Evidence of Joy

JULY.15OCTOBER.27.2024

PART ONE

A Call for Joy

(This is the call we posted for the artists in this exhibition)

April Parviz, February, 2024

Today I went to the doctor. On the sign-in station there sat a small snowman made from an old salt and pepper shaker. His head was a little foam ball. His hat was the lid of the shaker, and inside his little bottle tummy were a bunch of what looked to be miniature cotton-balls. As I waited to be checked in, I observed the fact that someone had made it. She didn’t have to. But she was perhaps feeling the joy of winter, and she wanted to share her joy. The snowman wasn’t sitting in her home, it was sitting here, for me to enjoy. And I did enjoy it. The reflection that she had experienced joy in making it, and the fact that she had done it selflessly, with no expectation of thanks, brought me joy.

After my reflection on the sweet little snowman, I began to see evidence of someone else’s joy, intentionally being shared with strangers, everywhere I went. The person in the house five doors from mine, has a little jar of complimentary dog treats out on a bird feeder hanger in their yard, right by the sidewalk. People have lovely seasonal wreaths hanging on the outside of their front doors, not on the inside. Painted rocks are mysteriously left in people’s gardens by strangers. I’m sure that now I’m aware of this, I’ll be seeing evidence of joy everywhere. And strangers will discover footprints of my own joy, making their footprints joyful too.

When I look at the current world of art, I feel like I see a lot of evidence of many inspiring things, but not always so much joy. I know in my own art practice, I am often fueled by loud palpable emotions like pain and confusion. Perhaps if I begin practicing using joy as fuel, I will begin to do it more habitually. Perhaps if we practice seeing joy more we can become habitual joy detectives.

Collecting Evidence

April Parviz, 2024 - ongoing

As soon as I wrote out my reflection about the little snowman in the doctor’s office, which was to be the call for art for this exhibit, I began seeing evidence of joy everywhere. At some point, I began recording what I saw. Here are some of the clues I’ve been finding:

3/23 - Banana muffins from a girl called Star. My daughter says, “This is the best day ever!”

3/24 - People wave palm branches and sing “Hosanna!”

3/25 - The dental hygienist quoted a joke from a movie, assuming she knew my sense of humor. She did. She really did.

3/26 - The dental hygienist and I both think it’s funny to use basically a piece of candy to remove a temporary crown.

3/27 - Rubber ducks lining the windshield of a jeep. I learn this is a thing. A very friendly thing.

3/28 - Banana muffins, for my daughters, from a boy called Davison, after he collected the evidence of joy while witnessing the joy of the banana muffins from a girl called Star.

3/29 - At the Botanical Gardens with a friend, she paused our conversation with a sense of delighted urgency to say, “Oh look! They’re in the leaves!” We stopped. I looked at a floor of dead leaves and saw one lovely little robin, tousling the leaves around for one reason, or another. Then, as I stared, about

eight other robins arose from the camouflage of leaves as they too tousled. And then another eight...

3/30 - License plate says “HeeHeHe”

3/31 - In the church balcony with a friend, we sang of the beauty of the earth, in celebration of Easter morning. We sang while her grandmother was on her way to heaven, miles away, and she knew, and I knew, and we sang.

- - -

Joy and godly grief are somehow related. I haven’t quite figured out how yet, but I’m en route. - April

- - -

4/1 - Today is the day after Easter. I saw an old friend from church, who had a stroke several years ago and barely speaks anymore. When she does, it’s typically just with a one syllable word. Today, when I said goodbye to her, I said, “He is risen!” and she said, “He is risen indeed!”

4/2 - We all sang happy birthday to a stranger.

4/3 - A group of ladies, ranging from 27 to 68, don’t want to leave because they are enjoying eachother’s presence so much.

4/4 - Driving through the country, my five-year-old insists that we all look out the window at the stars. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Continued on page 28.

