MAGNIFICAT: Installation of Bruce Herman's Triptychs
Monastery San Paolo, Saturday June 13, 2009
The Festival of Art and Faith was launched in 2004 by the Studio for Art, Faith & History but has now been incorporated into the town’s annual celebration of the holy-day of Corpus Christi, with its focus on the Incarnation in Word and sacrament. This year’s Festival was coordinated with the Vatican-promoted ANNO PAOLINA – a year of reflection on the witness of the Apostle Paul and his mission of opening up the Gospel of Christ to the entire world.
The theme of the Festival was “Witnesses to the Word.” Several events featured figures prominent in the public eye of contemporary Italian culture for their “road to Damascus” conversions to Christian faith, such as the journalist Antonio Socci and the film actress Claudia Koll, and for their courageous testimony through the arts in a largely post-Christian cultural terrain, such as the novelist Susanna Tamaro. Read Tamaro's essay in Palimpsest.
Bruce Herman’s paintings – in the traditional form of two large altarpieces – constitute a sustained reflection on the life of the Virgin Mary from the time of her “Yes” to God at the Annunciation to the fulfillment of this “sword that will pierce your soul” at her Son’s Crucifixion.
Mary, of course, is a “witness to the Word” in the most intimate of ways. She bears the Word in her womb; she is the vessel of the Incarnation. Her own word of acceptance – “Be it unto me according to thy word” – is testimony to the divine power that can be released when we say Yes to God’s word of invitation.
As Herman said in his introductory remarks to the event,
Mary’s example as a young person with full presence of mind and heart surrendering to her calling, her deepest vocation as bearer of God into the realm of time and space and flesh – this example is really meant to be “normal”. Normal in the sense that all of us are likewise called to incarnate the truth, to live it, and bring beauty and genuine goodness into the world. Our failures to do this are the history, not only of the church, but of the human race. Our hope here at monastery San Paolo is that the music, theater, and art presented tonight makes a movement toward the high calling to give form – give flesh to this mystery: God in our midst.
As the art historian Rachel Smith writes in the catalogue for these paintings:
The two triptychs, Second Adam and Miriam: Virgin Mother, represent the dual paths of discipleship that Mary exemplifies: the via activa, where Mary is active participant called to be a key instrument in God’s most critical work and the via contemplativa, where Mary is reflective witness pondering the implications of God’s audacious plan. Just as he has so often throughout history, God chooses an unlikely, decidedly unimportant, and apparently highly unsuitable agent to be the means through which he will come into the world a helpless infant. What could be more unexpected? And yet what could be more consistent for a God who will overturn the powers and principalities that rule in this world? …
Herman’s work [writes Smith] embodies a complex interplay between tradition and innovation. Drawing from the deep well of the Christian tradition, he casts that imagery into our present moment by melding it with contemporary modes of expression where the abstraction of surface complexity carries just as much meaning and weight as the representational content. The patchwork of gold and silver leaf, tarnished and worn, with vibrant color passages scratched, abraded, over-painted, and sanded smooth, these beautiful yet marred surfaces are the visible signs of divine presence in a world that is broken and tainted by the Fall.
The theme of the Incarnation and the “interplay between tradition and innovation” have marked another international project developed in Orvieto by another American artist, theater director Karin Coonrod. Under the working title Strangers and Other Angels, Coonrod’s Compagnia de’ Colombari has developed a cycle of modernized medieval mystery plays that bear witness to the power of the Word that creates, to the prophetic word that testifies to the coming Messiah, to the word Incarnated in Jesus, and to the powerful word of Judgment by which the resurrected Christ calls his people out of death and establishes a new kingdom of justice and peace.
Coonrod returned to Orvieto with composer and musician Paul Vasile and four African-American singers and dancers from New York City to choreograph a performance correlated with the three panels of Herman’s Miriam: Virgin Mother altarpiece.
The first act of ANNUNCIATION was performed in the chapel itsef before the paintings, with passages from the Gospel according to Luke performed by local musicians Stefano Benini, (soloist), Chiara Dragoni (flutist), and Gianluca Foresi (narration).
