artists.  As one of the pioneers of art in Monterrey,  he set up an exhibit at the Edificio Rayón for the Third National Missionary Congress. His subjects were all religious and centered on the Missionary quests of Pope Pius XII. He finished his studies in 1953, but at the same time he was already an emerging figure in the art world.

He was commissioned to create prints, sculptures, murals and stained glass for the Archdiocese of Monterrey in 1955, and this earned him recognition as an artist who could translate religious themes through art.

Efren Ordoñez's work was exhibited in Mexico and also the United States.

A retrospective of his work was held in 1976 in Monterrey.  He was awarded the "Presea Estado" (Civic Merit Award) for his art by the government of Nuevo Leon  in 1988. In 2000, his work was included in '100 Years performed by 100 Artists, Visual Arts in Nuevo Leon'.  He died in 2011 of prostate cancer. He left behind a legacy of art that is continued by his daughter Sylvia and her husband Arturo Marty.

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BLESSED AGUCHITA

 

A fascinating woman is soon to be named blessed, from my favorite South American country.  Pope Francis  recognized the martyrdom of SISTER AGUSTINA RIVAS LOPEZ, known as “AGUCHITA.” She was killed in 1987 in the Amazon region of Peru, determined to continue helping people of the Ashaninka tribe.

In the 1980s, a high level of violence prevailed in Peru, mainly in the interior areas of the country. Shining Path,  a Maoist guerrilla movement, sought to end  democracy and establish a socialist state.   When I visited Northern Peru 12 years ago, the peoples of the highlands were still suffering the effects of this dreadful movement.

Born in Coracora, capital of the province of Parinacochas, Antonia Luzmila Rivas López was born on June 13, 1920. She was the oldest of eleven children.

Part of her  early years were spent helping her parents in the fields, taking care of their animals. She enjoyed being in contact with nature.

From a very young age she knew the word of God and the Christian virtues within her family.  She and her mother  were very active in the town’s parish, which  played an important role in deciding her vocation to be a religious.

 In 1938 she traveled to Lima visiting her brother César, upon his ordination to the priesthood. On that occasion she had her first meeting with the Sisters of the Good Shepherd, whom she would join in 1942.

From 1963 to 1967 she worked in the house of Barrios Altos, Lima, as director of the laundry, where she  evangelized the young residents under the care of the Congregation.  She once wrote, “To love the poor is to love life.

She  also organized soup kitchens and mothers' clubs, where she taught the women how to earn a living through their own work. She spent five years, from 1970 to 1975, as a nurse, working among the poor.

In 1988 she felt called to serve among the Asháninka, an indigenous people living in the rainforest of Peru. The Ashaninka tribe, were a people who had almost been wiped out in the early 20th century by rubber exporters destroying the forests and bringing disease to the local people. Sister Aguchita spent most of her time working with the young women of the tribe.

On September 27, 1990, members of the guerrilla band, nabbed Sister Aguchita and placed her in front of the villagers. Six of the local people were also taken to be made examples of.  A 17-year-old girl executed Sister by firing seven shots into her with a rifle. Sister Aguchita died “in odium fidei” (in hatred of the faith).

The congregation’s website described her as “a free, strong, infinitely charitable woman with a deep faith in God.”

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THE YEAR OF THE EUCHARIST

 

It is hard to believe that the year dedicated to the Eucharist in our Archdiocese comes to a close  tomorrow. 

Our Archbishop, Paul Etienne, had these words:

 Our Church is built upon the presence of Christ in the Eucharist. On the solemnity of Corpus Christi, we renew our faith in this mysterious but true presence of Christ in the eucharistic elements of bread and wine, which become his body and blood. It is this presence of Christ in the Church and all its members that makes the Church at once divine and human.

 To be all we are called to be as members of the Body of Christ, it is imperative that we celebrate well and regularly receive the Eucharist. 

 I know there are many things in this world competing for our time and attention — and the pandemic has created yet more obstacles — but for us to be fully Catholic members of this one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church, we must grow in our understanding of the importance of regular reception of the Eucharist. It is the one thing Christ asked us to do for him: “Do this in memory of me.”

 A deeper appreciation for the real presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist is significant not only for the moment of celebrating Eucharist, but also for the great impact it is meant to have in transforming and redeeming individuals and the world in which we live. We are sent forth from every Eucharist to love and serve the Lord and one another.

The Eucharist (and the Church) is Christ’s chosen means of remaining with us until the end of time. As we receive Christ into our bodies, he is continuing the work of redemption, conforming us more and more to his truth, and transforming our priorities to the priorities of the Kingdom.

 We are to carry this same presence and person of Christ with us into the world and be authentic witnesses to the reality of his death and resurrection and his promise to come again. This is the process by which the world is conformed, transformed, converted into the Kingdom of God which has yet to come in all its fullness.

 How do I allow this presence of Christ in me to “speak” in moments of trial and temptation? How do I bring this presence of Christ in me to others? 

 As Christ poured himself out for our sake, so are we to give fully of ourselves to others. To do so is to empty oneself, and this gift of self (which is the gift of Christ) can only be “refilled” by renewing his life within us at the eucharistic feast.

 Thus, we see the unending cycle of life in our daily Christian life: dying to self, rising in Christ that the work and will of the Father might be fulfilled. This is our belief, that through the ordinary events of our daily life, the extraordinary work of Christ continues until the end of time, when he will return to make all things new.

                                                —  June 2021

I highly recommend Magnificat's Magazine "Adoration Companion".