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Support and Solace for Christmas, the New Year and Beyond
By Thea Gavin
Nov. 29, 2008: two days after Thanksgiving. A turkey/stuffing/apple-pie-hangover lingered. Christmas loomed. I didn't know it, but I needed . . . “Succour—the gift of support and solace.”
Not the name of a digestion aid or personal shopper, “Succour” is a SEEDS Fine Art Exhibit—a beacon of beauty and encouragement for the holiday-harried. Images from this exhibit blessed me on my gala-grand-opening-night visit to the gallery, and I hope they stay with me into the unnerving New Year.
On my first quick tour through the art show on the second floor of the Crystal Cathedral's Welcoming Center, I tried to take it all in as a whole: shimmering paintings large and small, several eye-grabbing 3-D assemblages, and a couple of canvasses that seemed to be covered with . . . paw prints?
Artist Tommy Hollenstein became a paraplegic after a mountain biking accident in the 1980's. With the help of his service dog, he now creates paintings such as “Hiley,” where paw prints become vibrant spring flowers as the artist is reminded of how God makes “all things new.” Seeing Mr. Hollenstein—service dog at his side—rolling around the gallery on that opening night gave me much-needed perspective to view the stress and busy-ness of the holidays in a new light. It's God's holiday. He can make it (He HAS made it!) a time of blessing without so much fussing and fuming on my part.
On the other side of the gallery stood “Of Calamities,” a chaotic-looking piece of three-dimensional art that turned my thoughts in other directions—like, what on earth was this mess?
The rusty-looking sculpture, about the size of a big crock pot, seems to once have been a tiny carousel that was now smashed and jumbled, full of tipped-over and tilting miniature animals and packed with other debris. “Of Calamities” demanded my attention. What was happening here? In his artist's statement, Barry Krammes mentions how this piece tries to “capture the feeling of being on unstable ground, that no material thing lasts.”
Not the most shiny-happy-Hallmark of sentiments, but the truth. God's word makes it plain that this world is sin-sullied. Fleeting. Chaos contained in art can help us contemplate this. And, in the contemplating, we remember what is eternal: God's love in Christ. This is another needful reminder for me as one year ends and another begins.
From spring flowers to calamities—one of the things I appreciate about “Succour” is the lively variety of subjects and sentiments portrayed by the dozens of artists in the exhibit. Life (and the gallery) are full of occasions where solace is needed—incarceration, interior demons, sickness, injury, storms—but there is one picture that, for me, serves as the over-arching emblem of where the best kind of succour is to be found: “The Empty Tomb” by Lalo Garcia. A strong shaft of light splits the tomb—and painting—as an angel communicates the good news to the women early Easter morning: CHe is not here, He is risen.”
And standing there on the last Saturday in November 2008, in front of “The Empty Tomb,” I was taken back to my children's years at St. John's Elementary School and their enthusiastic renditions of the classic song, “Every Morning Is Easter Morning From Now On.”
Facing Christmas, facing the New Year, this was the resurrection “succour” I found at the art gallery that night. The exhibit runs until Jan. 9—I hope you get a chance to find it too.!
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Cindi Rhodes and Denise Weyhrich
SEEDS Fine Arts Exhibits
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