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Year: 2013

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Catacombs of Priscilla

The orans posture (hands up, pleading) is a common trope in religious art, but the audience implies a preacher. From the newly restored Catacombs of Priscilla. (All images from the Catacombes de Priscilla website.)
Newly restored frescoes in the Catacombs of Priscilla have ignited a firestorm of speculation about whether the early church allowed women priests. I read these stories thinking this was another case of the popular press suffering from too little knowledge. Now I’m not at all sure they’re wrong.

The dominant cults of Rome at the time, including the Imperial Cult, honored women as members of the imperial family, priestesses, and goddesses. The Christian citizens of Rome would not have found a woman in the role of priestess to be particularly strange.
Among the images in the Catacombs’ Capella Graeca is a fresco of the Fractio Panis, showing six men and one woman breaking bread in the Eucharist. No, she’s not the central priest, but then again, is there one?
Paul—often cited as the authority for keeping women from religious roles—refers to Phoebe as a “deacon” in Romans 16:2 and clearly held Priscilla in high regard as a teacher and missionary.
That the catacombs are called after Priscilla and not her husband, the Consul Aquila, is in itself informative. The couple is mentioned six times in the New Testament. Acts 18 claims that the couple had recently come from Rome to Corinth where they met the apostle Paul (implying that Christianity had been taught in Rome before Paul got there).
Paul’s prohibitions against women preachers seem to conflict with his delight in the work of women like Priscilla. But this is just another example of the syncretic thinking of the ancients, which we moderns seemingly cannot embrace. It was Aquila who became a bishop in Asia Minor and not Priscilla, but Christianity had a way of adapting itself to the political realities of place. At any rate, they were both martyred, so for them it’s all water over the dam now.
A beautiful image of Christ with his lambs from the Catacombs of Priscilla.
The Catacombs of Priscilla are among many such catacombs in Europe. Generally, these were also used for religious services when Christianity was suppressed. In the case of the Catacombs of Priscilla, that was the mid-second century through fourth century AD, a time of intermittent but violent suppression of the new Christian religion.
This was not an insignificant site in the early church. Two early popes—Marcellinus (296 -304) and Marcellus I (308-309) and many martyrs are entombed there, and many other popes and martyrs were once there but have been removed elsewhere.

The previous interpretation of the frescos was that they illustrated the deuterocanonical story of Susannah. Why such a minor story would receive such treatment in such a prominent tomb is inexplicable, and the Fractio Panis, above, makes no sense in that context.

There are three major burial chambers in the Catacombs:  the “arenarium” or sand-quarry, the cryptoporticus, (an underground area to get away from the summer heat), and the hypogeum with the tombs of the Acilius Glabrio family, of which Priscilla was a member. 
It would be a pity to view the Catacombs of Priscilla only through the lens of gender equality. It contains some of the earliest known wall paintings of saints and Christian symbols, including the oldest known Marian paintings, from the third century AD.
Still, the gender equality question is fascinating, and this meticulous restoration brings the issue to light.
Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!
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Beauty and the human brain

Polka Dot Shirt, mixed media on canvas, by Erich H. (Autism Services of WNY)
A recent report suggests* a link between autism and synesthesia,  a neurological condition in which stimulating one sensory or cognitive pathway triggers involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway.
The report is rudimentary in the extreme, being based on an online survey. This is no surprise, since the whole question of synesthesia is largely unstudied. That’s a pity, since managing neuroplasticity has so much potential for some of the most intractable diseases we humans face. Who knows whether the cures for Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, ALS, or Huntington’s might be found in the ability of the brain to work along duplicate pathways?
Guitar, acrylic on canvas, by Erich H. (Autism Services of WNY)
When I read this story, my thoughts immediately went to a young man I’ve known since before he was in short pants. It’s no surprise that Erich can draw and paint beautifully. I’ve known his mother since she was in short pants and she’s a very talented woman. 
Batman and Tops with Hearts and Candy Bars, mixed media on paper,  by Erich H. (Autism Services of WNY)
I asked Erich’s mother if she thought synesthesia contributed to Erich’s painting ability, and she answered, “Possibly. He does have perfect pitch, too.”
Yellow Ceiling Fan on Black, mixed media on canvas, by Erich H. (Autism Services of WNY)
Erich is hardly alone in being a talented artist with autism. For the past decade, Autism Services of Western New York has run an art program for its clients. Not only are they exposed to various materials and resources, but their work is shown regularly in commercial and public venues across the greater Buffalo area.
If you’re interested in seeing their clients’ work in a real-world setting, check here for a list of venues. If you’re on Facebook, like Autism Services of Western New York on your news feed. 