Wind and Music and Life

Ellie Harold

Ellie Harold

Avian Joy Ride

ARTIST STATEMENT:

I use an intuitive “inside-out” approach to creating my art. I stand before a blank canvas and see what happens as the brush moves. I don’t plan in advance what the painting will be and, as I was during the pandemic, I’m often surprised by what emerges. While the news cycle during that period was filled with grim statistics, my work was anything but gloomy. In fact, it blossomed, as for the first time, shades of pink became a dominant feature in my palette. When a studio visitor saw one of these paintings, he exclaimed, “There’s so much joy!” Pink is now a staple in my work as it does bring me joy to use it. I apply it with chunky oil paint sticks, with a spontaneous brush, or with my fingers. Layered atop or within a flowing or floral display in many of my paintings, pink continues to sing to me of a joyful, bright life that lightens whatever darkness appears.

On Avian Joy Ride:

Avian themes have dominated my work since 2017 when they appeared in my paintings as “intuitive messengers of hope and healing for a troubled world.”

On Heart Spring:

Spontaneous and joyful mark-making on a gessoed panel!

Why the Birds Raise the Sun in the Mornings in the Spring

A Just So Story

by April Parviz, 2022

Once. A very long time ago.

The sun went down in the winter.

It went down in the winter and then it stayed down.

You see, it had found a new friend down there. That friend was the equator. The sun loved the equator because it was a kindred spirit. The equator was also a circle. It was also hot. All kinds of creatures were also drawn to its warmth and love.

It was nice for the sun to find someone to relate to. You see, dear reader, being the sun is often a lonely sort of business. No one really pays much attention to you. People don’t often say, “thanks for shining today, Mr. Sun.”

The sun said to the equator, I am so happy to be here with you. I think I will retire and the moon can light the world from now on.

The moon was very excited to overhear this, but that’s a story for a different day.

The equator agreed that the sun should stay and retire.

The sun said that he would wait for a few days to see if he was missed. And if no one mentioned it, he would stay down here forever.

On the first day, all the birds on the very top and bottom of the world (which is the same place) noticed. They noticed, and they sounded the alarm. They started flying very very fast down from the top and up from the bottom (which is the same way).

As they flew, they chirped and squawked and sang, “The sun has retired! We must go pull him back! We must pull him back! We must pull him back!”

As the birds from the very top and bottom of the world (which is the same place) flew down from the top and up from the bottom (which is the same way), they picked up every single bird in the world.

It had been about seven days and the sun hadn’t heard any complaints from anyone yet. He thought, I am sad that no one notices my work. I suppose it must be time to retire. He went to tell the equator the bittersweet news.

But before he could, he heard the loudest sound he had ever heard in his existence.

It sounded like all of the birds in the entire world were squawking and chirping with an abnormal level of urgency.

And of course we, dear reader, know that is just what it was.

The sun was so pleased to see all the birds, for everyone knows that they are his favorite.

They scolded and snipped at him. They tapped their little toes and shook their little feather fingers at him. And he lovingly agreed to come back with them.

But only if they escorted him up every morning for all of spring, so that he never again doubted their love.

And that, dear reader, is why the birds raise the sun in the mornings in the spring.

The Swarms / Songs of Praise (detail), Kelly Kruse (page 14)

Morgan Burton Johnson

ARTIST STATEMENT: The Jubilant Self , is a random yet explosive moment of feeling joy, independent of surroundings, cause, or one’s regular demeanor. This dancing creature reflects the sense of purity and release.

The Jubilant Self

Kelly Kruse

The Swarms / Songs of praise

The Fifth Day

Genesis 1:20-23

Then God said, “Let the waters teem with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth in the open expanse of the heavens.” God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind; and God saw that it was good. God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” There was evening and there was morning, a fifth day.

The Praises of God

Anonymous monk, trans. W. H. Auden

How foolish the man who does not raise His voice and praise with joyful words, As he alone can, Heaven’s High King. To whom the light birds with no soul but air, All day, everywhere laudations sing.

To play in it

Psalm 104:24-26

O Lord, how many are Your works! In wisdom You have made them all; The earth is full of Your creatures. There is the sea, great and broad, In which are swarms without number, Animals both small and great. There the ships move along, And Leviathan, which You have formed to play in it.

ARTIST PRAYER:

Oh God of the swarms, your birds and sea creatures reach heights and depths that no naked man can. Though their minds are unlike our own, you gifted them with lungs and gills filled with primordial notes of praise. Such creatures prove that your sustaining life is the only required element for praise. In the quiet before you formed mankind, you invited the first winds and waves of worship to cascade over your creation. Even some fish join together in choruses of watery exaltation at the rising and setting of the sun. I marvel in wonder at such songs and sonar, free from all pride and shame.

