Arte Sagrado 2005

Juror's Statement

I watched the DVD of, The Incredibles the other night. Dash, responds to his mom's comment that, "everyone is special" by saying, "If everyone is special, no one is special." I wonder if the same sentiment could be applied to art. "If everything is art, nothing is art." That appears to be the legacy currently bequeathed to contemporary artists. All of the -ism's of the last century are dead and the smorgasborg is wide open. Anything goes: piss in a bottle, crap on a canvas (literally) and somebody will hang it in a gallery or museum and declare it is art. Total freedom is really a kind of constraint, like the freedom to defy gravity by jumping off of tall buildings. Sometimes, this kind of freedom ends in despair and death. The challenge for those of us working in a milieu of total freedom is to acknowledge that even as artists, we do not live for ourselves. We must choose the right constraints. Our role as artists is to be the eyes of the world, to see the invisible and to somehow, with paint, cameras or metal, make the invisible tangible. As artists, living in this specific time and place we are aware of how this particular moment is connected to the past and the future as the story of the world unfolds. And more importantly, we acknowledge that the lynch pin of history, the turning point in the story is the incarnation, life, death and resurrection of Jesus without which the story collapses into meaningless babble. Everything becomes something, and something becomes nothing. Everyone is special and no one is special. Everything is art and nothing is art; and our total freedom kills us.

The art in this year's Arte Sagrado stretches from photography to painting, drawing, sculpture and assemblage in a multiplicity of styles. There is no coherence in the techniques and media represented. As we honestly work in the age we are born in, we are free to work in many different media and styles, but what holds this show together is the underlying premise that the world is not merely made up of what we can experience with our senses. We are aware of the unseen world which exists around us and in us. We know the world we live in and make art in is a temporary home and through the works of art, we translate the longing, the suffering of homelessness, and maybe even a glimpse of our true home which is heaven. All of these ideas remain invisible and inarticulate until they are incarnate in paint, metal, or paper. Through these works of art, we artists hope that you, the viewer, would be able to recognize and own these same feelings and intuitions about our common state of being, and that you would not be alone in being alone, but that we would be alone together, and wait together, in hopefulness not despair, for the coming of our Lord. Truly, artists and art can bring hope to the world.