The second part, the OVERSHADOWING of Mary by the Holy Spirit, was performed in the medieval refectory of the monastery, where the deep voice of Ayeje Feamster (accompanied by saxophone, percussion, and vibraphone) embodied the words of Scott Cairns’s poem composed for the occasion:
Deep within the clay, and O my people
very deep within the wholly earthen
compound of our kind arrives of one clear,
star-illumined evening a spark igniting
once again the ember of our lately
banked noetic fire. She burns but she
is not consumed. The dew falls gently,
suffusing the pure fleece. Her human flesh
adorns its Lord, and lo, the wall comes down.
And—do you feel the pulse?—we all become
the kindled kindred of a King whose birth
thereafter bears to all a bright nativity.
For the concluding MAGNIFICAT, the audience followed the performers outside into the moon-lit courtyard overlooking the cliff’s edge. There, choreographed around the central well, step-dancers Janille Hill and Candyce Burke led a group of young Orvietana teenagers as well as students from the Orvieto semester program in rhythmic accompaniment to passages from Gospel of Luke performed by Dietrice Bolden and Ayeje Feamster.
Reluctant to leave, the audience gradually became performers themselves, learning the steps and joining the dance.
MAGNIFICAT: Installation of Bruce Herman's Triptychs
Monastery San Paolo, Saturday June 13, 2009
The Festival of Art and Faith was launched in 2004 by the Studio for
Art, Faith & History but has now been incorporated into the town’s
annual celebration of the holy-day of Corpus Christi, with its focus on
the Incarnation in Word and sacrament. This year’s Festival was
coordinated with the Vatican-promoted ANNO PAOLINA – a year of
reflection on the witness of the Apostle Paul and his mission of
opening up the Gospel of Christ to the entire world.
The
theme of the Festival was “Witnesses to the Word.” Several events
featured figures prominent in the public eye of contemporary Italian
culture for their “road to Damascus” conversions to Christian faith,
such as the journalist Antonio Socci and the film actress Claudia Koll,
and for their courageous testimony through the arts in a largely
post-Christian cultural terrain, such as the novelist Susanna Tamaro.
Read Tamaro's essay in Palimpsest #1.
Bruce
Herman’s paintings – in the traditional form of two large altarpieces –
constitute a sustained reflection on the life of the Virgin Mary from
the time of her “Yes” to God at the Annunciation to the fulfillment of
this “sword that will pierce your soul” at her Son’s Crucifixion.
Mary,
of course, is a “witness to the Word” in the most intimate of ways. She
bears the Word in her womb; she is the vessel of the Incarnation. Her
own word of acceptance – “Be it unto me according to thy word” – is
testimony to the divine power that can be released when we say Yes to
God’s word of invitation.
As Herman said in his introductory remarks to the event,
Mary’s example as a young person with full presence of
mind and heart surrendering to her calling, her deepest vocation as
bearer of God into the realm of time and space and flesh – this example
is really meant to be “normal”. Normal in the sense that all of us are
likewise called to incarnate the truth, to live it, and bring beauty
and genuine goodness into the world. Our failures to do this are the
history, not only of the church, but of the human race. Our hope here
at monastery San Paolo is that the music, theater, and art presented
tonight makes a movement toward the high calling to give form – give
flesh to this mystery: God in our midst.
As the art historian Rachel Smith writes in the catalogue for these paintings:
The two triptychs, Second Adam and Miriam: Virgin Mother, represent the dual paths of discipleship that Mary exemplifies: the via activa, where Mary is active participant called to be a key instrument in God’s most critical work and the via contemplativa,
where Mary is reflective witness pondering the implications of God’s
audacious plan. Just as he has so often throughout history, God chooses
an unlikely, decidedly unimportant, and apparently highly unsuitable
agent to be the means through which he will come into the world a
helpless infant. What could be more unexpected? And yet what could be
more consistent for a God who will overturn the powers and
principalities that rule in this world? …
Herman’s
work [writes Smith] embodies a complex interplay between tradition and
innovation. Drawing from the deep well of the Christian tradition, he
casts that imagery into our present moment by melding it with
contemporary modes of expression where the abstraction of surface
complexity carries just as much meaning and weight as the
representational content. The patchwork of gold and silver leaf,
tarnished and worn, with vibrant color passages scratched, abraded,
over-painted, and sanded smooth, these beautiful yet marred surfaces
are the visible signs of divine presence in a world that is broken and
tainted by the Fall.