I am astonished by the range of sizes, shades, and sheens in the seas and skies—some feathers and scales are petal-bright, flashy as flowers in midsummer, while others are somber as the sky before a storm. Your creation flaunts a many-hued display; homogeneity has no part in your divine design.

I contemplate the tiny chickadee, huddled in the pine outside my window in the winter wind, dipping her black cap against the gusts as she forages for food. She searches among the drifts for your extended hand—enough for one more day. Oh Lord, I pray that you would give me the faith to search for your outstretched arm— enough for all my days.

On this day you made the fearsome sea monsters, too, and birds with wingspans of two tall humans put together. As the Psalmist says, Leviathan is just another of your creatures, who you made to play in the waves. I need not fear the embodiment of chaos when you are the one who draws its boundaries and gives it freedom to frolic. What glorious wildness pours forth from your heart, Oh God, that you would make space for the most fearsome creatures to play?

The entire range of creation is your palette—you commission both magnificent and minuscule to bring you delight. Leviathan cannot be tamed just as your wisdom cannot be contained by human understanding. And while I am limited, there are no heights you cannot reach, no depths you cannot plumb. Will you bring me soaring to the heights of your exaltation, and remind me not to fear the fall? Will you plumb the depths of this human heart, and contend with the chaos there? Oh, my God, inscribe your boundary on my heart, and make space for my soul to play.

Katherine Gastler

the twelve | woven together

Katherine Gastler

trillium

Katherine Gastler

ARTIST STATEMENT:

I have been exploring making eggs with the batik technique that originated with Ukrainian Easter eggs, called pysanky. I learned this art from my aunt as a child, and it brings me joy to see the endless combinations of colors and shapes that can fit on a small eggshell. Pysanky are traditionally made before Easter, blessed, and believed to protect houses as talismans. These eggs were created for Holy Cross Lutheran Church to continue to bring joy to the Sundays throughout the season of Easter. Each egg was created to incorporate symbols based on the scripture readings selected for each week.

These designs are drawn on an hollow shell with melted beeswax using a stylus called a kistka; pysanky is based on the Ukrainian word “to write.” Then the egg is dipped in dye, with the wax protecting the current color from the next dye. At the end of the process, I have an egg that is mostly covered in dark wax, with my design obscured. As I carefully melt off the wax, I often gasp - usually with delight, but always with surprise - as I see my final colors emerge for the first time.

Ode to Joy

Friedrich Schiller, 1808

Joy, thou shining spark of God, Daughter of Elysium, With fiery rapture, goddess, We approach thy shrine! Your magic reunites those Whom stern custom has parted; All men will become brothers Under your protective wing.

Be embraced, all ye millions! With a kiss for all the world! Brothers, beyond the stars Surely dwells a loving Father. Do you kneel before Him, oh millions? Do you feel the Creator’s presence? Seek Him beyond the stars! He must dwell beyond the stars.

Let the man who has had the fortune To be a helper to his friend, And the man who has won a noble woman, Join in our chorus of jubilation! Yes, even if he holds but one soul As his own in all the world! But let the man who knows nothing of this Steal away alone and in sorrow.

All the world’s creatures draw Draughts of joy from nature; Both the just and the unjust Follow in her gentle footsteps. She gave us kisses and wine And a friend loyal unto death; She gave the joy of life to the lowliest, And to the angels who dwell with God.

Joyous, as His suns speed Through the glorious order of Heaven, Hasten, brothers, on your way Exultant as a knight victorious.

Grace McGinnis

Bliss

ARTIST STATEMENT:

I shot the reference photo for this piece on a dreary morning walk. The small yellow bird lay before me on the sidewalk, deceased, yet posed in an expression of euphoria. I illustrated the image in gouache and was moved by the feelings of joy and serenity I experienced while creating it. There is a peace in death, and thus, a beauty. Incidentally, shortly after I created this piece, my grandfather suffered from an acute exasperation of an interstitial lung disease. He was hospitalized and ultimately passed a few weeks later. During his stay at the hospital, and in the ICU, this image hung in his room, in clear view from his bed. I would like to believe it provided him a small, but sustained, ration of peace in his last days.

