Barbara Tekker – Exhibition Essay

Fig. 1. Sharon Alward, Christian Woman of Virtue, 2000, performance/video. http://ccca.concordia.ca/artists/work_detail.html?languagePref=en&mkey=79166&title=Christia n+Woman+of+Virtue++&artist=Sharon+Alward&link_id=13742.

Fig. 2. Ann Beam, Angel of the West Dreaming, 1996, cement, tin, and plywood, 50.8 x 76.2 cm. http://ccca.concordia.ca/artists/work_detail.html?languagePref=en&mkey=30830&title=Angel+o f+the+West+Dreaming&artist=Ann+Beam&link_id=171.

Fig. 3. Sheila Butler, The Angel of God Appears at the Friday Night Movie, 1982, mixed media on paper, 76.2 x 104.1 cm, collection of Denis Lessard, Montreal. http://ccca.concordia.ca/artists/work_detail.html?languagePref=en&mkey=73225&title=The+An gel+of+God+Appears+at+the+Friday+Night+Movie&artist=Sheila+Butler&link_id=179. Messengers in a Skeptical World

Barbara Tekker

The emphasis on the artist and the distancing from religious to secular themes is typical of contemporary art, leading art historian James Elkins to assert: “[A]mbitious successful art is thoroughly non-religious.”1 Indeed, even Canadian artist and curator A.A. Bronson (b. 1946), whose own art deals with spirituality and is founder of the Institute for Art, Religion and Social

Justice in New York City, believes that iconic symbols of religion have no place in today’s art.2

Bronson has stated that an artist “who uses religious language risks being cast out of the inner circles of contemporary art.”3 Is such art then categorized as irrelevant and outdated? What would propel contemporary artists to include religious symbolism in their artwork? Featured in this exhibition essay are three contemporary Canadian artists who have ignored Bronson and others who have similar views, and have injected the theme of angels into their work: Winnipeg- based performance artist Sharon Alward (b. 1954) with her 2001 performance/video work

Christian Woman of Virtue (fig. 1); Manitoulin resident Ann Beam (b. 1944) with her 1996 relief sculpture Angel of the West Dreaming (fig. 2); and lastly, Toronto-based artist Sheila Butler (b.

1938) with her 1982 mixed media drawing on paper The Angel of God Appears at the Friday

Night Movie (fig. 3).

Angels in the form of winged figures were depicted in ancient Egyptian art.4 They play a strong role in the three Abrahamic religions—Judaism, Islam and Christianity—as well as

Zoroastrianism and many of the Eastern religions.5 The word “angel” comes from the Late Latin angelus and the Greek angelos, meaning “messenger.”6 In her forty-five-minute performance/video Christian Woman of Virtue, Alward walks through the Liverpool city core area to the nearby Pennine Hills, wearing angel wings cut from clear plastic sheeting and outlined with white neon tubing. Wearing a mid-calf black leather coat, and dragging a rolling shopping cart behind her housing a car battery to power her neon lights, she weaves through the people, the streets and later the metaphysical fog of the countryside around Liverpool (figs. 1a,

1b).7 Alward’s neon lights—often associated with nightlife and the seedier side of society—and her long, black leather coat challenge conventional images of angels. Alward positions herself as a messenger communicating between the people and the divine, admitting to me during an interview that it is a slightly romanticized interpretation.8

Fig. 1a. Sharon Alward, Christian Woman of Virtue, 2000, performance/video. http://ccca.concordia.ca/artists/work_detail.html?languagePref=en&mkey=79166&title=Christia n+Woman+of+Virtue++&artist=Sharon+Alward&link_id=13742.

Fig. 1b. Sharon Alward, Christian Woman of Virtue, 2000, performance/video. http://ccca.concordia.ca/artists/work_detail.html?languagePref=en&mkey=79166&title=Christia n+Woman+of+Virtue++&artist=Sharon+Alward&link_id=13742.

When discussing her work, Alward references Suzi Gablik’s book The Reenchantment of Art, in which the author believes the focus of an artist is not to add to the plethora of images that exist already, but to be in spiritual pursuit through ritual and intervention with an audience.9 Cultural historian Constance Classen, in her book The Color of Angels: Cosmology, Gender, and the

Aesthetic Imagination, describes “the cloak of invisibility to sensory imagery” that has permeated the art world, and asks the viewer to shed that cloak to witness the multi-sensory beauty of art.10 In the same vein, Alward creates a heightened sensorial experience in her performance narrative. The video Christian Woman of Virtue, with Alward’s voice-over throughout, is autobiographical.11 Focusing on the seven virtues, she explores traditional religious thought and its dangers through her memories of childhood and the defining moments on her road to the person she is today.12 Alward is comfortable in her role with the public as she has been an outreach worker at POWER (Prostitutes and Other Women for Equal Rights), as well as an administrant of the Holy Eucharist and lay reader for the Anglican Church.13 She explains that her performance work deals with the metaphysical and the conceptual rather than the hardcore aesthetics most artists seek, and stresses that art should be a healing agent as well as a vehicle for ethical action in the community.14 In her performances Alward unifies the long- isolated worlds of religion and art.