The theme of the Incarnation
and the “interplay between tradition and innovation” have marked
another international project developed in Orvieto by another American
artist, theater director Karin Coonrod. Under the working title Strangers and Other Angels,
Coonrod’s Compagnia de’ Colombari has developed a cycle of modernized
medieval mystery plays that bear witness to the power of the Word that
creates, to the prophetic word that testifies to the coming Messiah, to
the word Incarnated in Jesus, and to the powerful word of Judgment by
which the resurrected Christ calls his people out of death and
establishes a new kingdom of justice and peace.
Coonrod
returned to Orvieto with composer and musician Paul Vasile and four
African-American singers and dancers from New York City to choreograph
a performance correlated with the three panels of Herman’s Miriam: Virgin Mother altarpiece.
The
first act of ANNUNCIATION was performed in the chapel itsef before the
paintings, with passages from the Gospel according to Luke performed by
local musicians Stefano Benini, (soloist), Chiara Dragoni (flutist),
and Gianluca Foresi (narration).
The second part, the
OVERSHADOWING of Mary by the Holy Spirit, was performed in the medieval
refectory of the monastery, where the deep voice of Ayeje Feamster
(accompanied by saxophone, percussion, and vibraphone) embodied the
words of Scott Cairns’s poem composed for the occasion:
Deep within the clay, and O my people
very deep within the wholly earthen
compound of our kind arrives of one clear,
star-illumined evening a spark igniting
once again the ember of our lately
banked noetic fire. She burns but she
is not consumed. The dew falls gently,
suffusing the pure fleece. Her human flesh
adorns its Lord, and lo, the wall comes down.
And—do you feel the pulse?—we all become
the kindled kindred of a King whose birth
thereafter bears to all a bright nativity.
For
the concluding MAGNIFICAT, the audience followed the performers outside
into the moon-lit courtyard overlooking the cliff’s edge. There,
choreographed around the central well, step-dancers Janille Hill and
Candyce Burke led a group of young Orvietana teenagers as well as
students from the Orvieto semester program in rhythmic accompaniment to
passages from Gospel of Luke performed by Dietrice Bolden and Ayeje
Feamster.
Reluctant to leave, the audience gradually became performers themselves, learning the steps and joining the dance.
MAGNIFICAT: Installation of Bruce Herman's Triptychs
Monastery San Paolo, Saturday June 13, 2009
The Festival of Art and Faith was launched in 2004 by the Studio for
Art, Faith & History but has now been incorporated into the town’s
annual celebration of the holy-day of Corpus Christi, with its focus on
the Incarnation in Word and sacrament. This year’s Festival was
coordinated with the Vatican-promoted ANNO PAOLINA – a year of
reflection on the witness of the Apostle Paul and his mission of
opening up the Gospel of Christ to the entire world.
The
theme of the Festival was “Witnesses to the Word.” Several events
featured figures prominent in the public eye of contemporary Italian
culture for their “road to Damascus” conversions to Christian faith,
such as the journalist Antonio Socci and the film actress Claudia Koll,
and for their courageous testimony through the arts in a largely
post-Christian cultural terrain, such as the novelist Susanna Tamaro.
Read Tamaro's essay in Palimpsest #1.
Bruce
Herman’s paintings – in the traditional form of two large altarpieces –
constitute a sustained reflection on the life of the Virgin Mary from
the time of her “Yes” to God at the Annunciation to the fulfillment of
this “sword that will pierce your soul” at her Son’s Crucifixion.
Mary,
of course, is a “witness to the Word” in the most intimate of ways. She
bears the Word in her womb; she is the vessel of the Incarnation. Her
own word of acceptance – “Be it unto me according to thy word” – is
testimony to the divine power that can be released when we say Yes to
God’s word of invitation.
