Sandra Bowden and Bowden Collections

One of many joys in attending 'The Artist as Truth-Teller and the Legacy of French Artist Georges Rouault' last week was that of meeting the artist Sandra Bowden.

Sandra Bowden has been interpreting Scripture and her own spiritual walk through mixed media for more than forty years. She has been acclaimed as one of the most unique, impressive and inspiring Christian artists in America. Bowden’s work has been featured in books, magazines and gallery shows across the United States, Canada, Italy and Jerusalem.

Her work fuses the vivid yet traditional imagery of the Old Testament – stone tablets and artifacts, Hebrew inscriptions, architectural depictions – with images of Christ’s passion, important music scores, and God’s natural creations. She has issued several series of artworks over the years: crucifixion scenes, artistic use of text and color, new interpretations of classic religious artwork, even altered books with applied textures and hues. God’s grandeur and creativity shine through in each piece of her art.

“My Christian faith has been the driving force behind my art,” Bowden says. “I look at the making of a piece of art as a kind of doxology, a prayer or conversation with God. I don’t mean this in any mystical way, but my ideas come out of my theology and thoughts about God. I am somewhat of a theologian, but one who translates those interpretations into visual form.”

In addition to being an exceptional artist, Sandra is also a collector who, through Bowden Collections, offers a variety of traveling exhibitions available for rental to museums, churches, colleges, seminaries and similar institutions.

Bowden says:

'I have always wanted to own art by other artists. My first pieces were pottery or works that I could swap with other artists. Then I began to make a greater commitment to strategically collecting. However, the most important reason is that it is enjoyable. What a thrill to “find” a piece, recognize its value and have it become part of my collection.

I feel like a caretaker, so to speak, of each piece in our collection, preserving it for the future. With every new acquisition comes a world of knowledge, a reservoir of information surrounding the piece that adds to the fascination and enjoyment.

The Bowden Collections focuses on religious art for several reasons: first, it is the subject I am most passionately interested in; second, it is a wonderful time to be collecting work with biblical themes because the art market in general is not particularly interested in art with religious content. I also feel that religious art needs exposure within the Christian community, and it is my intent to make these pieces available whenever possible for that purpose. I see my collector's role as a calling—something that is critically important to do at this particular time.'

Click here to see the range of collections available which include work by Marc Chagall, Otto Dix, Alfred Manessier, and Georges Rouault, among others. 

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Morten Lauridsen - Lux Æterna.

Society still needs religion

This comes from the Anglican News Service (Rowan's lecture - click here - is well worth reading in full):

The Archbishop of Canterbury gave a lecture in which he acknowledges the rise in interest in spirituality, particularly in the Western World, but underlines the crucial role traditional religious allegiance continues to play in a genuinely plural society. Dr William's lecture entitled "The Spiritual and the Religious: is the territory changing?", is the third in a series "Faith and Life in Britain" being given at Westminster Cathedral.

Acknowledging the contribution that increased spiritual awareness can make to social and corporate life, Dr. Williams argues for the continued relevance of traditional religious commitment in developing and sustaining some of the deepest resources needed in a responsible plural society."When the great German philosopher Jurgen Habermas acknowledged some years ago in debate with the then Cardinal Ratzinger that traditional religion offered necessary resources to the construction of social reason and just practice, he was paving the way for some such approach on the part of secular government. There is an implicit acknowledgement, it seems, that what religious affiliation of a classical kind offers is not to be reduced just to an enhanced sense of the transcendent or of the interconnection of all things."

Dr Williams argues that religion is in fact: "...one of the most potent allies possible for genuine pluralism - that is, for a social and political culture that is consistently against coercion and institutionalised inequality and is committed to serious public debate about common good. Spiritual capital alone, in the sense of a heightened acknowledgement especially among politicians, businessmen and administrators of dimensions to human flourishing beyond profit and material security, is helpful but is not well equipped to ask the most basic questions about the legitimacy of various aspects of the prevailing global system. The traditional forms of religious affiliations, in proposing an 'imagined society', realised in some fashion in the practices of faith, are better resourced for such questions.

"The challenge for those "who adhere to revealed faith" but do not wish simply to be absorbed into an uncritical post-religious culture focused on "the autonomous self and its choices" was to rediscover what "the great Anglican Benedictine scholar Gregory Dix meant by describing Christians as a new 'species', homo eucharisticus, a humanity defined in its Eucharistic practice ... 'The unleavened bread of sincerity and truth' is the gift of the Easter Gospel, we are told in the liturgy; 'Lord, evermore give us this bread' (Jn 6.34)."

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Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - There She Goes My Beautiful World.