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!
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The trials of a young art-school graduate

Meeting of Fronts, from Jeff Swartout’s senior show went to New York and was sold. Heady success for a young kid.

One of the groups affected disproportionally by the 2008-13 economic malaise has been recent college graduates. About half of them scrape by either unemployed or marginally employed. It’s always taken time for kids to find their niche, but it appears to have gotten tougher in the last five years.
Art students, however, have always expected to cobble a living together after graduation. Sadly, many of them leave their field, since it’s an unreceptive world that pretty much leaves the young artist to flounder without mentoring.

A cat, drawn in multiple poses by Jeff Swartout. Hard to take on big projects without the structure of a studio, but one can always draw.
I’ve watched the career of one young artist with considerable interest. Jeff Swartout is a 2012 graduate of Alfred University and a talented young painter.
When Jeff’s painting, top, went on to New York and sold in May of 2012, I was optimistic about his chances of success. “It was a hugely validating experience,” he said. In a normal market it would have opened the door to more opportunities, but that didn’t happen. “In the back of my mind I knew I wasn’t experienced enough to live on my own or make a living as an artist.”
Jeff has great painting chops, but he can’t really see a clear path forward. When I asked him where he wanted to be in twenty years, he answered, “I don’t know.”
“I could do anything and be happy as long as I’m learning something. The more I think about it, and look back on my past work, the more I think I want to pursue illustration/animation,” he said.

That confusion is common enough at that age, but it’s made more difficult because in our society, artists get almost no help in establishing careers.  However, even without a clear goal, Jeff knows the first step is to get out of Binghamton and move to a vibrant regional art market. His choice is Asheville, NC. “I just want to marinate in a different culture for a while,” he said. “I fell in love with North Carolina, felt inspired, and loved being so close to the deep outdoors. Plus, Asheville is such a cool and progressive city.”

And figure studies, done this year, by Jeff Swartout.
To that end, he’s working nights at Kohl’s and looking for a second job. It’s a good plan. Although we New Yorkers have been trained to think of Manhattan as the Center of the Known Universe, a good regional market actually makes more sense for an emerging artist.
Almost every college student expresses doubts about career choices, but the art major has the added burden of having spent his or her formative years hearing from almost everyone how an art major is a dumb idea. “Before college I had so many aspirations, and somewhere between my sophomore and senior years my motives changed. I’m still figuring out what the root of that is and if it’s ultimately helpful or harmful.”
But I’ve observed that most young people actually like what they’ve chosen once they actually start working. For one thing, work is a structured activity. Your job assignments take the place of your school assignments.
That’s a luxury artists don’t have. “Without a studio, peer review, or advisors to discuss my work with, I found after college that I didn’t know what to do with myself,” Jeff told me. “The motivations I had to draw before and after college were completely different because I got so caught up in assignments and projects that when I no longer had a prompts, I floundered.”
Jeff’s path may never involve a conventional job, but he may be getting to the recharge point all the same. ”I’ve recently inhaled a gust of inspiration, so perhaps that will change as I practice.”
Stick with it, kid. The world needs what you’re selling.

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!
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Working under duress