As Herman said in his introductory remarks to the event,
Mary’s example as a young person with full presence of
mind and heart surrendering to her calling, her deepest vocation as
bearer of God into the realm of time and space and flesh – this example
is really meant to be “normal”. Normal in the sense that all of us are
likewise called to incarnate the truth, to live it, and bring beauty
and genuine goodness into the world. Our failures to do this are the
history, not only of the church, but of the human race. Our hope here
at monastery San Paolo is that the music, theater, and art presented
tonight makes a movement toward the high calling to give form – give
flesh to this mystery: God in our midst.
As the art historian Rachel Smith writes in the catalogue for these paintings:
The two triptychs, Second Adam and Miriam: Virgin Mother, represent the dual paths of discipleship that Mary exemplifies: the via activa, where Mary is active participant called to be a key instrument in God’s most critical work and the via contemplativa,
where Mary is reflective witness pondering the implications of God’s
audacious plan. Just as he has so often throughout history, God chooses
an unlikely, decidedly unimportant, and apparently highly unsuitable
agent to be the means through which he will come into the world a
helpless infant. What could be more unexpected? And yet what could be
more consistent for a God who will overturn the powers and
principalities that rule in this world? …
Herman’s
work [writes Smith] embodies a complex interplay between tradition and
innovation. Drawing from the deep well of the Christian tradition, he
casts that imagery into our present moment by melding it with
contemporary modes of expression where the abstraction of surface
complexity carries just as much meaning and weight as the
representational content. The patchwork of gold and silver leaf,
tarnished and worn, with vibrant color passages scratched, abraded,
over-painted, and sanded smooth, these beautiful yet marred surfaces
are the visible signs of divine presence in a world that is broken and
tainted by the Fall.
The theme of the Incarnation
and the “interplay between tradition and innovation” have marked
another international project developed in Orvieto by another American
artist, theater director Karin Coonrod. Under the working title Strangers and Other Angels,
Coonrod’s Compagnia de’ Colombari has developed a cycle of modernized
medieval mystery plays that bear witness to the power of the Word that
creates, to the prophetic word that testifies to the coming Messiah, to
the word Incarnated in Jesus, and to the powerful word of Judgment by
which the resurrected Christ calls his people out of death and
establishes a new kingdom of justice and peace.
Coonrod
returned to Orvieto with composer and musician Paul Vasile and four
African-American singers and dancers from New York City to choreograph
a performance correlated with the three panels of Herman’s Miriam: Virgin Mother altarpiece.
The
first act of ANNUNCIATION was performed in the chapel itsef before the
paintings, with passages from the Gospel according to Luke performed by
local musicians Stefano Benini, (soloist), Chiara Dragoni (flutist),
and Gianluca Foresi (narration).
The second part, the
OVERSHADOWING of Mary by the Holy Spirit, was performed in the medieval
refectory of the monastery, where the deep voice of Ayeje Feamster
(accompanied by saxophone, percussion, and vibraphone) embodied the
words of Scott Cairns’s poem composed for the occasion:
Deep within the clay, and O my people
very deep within the wholly earthen
compound of our kind arrives of one clear,
star-illumined evening a spark igniting
once again the ember of our lately
banked noetic fire. She burns but she
is not consumed. The dew falls gently,
suffusing the pure fleece. Her human flesh
adorns its Lord, and lo, the wall comes down.
And—do you feel the pulse?—we all become
the kindled kindred of a King whose birth
thereafter bears to all a bright nativity.
For
the concluding MAGNIFICAT, the audience followed the performers outside
into the moon-lit courtyard overlooking the cliff’s edge. There,
choreographed around the central well, step-dancers Janille Hill and
Candyce Burke led a group of young Orvietana teenagers as well as
students from the Orvieto semester program in rhythmic accompaniment to
passages from Gospel of Luke performed by Dietrice Bolden and Ayeje
Feamster.
Reluctant to leave, the audience gradually became performers themselves, learning the steps and joining the dance.
