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Details 'The Sacred Art Exhibition'
What: Group exhibition of art that is either spiritual in nature or spiritually inspired Where and when: BoxHeart Gallery, 4523 Liberty Ave., Bloomfield, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays, 1 to 5 p.m. Sundays. Moxie DaDA, 4510 Liberty Ave., Bloomfield, noon to 7 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays. Through July 12. Details: 412-687-8858 or www.boxheart.org for BoxHeart gallery; 412-682-0348 for moxie DaDA.
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Spiritual awakening
By Kurt Shaw
TRIBUNE-REVIEW ART CRITIC
Sunday, July 3, 2005
For centuries, beautiful masterpieces have been created solely in the name of religious devotion.
For example, the great cathedrals of Europe are lavishly adorned with frescoes, statues and other works of art that were created specifically for this purpose.
Think "religious art," and even the mildly indoctrinated could easily conjure up images of famous works by such masters as Michelangelo, Raphael and Donatello.
But in today's world, one doesn't expect to find original devotional art in modern churches, let alone an art gallery. However, since Saturday, one can find original works of devotion or spiritually inspired art in not one but two galleries in Bloomfield.
On display at both BoxHeart Gallery and Moxie DaDA, "The Sacred Art Exhibition" includes the work of 30 local, national and international artists. And, not surprisingly, their individual aspects of devotion, religion or notion of what is sacred as seen in their art are as diverse as the various media and methods with which the pieces were created.
"Their work is just great. It's so different," Nicole Capozzi says about the pieces by 17 artists on display in her gallery.
She and her husband, artist Josh Hogan, who together own and operate BoxHeart Gallery, chose the works displayed in their gallery from those submitted by artists from countries as far flung as Norway and Argentina. All responded to an open call the couple placed on their gallery's Web site as well as a few others.
Capozzi says more artists respond to the call every year since she started taking up the exhibition series left by the gallery that started it, Bloomfield Artworks -- which happened to be in the same spot as BoxHeart.
The first thing visitors will see when entering BoxHeart is a window installation by Butler artist Sue Burtner, who represents a group called the Christian Artist Collaborative.
In each of the gallery's storefront windows, Burtner has set up a dozen 2-foot-square cubes comprised of three painted sides that have been completed by 36 artists from various Butler- and Pittsburgh-area schools and churches. The artists range in ages from 2 to 82, and their works are as diverse as their backgrounds and ages.
That piece is appropriately titled "The Building Blocks of Faith," and, though most of the paintings contained therein are overtly Christian in context, they are more iconic in nature than the works inside the gallery, which for the most part explore the notion of what is sacred to each individual artist.
For example, Allison Trentelman of Maine has made mandalas out of digital landscape photographs that are clearly an homage to nature. Norwegian Reinhardt Sobye's digital painting "The Dark Forest" addresses both good and evil in a disturbing image of a pregnant woman. And Philadelphia artist Gerald DiFalco has taken everyday objects and turned them into relics for his piece "Relics: Earth, Air, Fire, Water and Sacred Ghost." Composed of 18 gold-painted canvases, DiFalco has attached to each such things as chicken bones and crucifixes and given each a title that has meaning -- either personal, universal or both -- such as "Temple of Japan Relic," which has part of an animal's spinal column, or "My Polish Pop Pop's Relic," which contains the Jesus figure from a crucifix.
Across the street at Christine Whispell's new gallery, Moxie DaDA, the works of 13 local artists make up the remainder of the exhibition.
This is the first year another gallery has been involved in the exhibition, Capozzi says, with the idea of turning the exhibition into more of an event, as it was when originally begun nine years ago by the Rev. Richard Infante and the late artist Phillip DeLucia.
Back then, it was a monthlong summer celebration of art, music and poetry devoted to "the sacred," in which several businesses along Liberty Avenue in Bloomfield got involved.
In this spirit, and in the hopes of returning the event to the stature it once enjoyed, Whispell was happy to get involved and put out a call for entries similar to that of BoxHeart's.
"I asked the artists to explore their own spirituality, their idea of what is sacred to them," Whispell says. "Or, if they wanted to be broad, they could address the process of creation."
That means at Moxie DaDA, visitors will find even broader interpretations on the theme, such as Catheryn Joslyn's small fiber-art pieces that were inspired by her travels in Ecuador, and Matt Macri's surrealist-inspired pen-and-ink drawings that explore various unrelated imagery and free-form thoughts.
"A lot of the artists have put their own spirit and soul into their work," Whispell says, "while some of them might have some religious themes behind it."
The work of photographer Christian Zagarskas certainly can attest to the latter notion. His work is made up of photographs of Arabic letters made to look like they are in flames -- which the artist ingeniously devised through a process involving as many as seven different aperture settings. The works directly address contemporary socio-political conflicts while holding fast to the traditions of Muslim religious art, which forbids the depiction of human beings.
All said, the various works to be found in "The Sacred Art Exhibition" are about as diverse as ever, making for a very thorough and enlightening gallery experience.
Kurt Shaw can be reached at kshaw@tribweb.com or .