Annunciation to Joseph, c. 2000, by little ol’ me. Who likes hearing upsetting news?
I was recently diagnosed with cancer. It’s kept me from doing much of anything these past few weeks, as I’m in a sort of paralysis of awe and anxiety. This is why I’ve been writing about art theory and history and not so much about practical painting.
Yesterday my doctor was reviewing the charts from my 1999 bout with a different cancer. “And you were running 900 miles a week,” he finished up.
I laughed. “I was actually running 30 to 36 miles a week then,” I said. “And the odd thing is, I’ve been ramping up my mileage all summer, and now I’m doing 25 miles a week.”  Last winter I realized that scrambling around rocks while teaching plein air painting in Maine would require a lot of endurance, so I started training harder.
Carnations and Clematis in a Crystal Vase, Ă‰douard Manet, 1883. Manet dealt with illness by painting some exquisite small florals; you just know they are flowers from his bedside table. I don’t think I have this kind of ‘sweet’ in my character, but, then again, Manet probably didn’t think he did either.
When I had cancer in 1999, I made exercise my top priority. If I wasn’t hooked up to an IV, I walked or ran. It was how I kept sane. And my first resolution with this round of cancer is to do the same, even if it uses up all my limited energy. In retrospect, running is probably why I’m still here.
Twice now I’ve ramped up my workout the year before I learned I had cancer. No, exercise doesn’t cause cancer. Rather, sometimes God tells us to do something that we don’t understand at the time. Listening to the voice of God is pretty hard for people who have been trained to think rationally rather than intuitively. But when we succeed at it, we rapidly realize God has his hand firmly on our shoulders.
Carrying the Cross, from A Child Walks With Jesus, 1999-2000, St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church, Rochester.
Right before my last diagnosis, I agreed to do Stations of the Cross for St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church in Rochester. It took me ten months to do 26 sketches, but in retrospect, I think the cancer shaped the work in ways I couldn’t have foreseen. The work also shaped my faith, because it addresses the fundamental question of the Christian experience: did Jesus really give us an end run around the inevitability of sin and death?
Oddly enough, I recently made a commitment to do seven large paintings on the subject of God and man in the environment. I have no idea how being sick can affect this work; I won’t know until I break this paralysis. But I will, and it will. That I know.

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!
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Feminist design, for real.

An outdoor toilet block in an orphanage in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. No lights, no doors and a pit toilet. (Photo courtesy of Douglas J. Perot)
My friends have gotten a mighty good laugh at Bic’s totally pointless For Her ballpoint pens. But if you think all work of interior and industrial designers is trivial, then consider this story from Delhi, which tells us there is a link between the lack of proper bathrooms and sexual crimes against women.
Women in the Bhalswa neighborhood have the choice of paying a rupee to use a toilet in a communal toilet block, which is one of two serving a thousand households in their neighborhood. When it isn’t open—which is frequently—they are reduced to squatting in a nearby field.
The interior of a pit toilet in an orphanage in Port-au-Prince. Although there are no doors, the orphanage is secured and girls are safe when using it. This is not the case elsewhere in Haiti or many other parts of the world. (Photo courtesy of Douglas J. Perot.)
In either case, the danger of molestation is high. Neighbors estimate the rate of abduction from the toilet blocks to be about one a month, and women using the field are frequently harassed or assaulted by men.
More than half of India’s households don’t have sanitary facilities, and for the lowest-caste Dalits, that percentage is far higher. More Indians have cell phones than toilets. Considering how cheap cell phones are and how expensive bathrooms are, that’s really no surprise.  
Occasionally plein airpainters end up in a situation where they have to relieve themselves outdoors. Any woman who’s done this has a small sense of the vulnerability of the third-world woman without a bathroom.
Sanitary water and sewer lines have enhanced the development of private bathrooms but did not create them. Before there was running water in homes, there was the garderobe, which was a pit toilet that emptied outside the house. 
When we think of “bathroom design” in America today, we think of clever storage, heated towel bars, and granite tiles. But these are very recent innovations. My house was built with one family bathroom containing a tub, commode and pedestal sink, and a half-bath on the ground floor. The doors on both rooms were designed to lock, and the walls were covered with ceramic tile to facilitate cleaning. That was pretty much state-of-the-art in 1928.
A Toto Washlet and its remote control.
Now there is the strange (to our eyes) toilet of Japan, the Toto Washlet and its variations, which are available in 72% of Japanese households. These toilet seats incorporate posterior washing, feminine washing, seat warming and deodorization. Some models raise and lower the seat automatically.
Modern bathrooms did not spring fully-formed from a scientist’s brain. They were created iteratively, starting from the humble outhouse and working forward. Most 20th century improvements were made by industrial designers at the factory level and interior designers at the consumer level, and the quick-and-easy solution that brings universal sanitary facilities to the third world will probably come about in a similar way.


Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!
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Stranded

An Everyman moment for the modern world, from Amy Stein’s Stranded.
Every once in a while an artist comes up with an idea that’s so universal I wish I’d thought of it. Amy Stein photographs people stuck at the side of the road.
Stein’s artist statement demonstrates the disconnect between what we say we’re investigating and what we actually create. Her essay is full of pap about “the despondence of the American psyche as certainty collapsed and faith eroded during the second term of the Bush administration.” But get past that, and the idea is simple and affecting.
From Amy Stein’s Stranded.
Most of her pictures are of cars and people, but the mobile home brought a smile of recognition. Our first house was pre-fabricated, built by kids at Orleans-Niagara BOCES. We bought it at auction and it was the biggest purchase we’d ever made, by far. Imagine our distress when we learned that it had been pulled over for a traffic violation and would spend the night parked next to a gravel pit. I didn’t sleep that night, visualizing thousands of stones in unseen punk hands aiming for all those uninsured new windows we had just paid for.
From Amy Stein’s Stranded.
Every breakdown has its backstory. Yes, it’s an isolating experience, but it is always personal, never political. We are late, we are in trouble, we are too broke to go buy oil, or we need that car to last six more months until we finish graduate school. Despite her rhetoric to the contrary, that’s the reality behind Stein’s pictures.
One scenario familiar to northeasterners is missing: the winter storm that lands our car in a ditch. A Google map, here, explains why: Stein, who is based in LA, never made it up here where the winds blow cold. Stein is intentionally artless and unheroic , but stripping away the conventions of earlier photography doesn’t actually move us; quite the opposite, in fact. Her empty emotional space is a pause waiting for an idea. Someone else should move in and fill it.

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!
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Etsy’s just another craft fair that’s now allowing resale.

Charm bracelet by Jennifer Jones Jewelry.
Jennifer Jones makes handmade statement jewelry from vintage brooches, pins, buttons, and the occasional Tabasco sauce bottle. Since she’s my former painting student and friend, we frequently talk shop. Recently, she’s been telling me that Etsy, the e-commerce website focusing on handmade craft items, has started allowing the resale of manufactured goods.
Maybe the New York Times can wax philosophical about the difference between ‘handmade’ and ‘mass-produced’ but we artists understand the difference. It isn’t about the tools and supplies you use; it’s about personally guiding the work through every step of the process.
Enamel flower necklace by Jennifer Jones. There is no way to mass-produce an assemblage of this nature. 
If you’ve done time on the art-fair circuit, you know that allowing manufactured goods is the kiss of death for a venue’s high-end craftsmen. It adulterates the brand, and it brings in the wrong audience—an audience which can’t distinguish the craftsmanship of a $500 piece from a mass-produced $50 copy. Nevertheless, it seems like sooner or later almost every venue succumbs to the temptation.
Freakonomics had this to say about it:
Etsy’s latest move is entirely in line with the history of handmade goods, a history that is more complicated than the simple term “handmade” implies. The artisans have run head-on into the problem that led to the Industrial Revolution: Making things by hand is slow. Really slow.
That’s kind of missing the point. We don’t live in an age where the major issue is making more stuff in less time. In fact, we are flooded in cheap goods. Right now, we Americans can’t compete in the cheap-goods market. Whether our craft is writing software or creating brilliant jewelry from castoffs, we are not selling a product but a process, one that frequently yields arrestingly good results.
Bracelet cuff made of vintage enameled pansies and some other stuff, by Jennifer Jones.
I had a designer friend with a unique and locally-popular line of clothes. She tried to scale it up, and she got lost in the vagaries of offshore manufacturing. When she was done, she had a product that would have been at home at Target—in fact, she didn’t even have that, because she was a rank amateur at the business of international sourcing. She sacrificed what she did best chasing a mirage, and her product line died completely.
Meanwhile, Jennifer keeps making these one-off items, and her market is worldwide. 


Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!
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Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!