MAGNIFICAT: Installation of Bruce Herman's Triptychs
Monastery San Paolo, Saturday June 13, 2009
The Festival of Art and Faith was launched in 2004 by the Studio for
Art, Faith & History but has now been incorporated into the town’s
annual celebration of the holy-day of Corpus Christi, with its focus on
the Incarnation in Word and sacrament. This year’s Festival was
coordinated with the Vatican-promoted ANNO PAOLINA – a year of
reflection on the witness of the Apostle Paul and his mission of
opening up the Gospel of Christ to the entire world.
The
theme of the Festival was “Witnesses to the Word.” Several events
featured figures prominent in the public eye of contemporary Italian
culture for their “road to Damascus” conversions to Christian faith,
such as the journalist Antonio Socci and the film actress Claudia Koll,
and for their courageous testimony through the arts in a largely
post-Christian cultural terrain, such as the novelist Susanna Tamaro.
Read Tamaro's essay in Palimpsest #1.
Bruce
Herman’s paintings – in the traditional form of two large altarpieces –
constitute a sustained reflection on the life of the Virgin Mary from
the time of her “Yes” to God at the Annunciation to the fulfillment of
this “sword that will pierce your soul” at her Son’s Crucifixion.
Mary,
of course, is a “witness to the Word” in the most intimate of ways. She
bears the Word in her womb; she is the vessel of the Incarnation. Her
own word of acceptance – “Be it unto me according to thy word” – is
testimony to the divine power that can be released when we say Yes to
God’s word of invitation.
As Herman said in his introductory remarks to the event,
Mary’s example as a young person with full presence of
mind and heart surrendering to her calling, her deepest vocation as
bearer of God into the realm of time and space and flesh – this example
is really meant to be “normal”. Normal in the sense that all of us are
likewise called to incarnate the truth, to live it, and bring beauty
and genuine goodness into the world. Our failures to do this are the
history, not only of the church, but of the human race. Our hope here
at monastery San Paolo is that the music, theater, and art presented
tonight makes a movement toward the high calling to give form – give
flesh to this mystery: God in our midst.
As the art historian Rachel Smith writes in the catalogue for these paintings:
The two triptychs, Second Adam and Miriam: Virgin Mother, represent the dual paths of discipleship that Mary exemplifies: the via activa, where Mary is active participant called to be a key instrument in God’s most critical work and the via contemplativa,
where Mary is reflective witness pondering the implications of God’s
audacious plan. Just as he has so often throughout history, God chooses
an unlikely, decidedly unimportant, and apparently highly unsuitable
agent to be the means through which he will come into the world a
helpless infant. What could be more unexpected? And yet what could be
more consistent for a God who will overturn the powers and
principalities that rule in this world? …
Herman’s
work [writes Smith] embodies a complex interplay between tradition and
innovation. Drawing from the deep well of the Christian tradition, he
casts that imagery into our present moment by melding it with
contemporary modes of expression where the abstraction of surface
complexity carries just as much meaning and weight as the
representational content. The patchwork of gold and silver leaf,
tarnished and worn, with vibrant color passages scratched, abraded,
over-painted, and sanded smooth, these beautiful yet marred surfaces
are the visible signs of divine presence in a world that is broken and
tainted by the Fall.
The theme of the Incarnation
and the “interplay between tradition and innovation” have marked
another international project developed in Orvieto by another American
artist, theater director Karin Coonrod. Under the working title Strangers and Other Angels,
Coonrod’s Compagnia de’ Colombari has developed a cycle of modernized
medieval mystery plays that bear witness to the power of the Word that
creates, to the prophetic word that testifies to the coming Messiah, to
the word Incarnated in Jesus, and to the powerful word of Judgment by
which the resurrected Christ calls his people out of death and
establishes a new kingdom of justice and peace.
Coonrod
returned to Orvieto with composer and musician Paul Vasile and four
African-American singers and dancers from New York City to choreograph
a performance correlated with the three panels of Herman’s Miriam: Virgin Mother altarpiece.
The
first act of ANNUNCIATION was performed in the chapel itsef before the
paintings, with passages from the Gospel according to Luke performed by
local musicians Stefano Benini, (soloist), Chiara Dragoni (flutist),
and Gianluca Foresi (narration).