Ann Beam is a multimedia artist residing on Manitoulin Island, where she and her late Ojibwe artist husband Carl Beam (1943–2005) moved in 1992 to return to the ancestral land of his grandfather. She lives in the adobe house they built together in the 1990s, and for the past twenty years Angel of the West Dreaming has hung over the front door, facing west (fig. 2a).

Fig. 2a. Ann Beam, Angel of the West Dreaming, 1996, cement, tin, and plywood. Photo: the artist.

To create Angel of the West Dreaming, Beam first sculpted a traditional angel with under wire and a thick cement pudding using the additive process.15 She then superimposed the sculpture on the tin lid of a large can, giving the illusion of a large halo around the head of the figure. She then mounted the angel on a sheet of raw plywood. Throughout her explorations, she has always stayed true to her quest for the spiritual world that she feels embraces her. The image of the angel is a spiritual signifier, broadly speaking, in that

Beam believes images speak multi-dimensionally to artists. She considers angels to be spiritual helpers who can be accessed, taking her inspiration from diverse sources such as Quan Yin, the

East Asian goddess of mercy and compassion, and Mother Mary of the Catholic faith, with whom Beam has a strong connection. As such, the artist explores strong female power cross- culturally.16 Although Mother Mary has had an ambivalent role according to some feminists who argue that she was solely a receptacle to give birth to Jesus, feminists like Beam regard Mary as an empowering influence on those who believe in her.17 Thus, Beam critically explores religious iconography in her works, and although she states that she is not religious, they convey a deep spirituality.

For close to fifty years, Butler has devoted her artistic talents to figurative painting. Her freely drawn figures, described by curator Stuart Reid as energy in marks and lines, dominate the canvas or paper.18 Whether the work is inspired by a biblical scene, such as The Creation of the

World (1986), a mythical scene such as Icarus (1996) or a mundane setting like the Marlborough

Hotel (1980), the viewer is compelled by the power of the figures. The Angel of God Appears at the Friday Night Movie is based on Butler’s personal experience in Baker Lake, Nunavut.

From 1969 to 1972, Butler and her husband, Jack Butler, ran a drawing and painting workshop for the Inuit artists in that remote Inuit community, 1000 miles directly north of Winnipeg and considered to be the geographical centre of Canada.19 Together the Butlers introduced drawing to the Inuit as they had no history of works on paper and they had only recently changed their lifestyle from nomadic to sedentary. This project fortified Butler’s dedication to the drawing process.

The Angel of God Appears at the Friday Night Movie reflects Butler’s signature technique of using a rectangular format within a larger rectangle. Sometimes she uses paper on canvas, or paper on paper; but in this case it appears to be one large sheet of paper that she has divided into the two fields. The central rectangle shows a film screen wherein a character in a Western genre film is seen in action on horseback, aiming to shoot. There is the illusion that another horse is galloping out of the screen onto the larger rectangle as well as the faint profiles of the viewers in the audience. This is Butler’s trademark style: to show movement and flight in a two- dimensional world. The left edge of the inner rectangle is hidden by the Angel of God, who is occupying a great portion of the vertical space on the edge of the film screen. The Angel is reaching out, demanding to be acknowledged by the viewer.

As Butler explains, very few forms of entertainment were available to the residents of Baker

Lake. There were certainly no televisions, and even radios did not work because of the magnetic waves in the area.20 The only entertainment was on Friday nights in the small recreation building built by a charity organization from southern Canada; each week a different film would be flown in and shown there. The films were old and often awful, but the community would never dream of not attending.21 Even when bad weather prevented a new film from being brought in, the whole community would congregate in the recreation centre and watch the film from the week before. They weren’t familiar with cinema theatres in the South; they didn’t sit during the projection of the film; and most did not even understand English. They moved around, talking to each other, eating hot dogs and chips which a volunteer organization provided. Butler explained that it was like watching a film in a busy train station, adding, “We could introduce anything here. Anything could happen. The Angel of God could appear.”22 Here she is recognizing the strong power of the Christian missionaries.