A 16th century fountain after the traditional Artemis of the Ephesians, in Tivoli.
In the Book of Acts, Luke records an incident where Ephesus rioted against Paul’s preaching. It gives us a great snapshot of Roman religious practice in the first century AD:
“He says that gods made by human hands are no gods at all. There is danger not only that our trade will lose its good name, but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis will be discredited; and the goddess herself, who is worshiped throughout the province of Asia and the world, will be robbed of her divine majesty.”
When they heard this, they were furious and began shouting: “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” Soon the whole city was in an uproar….
The city clerk quieted the crowd and said: “Fellow Ephesians, doesn’t all the world know that the city of Ephesus is the guardian of the temple of the great Artemis and of her image, which fell from heaven? (Acts 19:23-41)
A first-century AD copy of the original wooden cult-figure of Artemis, now destroyed. No bow and arrows for this girl.
The rioters were not calling her “great” merely because of her position; it was part of her proper name, distinguishing her from all other deities called Diana or Artemis. 
Artemis of Ephesus most likely descends from a pre-Hellenic fertility image whose origins are obscured by time. Thus the breasts. But the Greeks were syncretic thinkers, so it’s no surprise that they rolled the heavy, fertile goddess into the lithe hunter and thought nothing of it.
Artemis of Ephesus was a big wheel in cult circles. Her temple was one of the Seven Wonders of the World, and she was served by a whole coterie of servants, including a hereditary priestess, female slaves, eunuch priests, and young virgins. (Of passing interest is the fact that Kallimachos asserted that Ephesus was founded by Amazons, a story that might have some garbled resonance in the importance of Artemis’ cult there.)
Ephesian coin of Artemis, this time with her deer.
Luke’s account is the only written classical source for Artemis having fallen from the sky. However, “the image that fell from the sky” is a traditional appellation for Zeus’s offspring. In some cases, it might mean that the worshipped object was a meteorite, but since contemporary sources describe the lost Artemis as wooden, that seems unlikely. This figure was destroyed by flood in the eighth century AD. The images we have are copies. Perhaps their makers were among the very rioters Luke described in Acts.

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!

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The Case of the Missing Mummies

The missing statuette of  King Tut’s sister. No, she’s not a conjoined twin; that’s a lock of hair symbolizing her youth. She is holding an offering in her hand.
By 1922, when Howard Carter discovered the tomb of Tutankhamen in the Valley of the Kings, opinion was swinging around to the idea that the treasures of Egypt were most appropriately left with Egypt herself, rather than parceled out between the British Museum, the Metropolitan, and private collectors.
The Egyptian Museum of Antiquities in Cairo holds the world’s largest collection of Pharaonic antiquities, including many treasures from Tutankhamen’s grave. During the 2011 revolution, many of its artifacts were damaged or stolen. A full inventory of the lost works has never been released, but among the damaged (and restored) items were two statuettes of King Tut, worked in cedar and covered in gold.
Yesterday the Telegraph reportedthat Egypt has issued an international alert reporting the theft of a statuette of King Tut’s sister, stolen during rioting in Mallawi this past summer. During the violence, looters walked off with every single portable item in the City Museum—more than a thousand objects. Of the 46 left in situ because they were just too big to move, many were vandalized. (You can view the complete list here.)
The Mallawi City Museum when looters were done with it.
More than half the items have been retrieved by Egyptian authorities. Many of the ones still missing are from nearby Tell el-Amarna, which is the site of the short-lived capitol founded by the monotheist pharaoh Akhenaten. Amarna-era artifacts fetch the best prices from collectors.
Either the Mallawi riots were orchestrated to provide cover for the thefts, or the Egyptian families which control the illegal antiquities trade were able to strike fast and capitalize on the riots as they unfolded.  After all, the tradition of tomb-robbing in Egypt is far older than the business of professional archaeology itself.
They were together for more than 4500 years, before looters broke them up… into small pieces. This fifth dynasty tomb portrait was shattered during the riots. What couldn’t be stolen was destroyed.
What little I know about Egyptology comes from reading Elizabeth Peters’ Amelia Peabody mystery books. Under her real name of Barbara Mertz, the author held a PhD in Egyptology. She passed away a few months ago. This real-life mystery contains all the elements she threw into her novels. I imagine she’d have found it fascinating—and heart-breaking, at the same time.


Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!
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It’s always been all about cats

Statue of the cat goddess Bastet
Yesterday when I was looking through depictions of women in ancient Egypt, I noticed the above statue of the goddess Bastet as a domestic cat. It’s a delightful, relaxed, natural portrait of that small, furry, domesticated mammal that has been palling around with us for millennia, and it was on my mind all day.
For some reason, Bastet came to be associated with cosmetics in Egyptian cosmology (or cosmetology, for that matter). Here she is lounging on an alabaster cosmetic jar from King Tut’s tomb.
Very strict formal conventions were followed in Egyptian art, including rules about symbols representing gods or the social roles of royalty. These conventions have a way of looking stultified to us, so that when we look at Egyptian tomb portraits (with the exception of those of the Armana period), we can miss the humor and observation that is also in those portraits.
Cats lend themselves to looking regal anyway, but the jewelry is a nice touch. This is the Gayer-Anderson Cat, from about 664-332 BC.
This is less apparent in their animal portraits. One gets a real sense of a people who love and understand animals and the natural world. How much they would have enjoyed social media, with its endless stream of cat postings!

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!