The second part, the
OVERSHADOWING of Mary by the Holy Spirit, was performed in the medieval
refectory of the monastery, where the deep voice of Ayeje Feamster
(accompanied by saxophone, percussion, and vibraphone) embodied the
words of Scott Cairns’s poem composed for the occasion:
Deep within the clay, and O my people
very deep within the wholly earthen
compound of our kind arrives of one clear,
star-illumined evening a spark igniting
once again the ember of our lately
banked noetic fire. She burns but she
is not consumed. The dew falls gently,
suffusing the pure fleece. Her human flesh
adorns its Lord, and lo, the wall comes down.
And—do you feel the pulse?—we all become
the kindled kindred of a King whose birth
thereafter bears to all a bright nativity.
For
the concluding MAGNIFICAT, the audience followed the performers outside
into the moon-lit courtyard overlooking the cliff’s edge. There,
choreographed around the central well, step-dancers Janille Hill and
Candyce Burke led a group of young Orvietana teenagers as well as
students from the Orvieto semester program in rhythmic accompaniment to
passages from Gospel of Luke performed by Dietrice Bolden and Ayeje
Feamster.
Reluctant to leave, the audience gradually became performers themselves, learning the steps and joining the dance.
MAGNIFICAT: Installation of Bruce Herman's Triptychs
Monastery San Paolo, Saturday June 13, 2009
The Festival of Art and Faith was launched in 2004 by the Studio for
Art, Faith & History but has now been incorporated into the town’s
annual celebration of the holy-day of Corpus Christi, with its focus on
the Incarnation in Word and sacrament. This year’s Festival was
coordinated with the Vatican-promoted ANNO PAOLINA – a year of
reflection on the witness of the Apostle Paul and his mission of
opening up the Gospel of Christ to the entire world.
The
theme of the Festival was “Witnesses to the Word.” Several events
featured figures prominent in the public eye of contemporary Italian
culture for their “road to Damascus” conversions to Christian faith,
such as the journalist Antonio Socci and the film actress Claudia Koll,
and for their courageous testimony through the arts in a largely
post-Christian cultural terrain, such as the novelist Susanna Tamaro.
Read Tamaro's essay in Palimpsest #1.
Bruce
Herman’s paintings – in the traditional form of two large altarpieces –
constitute a sustained reflection on the life of the Virgin Mary from
the time of her “Yes” to God at the Annunciation to the fulfillment of
this “sword that will pierce your soul” at her Son’s Crucifixion.
Mary,
of course, is a “witness to the Word” in the most intimate of ways. She
bears the Word in her womb; she is the vessel of the Incarnation. Her
own word of acceptance – “Be it unto me according to thy word” – is
testimony to the divine power that can be released when we say Yes to
God’s word of invitation.
As Herman said in his introductory remarks to the event,
Mary’s example as a young person with full presence of
mind and heart surrendering to her calling, her deepest vocation as
bearer of God into the realm of time and space and flesh – this example
is really meant to be “normal”. Normal in the sense that all of us are
likewise called to incarnate the truth, to live it, and bring beauty
and genuine goodness into the world. Our failures to do this are the
history, not only of the church, but of the human race. Our hope here
at monastery San Paolo is that the music, theater, and art presented
tonight makes a movement toward the high calling to give form – give
flesh to this mystery: God in our midst.
As the art historian Rachel Smith writes in the catalogue for these paintings:
The two triptychs, Second Adam and Miriam: Virgin Mother, represent the dual paths of discipleship that Mary exemplifies: the via activa, where Mary is active participant called to be a key instrument in God’s most critical work and the via contemplativa,
where Mary is reflective witness pondering the implications of God’s
audacious plan. Just as he has so often throughout history, God chooses
an unlikely, decidedly unimportant, and apparently highly unsuitable
agent to be the means through which he will come into the world a
helpless infant. What could be more unexpected? And yet what could be
more consistent for a God who will overturn the powers and
principalities that rule in this world? …
Herman’s
work [writes Smith] embodies a complex interplay between tradition and
innovation. Drawing from the deep well of the Christian tradition, he
casts that imagery into our present moment by melding it with
contemporary modes of expression where the abstraction of surface
complexity carries just as much meaning and weight as the
representational content. The patchwork of gold and silver leaf,
tarnished and worn, with vibrant color passages scratched, abraded,
over-painted, and sanded smooth, these beautiful yet marred surfaces
are the visible signs of divine presence in a world that is broken and
tainted by the Fall.