The missionaries played a big part in the life of the settlements. The first recorded arrivals of the

Anglican and Christian missionaries to Baker Lake were in 1927,23 and many of the communities had more than one religious group ready to work with the locals. It was this powerful influence that Butler references in The Angel of God Appears at the Friday Night Movie, which she executed ten years after her return to the South.

Bronson refers to contemporary society’s simultaneous dismissal of religion and search for higher spirituality through the very popular centres for meditation and yoga, the ashrams as well as the retreats. He explains this new cultural phenomenon as the blurred line between the religious world and the secular world.24 Our culture has steered away from old notions of

Western religion but the search for spirituality is ever present. Alward, Beam and Butler have addressed in their art the existence of religion, and in particular angels, in very personal ways:

Alward serves as a messenger to the people; Beam acknowledges the role of angels as protectors; and Butler reveals the power of the Christian church amongst the Inuit in the Arctic and shows the angel as intercessor.

NOTES

1 James Elkins, On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art (New York: Routledge, 2004), 16. 2 A.A. Bronson, “A Letter to Montreal: Making Love to Jesus,” Journal of Canadian Art History 33, no. 2 (2012): 200. 3 Ibid., 210. 4 “The Symbolism of Wings,” New Acropolis Library, accessed December 18, 2016, http://library.acropolis.org/the-symbolism-of-wings/. 5 Janine Coghlan, “Angels: Are They Physical Beings or Metaphors for Human Conscience?” Diffusion 5, no 1 (2012), accessed December 5, 2016, https://www.uclan.ac.uk/courses/assets/rcs-coghlan.pdf. 6 Merriam-Webster Dictionary, “Angel,” accessed December 18, 2016, https://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/angel. 7 Sharon Alward, interview with Barbara Tekker, November 6, 2016. 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid. 10 Constance Classen, The Color of Angels: Cosmology, Gender and the Aesthetic Imagination (London; New York: Routledge, 1998), http://www.david-howes.com/senses/Classen.htm.

11 Sharon Alward, “Christian Woman of Virtue,” Sharon Alward, accessed November 19, 2016, http://sharonalward.com/projects/christian-woman-of-virtue. 12 Alward, interview. 13 Victoria Singh and Western Front, Ritual in Contemporary Performance: A Document of the Contemporary Ritual Series, 05/02/02–11/20/03 (Vancouver: Western Front, 2004), 20. 14 Ibid., 14. 15 Ann Beam, interview with Barbara Tekker, November 6, 2016. 16 Claudette Lauzon, Motherlines: Works on Paper by Ann Beam (Ottawa: Carleton University Art Gallery, 2003), 18. 17 Ibid., 20. 18 Stuart Reid, introduction to Sheila Butler: Sympathetic Magic, by Stuart Reid and Ilya Parkins (Mississauga: Art Gallery of Mississauga, 2000), n.p. 19 Ibid. 20 Sheila Butler, interview with Barbara Tekker, November 12, 2016. 21 Ibid. 22 Ibid. 23 Aparecida Vilaça and Robin M. Wright, eds., Native Christians: Modes and Effects of Christianity among Indigenous Peoples of the Americas (Surrey: Ashgate, 2009), 174. 24 Bronson, 211.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bronson, A.A. “A Letter to Montreal: Making Love to Jesus.” Journal of Canadian Art History 33, no. 2 (2012): 199–213.

Classen, Constance. The Color of Angels: Cosmology, Gender, and the Aesthetic Imagination. London: Routledge, 1998.

Coghlan, Janine. “Angels: Are They Physical Beings or Metaphors for Human Conscience?” Diffusion 5, no. 1 (2012). Accessed December 5, 2016. https://www.uclan.ac.uk/courses/assets/rcs-coghlan.pdf.

Elkins, James. On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art. New York: Routledge, 2004.

Gablik, Suzi. The Reenchantment of Art. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1991.

Lauzon, Claudette. Motherlines: Works on Paper by Ann Beam. Ottawa: Carleton University Art Gallery, 2003.

New Acropolis Library. “The Symbolism of Wings.” Accessed December 18, 2016. http://library.acropolis.org/the-symbolism-of-wings/.

Reid, Stuart. Introduction to Sheila Butler: Sympathetic Magic, by Stuart Reid and Ilya Parkins, n.p. Mississauga: Art Gallery of Mississauga, 2000.

Singh, Victoria, and Western Front. Ritual in Contemporary Performance: A Document of the Contemporary Ritual Series, 05/02/02–11/20/03. Vancouver: Western Front, 2004.

Vilaça, Aparecida, and Robin M. Wright, eds. Native Christians: Modes and Effects of Christianity among Indigenous Peoples of the Americas. Surrey: Ashgate, 2009.