Sanne Beavin's Expressionistic Art for Good Friday

NEWS TRIBUNE
By Rosemary Ponnekanti

"The Cross-Way" by Sanne Beavin

WASHINGTON - Gig Harbor, Washington artist Sanne Beavin has created eight painting-tableaux for Lent and Holy Week at her church, Harbor Covenant, as a spiritual meditation for parishioners and visitors. Asked by pastor Michael White, Beavin painted one work of “The Cross-Way” for each week of Lent, with two more for this week (Holy Week). The paintings, highly-colored expressionist works detailing each of eight Stations of the Cross (scriptural points on Jesus’ journey to crucifixion) are surrounded by a tableau of symbolic props and a second panel, some wrapped in barbed wire, some pounded with nails, and accompanied by a scriptural verse and meditative words. All will be on view this week through Good Friday at the church, including an Evening with the Artist on Thursday. The paintings have been highly popular at Harbor Covenant, where Beavin has been asked to reproduce them for sale. [link]

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Filipino Artists Offer Their Art for Reflection

ABS-CBN NEWS
By Caroline Howard

Kristo Manila Exhibition

PHILIPPINES - "Kristo Manila," a Lenten art show featuring reflections of visual artists, has been drawing artists and art aficionados since 2005. Until April 30, followers can again indulge in viewing inspiring artworks, and for the Lenten season also, for purposes of reflection. The Kristo Exhibit started in Malolos, Bulacan in 2001 under the auspices of artist Salvador Ching who took it up as part of his it up as part of his panata or vow. In 2005, Delan Robillos began mounting the Kristo Exhibit in Manila. "Every year, we're surprised by the number of participants, the messages we receive from the artworks," said Robillos on mailto:Mornings@ANC.%22 As Salvador Ching would always tell the people, it's a way for visual artists to pay tribute to the true Master," he added. Now on its sixth year, "Kristo Manila 2011" focuses on the theme of selflessness with an exhibit titled "The Offering." This year, 39 artists of various genres here and abroad are taking part in the Kristo Exhibit. Visual artist Dan Lerma said the number bears greater significance, as the number refers to the number of lashes brought upon Jesus Christ. "Since 2005, we've had non-Catholics joining the exhibit... We have realists, surrealists, abstractionists so it's a visual feast every Lenten season," Robillos said. [link]

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Apocalypse Now as Tate Stages Biblical Blockbuster

LONDON EVENING STANDARD
By Staff

Destruction Of Sodom And Gomorrah (1852) by John Martin

ENGLAND - The apocalyptic visions of an artist more popular than Constable and JMW Turner in his day are to be brought together in the biggest exhibition of his work for nearly two centuries. Tate curators hope that the blockbuster show uniting famous scenes of biblical catastrophe by the Romantic John Martin will restore him to his proper place at the heart of 19th-century cultural life. In his lifetime, Martin (1789-1854) was scorned by poets and by the art establishment. Yet curator Martin Myrone said Martin was adored by everyone from Charles Dickens to the Brontës and painted scenes from literature, including the Bible, works by John Milton and by 18th-century poets now largely forgotten. "He represents the art a mass public was consuming. He was the most popular artist of his day." It will include many works only discovered or restored in recent years including an early disaster painting, The Fall Of Babylon, not seen in public for 150 years. "John Martin: Apocalypse" at Tate Britain, Millbank will run from September 21 until January 15 next year. Visit http://www.tate.org.uk/. [link]

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The Gritty Bible, by Printer-Maker Barry Moser

THE NEWS JOURNAL
By Marina Koren

"Adam and Eve"

PENNSYLVANIA - These are not the kind of depictions you'd find in your grandmother's Bible. The 15 images, on exhibit in "Barry Moser: Bookwright" at the Brandywine River Museum, offer an earthier view of the world during biblical times, not the exquisitely painted holier-than-thou religious works favored by many publishers. "He just goes out of his way to show the humanity of the Bible more than the kind of idealized vision we have," says Lee Wierenga, assistant curator at the Brandywine River Museum. "He embraces the grittiness, the humanness of life. He doesn't pull a punch -- he calls it how he sees it." Born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Moser studied at Auburn University and the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, and did post-graduate work at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. [link]

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Stand Out at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts: Doug Kinsey

PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW
By Kurt Shaw

"Walking into the Dessert No. 27" by Doug Kinsey

PENNSYLVANIA - Doug Kinsey's "Waking Into the Desert Dream," is one of three solo exhibits currently on display at Pittsburgh Center for the Arts which command attention above and beyond the four other massive group exhibits that are, for the most part, a sea of generality. Kinsey is a native of Californian whose latest creations -- massive-yet-minimalist charcoal drawings -- were inspired by the view from his hillside home in Coraopolis of the Ohio River Valley. In a broad manner, they might be explained as contemporary icons, or, more specifically, as configurations of a spiritual geography. "My work is not about religion so much, but they are concerned with spiritual issues and reflection," Kinsey says. [link]

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Pakistani Artist, Abdul Gull’s Artwork at Drawing Room Art Gallery

DAILY TIMES
Staff Report

PAKISTAN - Abdul Jabbar Gull’s artwork exhibition kicked off at the Drawing Room Art Gallery on Thursday. In addition to a variety of art mediums used by Gull, an obsession with sculpture marked Gull’s work that explores and represents complex notions of time, movement and thought, past and future, the real and imagined. Gull’s main source of inspirations are humanity, spiritual belief, politics and human beings, especially ordinary people. He said, “ I call them ordinary souls and I am one of them so I endeavour to express their common sufferings, grief and relationships on individual and collective levels.” [link]

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The Whole Deal About Easter and Art

THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

AUSTRALIA - Easter is the most important festival of the Christian calendar, and for more than 2000 years the narrative behind it has also provided the inspiration for much of the greatest and some of the most controversial Western art. Religious images abound in Christian art, despite what some have argued is the literal meaning of the commandment in the Old Testament forbidding the making of graven images. By contrast, the injunction in the Koran against idol-worship means there is no comparable tradition of figurative religious art in the Islamic tradition, so much of whose characteristic genius is expressed in geometric patterns and calligraphy. [link]

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