The theme of the Incarnation
and the “interplay between tradition and innovation” have marked
another international project developed in Orvieto by another American
artist, theater director Karin Coonrod. Under the working title Strangers and Other Angels,
Coonrod’s Compagnia de’ Colombari has developed a cycle of modernized
medieval mystery plays that bear witness to the power of the Word that
creates, to the prophetic word that testifies to the coming Messiah, to
the word Incarnated in Jesus, and to the powerful word of Judgment by
which the resurrected Christ calls his people out of death and
establishes a new kingdom of justice and peace.
Coonrod
returned to Orvieto with composer and musician Paul Vasile and four
African-American singers and dancers from New York City to choreograph
a performance correlated with the three panels of Herman’s Miriam: Virgin Mother altarpiece.
The
first act of ANNUNCIATION was performed in the chapel itsef before the
paintings, with passages from the Gospel according to Luke performed by
local musicians Stefano Benini, (soloist), Chiara Dragoni (flutist),
and Gianluca Foresi (narration).
The second part, the
OVERSHADOWING of Mary by the Holy Spirit, was performed in the medieval
refectory of the monastery, where the deep voice of Ayeje Feamster
(accompanied by saxophone, percussion, and vibraphone) embodied the
words of Scott Cairns’s poem composed for the occasion:
Deep within the clay, and O my people
very deep within the wholly earthen
compound of our kind arrives of one clear,
star-illumined evening a spark igniting
once again the ember of our lately
banked noetic fire. She burns but she
is not consumed. The dew falls gently,
suffusing the pure fleece. Her human flesh
adorns its Lord, and lo, the wall comes down.
And—do you feel the pulse?—we all become
the kindled kindred of a King whose birth
thereafter bears to all a bright nativity.
For
the concluding MAGNIFICAT, the audience followed the performers outside
into the moon-lit courtyard overlooking the cliff’s edge. There,
choreographed around the central well, step-dancers Janille Hill and
Candyce Burke led a group of young Orvietana teenagers as well as
students from the Orvieto semester program in rhythmic accompaniment to
passages from Gospel of Luke performed by Dietrice Bolden and Ayeje
Feamster.
Reluctant to leave, the audience gradually became performers themselves, learning the steps and joining the dance.
MAGNIFICAT: Installation of Bruce Herman's Triptychs
Monastery San Paolo, Saturday June 13, 2009
The Festival of Art and Faith was launched in 2004 by the Studio for
Art, Faith & History but has now been incorporated into the town’s
annual celebration of the holy-day of Corpus Christi, with its focus on
the Incarnation in Word and sacrament. This year’s Festival was
coordinated with the Vatican-promoted ANNO PAOLINA – a year of
reflection on the witness of the Apostle Paul and his mission of
opening up the Gospel of Christ to the entire world.
The
theme of the Festival was “Witnesses to the Word.” Several events
featured figures prominent in the public eye of contemporary Italian
culture for their “road to Damascus” conversions to Christian faith,
such as the journalist Antonio Socci and the film actress Claudia Koll,
and for their courageous testimony through the arts in a largely
post-Christian cultural terrain, such as the novelist Susanna Tamaro.
Read Tamaro's essay in Palimpsest #1.
Bruce
Herman’s paintings – in the traditional form of two large altarpieces –
constitute a sustained reflection on the life of the Virgin Mary from
the time of her “Yes” to God at the Annunciation to the fulfillment of
this “sword that will pierce your soul” at her Son’s Crucifixion.
Mary,
of course, is a “witness to the Word” in the most intimate of ways. She
bears the Word in her womb; she is the vessel of the Incarnation. Her
own word of acceptance – “Be it unto me according to thy word” – is
testimony to the divine power that can be released when we say Yes to
God’s word of invitation.
