Past Features – 2009:
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Love Actualized: In his post about Evelyn Williams‘ work, Phil Barcio writes: “So often we dwell on the calamities of our world without imagining a better way forward. The purpose of this Tikkun Daily art gallery is to seek out artwork that presents a hopeful and positive vision of this life while still conveying a sense of intellect and awareness of the ways our world and our nature cause suffering and grief.” Evelyn’s work fits in particularly well with this vision.
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The Art of School Lunch: Kai Klaassen’s portraits depict school district cafeteria workers. Klaassen says, “My hopes were that the viewer would just take a minute or two to find out who these people were.” Read Phil Barcio’s blog post about Klaassen and her work.
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Emergent Submersion: Kim Keever’s landscape photographs are created by meticulously constructing miniature topographies in a 200-gallon tank, which is then filled with water. These dioramas of fictitious environments are brought to life with colored lights and the dispersal of pigment, producing ephemeral atmospheres that are a combination of the real and the imaginary. They document places that somehow we know, but never were. Check out Phil Barcio’s blog post and see more of the artist’s work in our gallery or on his website.
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Art for Earth’s Sake: Jackie Brookner’s work integrates ecological revitalization with the concepts and aesthetics of sculpture. Her projects raise community awareness of the urgency of restoring health to aquatic ecosystems. Read Phil Barcio’s profile of her work and visit the artist’s website.
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Nothing Is Wasted: Aurora Robson’s work focuses on transforming “the negative or downward trajectory of motion” inherent to materials like junk mail or plastic bottles. She creates beauty out of waste, “a meditative practice in alchemy, enantiodromia, positive spin, acceptance, and balance.” To see more of this stunning work, visit her exhibit, read Phil Barcio’s blog post and explore the artist’s website.
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Tender Brutalities: Ran Ortner uses art to explore the fragile, unrelenting forces of nature. To see his massive, powerful paintings of the sea, visit his exhibit, read Phil Barcio’s blog post and explore the artist’s website.
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Beast’s Burden: Wild animals are the first to suffer from human-made ecological disaster. Painter Christopher Reiger seeks to ‘re-enchant’ humans and remind us of our community with the anguished world around us. To learn more about Christopher Reiger’s work, visit his exhibit, read Phil Barcio’s blog post, and explore the artist’s website, as well as his blog, Hungry Hyaena.
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Material Androgyny: Alison Wilder’s playful, massive sculptures – made of reclaimed fabric, metal, and wood – invite laughter and experimentation. To experience this joy-filled art and read about Wilder’s views on communion, pain, toys, and androgyny, visit her exhibit, read Phil Barcio’s blog post and explore the artist’s website.
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Between Heaven and Earth: Barbara Bash uses mop-sized brushes to create intuitive, gestural expressions in paint. To learn more about her giant canvases and their connection to Zen Buddhism, visit her exhibit, read Phil Barcio’s blog post and explore the artist’s visual blog, True Nature.
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Survivors: “At a time when human life on earth is in danger and needs protection, we all need to know more about the nature of survival.” Check out Andrée Singer Thompson’s Survivors exhibit in our gallery.
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Buddha Park: Buddha Park is just outside of Vientiane, the capital of Laos. It’s one of two concrete scupture theme parks created by Bunleua, an apostate Buddhist monk who created his own synthesis of Buddhism and Hinduism. Read Peter Marmorek’s blog post, and visit the Buddha Park page in our gallery.
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Art from My Kishkes, from My Soul: Nancy Katz creates breathtaking chuppahs, Ark curtains, torah covers, and tallitot. “For the most part, my work is about bringing color and light into the world,” she says. “As an educator, my goal is to empower others to take risks and to embrace their own creativity.” Read Phil Barcio’s profile of her work, visit the exhibit of her artwork in our gallery, and visit the artist’s website.
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Shadow Series: In Lanell Dike’s beautiful photographs, our shadow form merges with the background, and the illusion of our separateness dissolves: we are one with our surroundings. Read Phil Barcio’s profile of her work, visit the Shadow Series in our art gallery, and visit the artist’s website.
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Being One: Helena Tiainen evokes the wondrous and radical interconnectedness of all things with her intricate drawings. Read Phil Barcio’s profile of her work and visit the artist’s website.
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Utopian San Francisco: Muralist Mona Caron envisions “a post-global warming, post-fossil fuel, bioregionalist San Francisco, thriving within a different socio-economic system.” Read Phil Barcio’s profile of her work and visit the artist’s website.
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What Kinda Name Is That: Beverly Naidus engages in culture jamming by manipulating mid-twentieth-century advertising imagery and adding text about her own experience as the child of immigrants. Read Phil Barcio’s profile of her work and visit the artist’s blog.
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The Catholic Church: Julia Dean offers another sensitive portrayal of religious life on the San Carlos Apache Reservation. According to A. Jay Adler, who writes prose to accompany Dean’s photo essays on their blog, The Sad Red Earth, “A major effort has been in reenvisioning Jesus through Apache eyes.” Read more about Julia Dean’s work.
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Finding Home: Siona Benjamin’s paintings beautifully combine ancient and modern symbolism to create a visually stunning mythology that challenges our notions of identity and home. Check out the art, read our blog post about it, and visit her website.
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The Dancing Saints: Black Elk, Cesar Chavez, John Coltrane, Charles Darwin, Fyodor Dostoevski, Albert Einstein, Ella Fitzgerald, Anne Frank, Martha Graham, Malcolm X, and eighty others dance hand in hand across the walls of the St. Gregory of Nyssa Church in San Francisco, thanks to muralist Mark Dukes. Read more about The Dancing Saints.
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Painting Past Borders: Painter Salma Arastu offers a behind-the-scenes tour of her studio and a glimpse of her “Blue God” series, which was inspired by stories about the Hindu god Krishna, who danced his way back into her work years after her conversion to Islam. Read more about the “Blue God” series.
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Shmah — a Hope for Harmony: Erik Slutsky reflects on his connection to Judaism and stands witness to the violence and suffering of war and genocide. Here’s our blog post describing his relationship to religion and art.
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Sacred Celebration: Janet McKenzie’s paintings of women and people of color draw on sacred Christian imagery in an attempt to transcend stereotypes and convey a yearning for equality and radical wonder. Read her story here.
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The Native American Church: Julia Dean documents worship in the Native American Church. Read about Julia Dean and her connection with Native American life here.
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