As Herman said in his introductory remarks to the event,
Mary’s example as a young person with full presence of
mind and heart surrendering to her calling, her deepest vocation as
bearer of God into the realm of time and space and flesh – this example
is really meant to be “normal”. Normal in the sense that all of us are
likewise called to incarnate the truth, to live it, and bring beauty
and genuine goodness into the world. Our failures to do this are the
history, not only of the church, but of the human race. Our hope here
at monastery San Paolo is that the music, theater, and art presented
tonight makes a movement toward the high calling to give form – give
flesh to this mystery: God in our midst.
As the art historian Rachel Smith writes in the catalogue for these paintings:
The two triptychs, Second Adam and Miriam: Virgin Mother, represent the dual paths of discipleship that Mary exemplifies: the via activa, where Mary is active participant called to be a key instrument in God’s most critical work and the via contemplativa,
where Mary is reflective witness pondering the implications of God’s
audacious plan. Just as he has so often throughout history, God chooses
an unlikely, decidedly unimportant, and apparently highly unsuitable
agent to be the means through which he will come into the world a
helpless infant. What could be more unexpected? And yet what could be
more consistent for a God who will overturn the powers and
principalities that rule in this world? …
Herman’s
work [writes Smith] embodies a complex interplay between tradition and
innovation. Drawing from the deep well of the Christian tradition, he
casts that imagery into our present moment by melding it with
contemporary modes of expression where the abstraction of surface
complexity carries just as much meaning and weight as the
representational content. The patchwork of gold and silver leaf,
tarnished and worn, with vibrant color passages scratched, abraded,
over-painted, and sanded smooth, these beautiful yet marred surfaces
are the visible signs of divine presence in a world that is broken and
tainted by the Fall.
The theme of the Incarnation
and the “interplay between tradition and innovation” have marked
another international project developed in Orvieto by another American
artist, theater director Karin Coonrod. Under the working title Strangers and Other Angels,
Coonrod’s Compagnia de’ Colombari has developed a cycle of modernized
medieval mystery plays that bear witness to the power of the Word that
creates, to the prophetic word that testifies to the coming Messiah, to
the word Incarnated in Jesus, and to the powerful word of Judgment by
which the resurrected Christ calls his people out of death and
establishes a new kingdom of justice and peace.
Coonrod
returned to Orvieto with composer and musician Paul Vasile and four
African-American singers and dancers from New York City to choreograph
a performance correlated with the three panels of Herman’s Miriam: Virgin Mother altarpiece.
The
first act of ANNUNCIATION was performed in the chapel itsef before the
paintings, with passages from the Gospel according to Luke performed by
local musicians Stefano Benini, (soloist), Chiara Dragoni (flutist),
and Gianluca Foresi (narration).
The second part, the
OVERSHADOWING of Mary by the Holy Spirit, was performed in the medieval
refectory of the monastery, where the deep voice of Ayeje Feamster
(accompanied by saxophone, percussion, and vibraphone) embodied the
words of Scott Cairns’s poem composed for the occasion:
Deep within the clay, and O my people
very deep within the wholly earthen
compound of our kind arrives of one clear,
star-illumined evening a spark igniting
once again the ember of our lately
banked noetic fire. She burns but she
is not consumed. The dew falls gently,
suffusing the pure fleece. Her human flesh
adorns its Lord, and lo, the wall comes down.
And—do you feel the pulse?—we all become
the kindled kindred of a King whose birth
thereafter bears to all a bright nativity.
For
the concluding MAGNIFICAT, the audience followed the performers outside
into the moon-lit courtyard overlooking the cliff’s edge. There,
choreographed around the central well, step-dancers Janille Hill and
Candyce Burke led a group of young Orvietana teenagers as well as
students from the Orvieto semester program in rhythmic accompaniment to
passages from Gospel of Luke performed by Dietrice Bolden and Ayeje
Feamster.
Reluctant to leave, the audience gradually became performers themselves, learning the steps and joining the dance.
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