When I first stumbled upon the subject for this piece, I was initially filled with sadness that this sweet little bird had passed away. However, when I noticed the blissful look on his face, how his head pointed enthusiastically towards the sky, how coyly his wingtips touched, I felt a smile cross my lips. I remembered how my great-grandmother used to yearn for heaven in her later years, because she truly believed that once there, she’d be able to dance and swim and sing in ways she never could on earth. It reminded me that even in death and grief, there is joy. That duality is actually essential to joy’s existence.

Sarah Guthrie

ARTIST STATEMENT:

Since 2017, I have been painting, thinking, and writing about joy–what it is, why it matters, how to cultivate it, and why we all deserve it.

To me, joy is an optimism of spirit we all carry within us. It’s sparked through our actions and, unlike happiness, is not dependent on our circumstances to be felt. Paradoxically, we can feel joy at the same time we feel anger, sadness, and grief.

I have been painting and writing about Joy for over seven years... I create works about joy to feel better–the process of painting soothes me. Re-assembling the colors, creating gentle patterns with petal-shaped brush marks, and working with hues I love brings me joy and mends something inside me. My work invites people into a dialogue about joy and serves as a touchstone for how they can find and create more joy in their lives.

A special feature of my process is the array of colors within each brush mark, which contain dozens of slender lines of color that engage the viewer in optically mixing the colors–inviting them into the process as they find their own joy in my non-objective paintings.

The pieces in this exhibit were inspired by scenes while I was at a Residency in Santa Fe, New Mexico. A musical friend inspired the title of Discordant Harmony. On seeing the painting, she said it made her think of that sound in music when things don’t quite fit together but sound exactly right. This piece had its start in the streets of Santa Fe. I saw a bright red shirt on display outside a shop, laid over a turquoise scarf and adorned with marigold beads. The collection of colors took my breath away. I loved the intensity of the colors against the softness of the storefront’s neutral adobe and tiles.

Collecting Evidence Continued

I love this piece by Sarah Guthrie for lots of reasons. One is that I personally love discordant harmonies. Another reason is because it describes the journey I’ve had with joy over the last several months, leading up to the opening of this exhibition. At first, it felt like joy was the answer to everything. It felt like I could transform all of my thoughts and experiences into joy.

But over this short time, I discovered that’s impossible, unless you live a life of complete denial. Sad and difficult things are happening all the time. But does this mean we should always be sad or angry? Take a look at the evidence I’ve collected. My journey may look familiar to one you’ve had before, or are perhaps having now, or maybe perhaps will have one day.

4/5 - A five-year-old girl meets many of her cousins for the first time. One of them wants to marry her. He’s also five. They both like dinosaurs.

4/6 - My twelve-year-old niece ran into the house to call all of us out, urgently, to see the sunset. Her sense of urgency was appropriate. The sunset was astonishing. As we all drank in the glory of colors slowly swirling along the horizon, some of us danced, some of us sang, some of us stood in silent meditation. The young girl who called us all out to receive this beauty had buried her ten-year-old little brother about five hours earlier, that day. Her fight for joy was an inspiration.

Paradoxically, we can feel joy at the same time we feel anger, sadness, and grief.

—Sarah Guthrie

4/7 - A friend wants to give a gift to another friend for an outof-the-ordinary occasion.

4/8 - Driving down three hours to see four minutes of eclipse totality, my husband, two daughters, and I noticed a rare energy amidst the other travelers, as we would stop for gas or bathroom breaks. Everyone was happy. Everyone was excited. And it didn’t matter who we were, or where we came from, we were all on our way to the same thing. And we were all excited. So my three-year-old wrote this song, which she proceeded to sing on repeat for the rest of the day, off and on;

Ev - ery- bo- dy’s hap-py for the e - clipse

4/9 - A woman with a baby strapped to her stood in the rain, under an umbrella, smiling and waiting for the bus.

4/10 - A lady is singing in her car. She might also be dancing.

4/11 - My friend roller-skates in the dance studio for fun.

4/12 - The bubbles were filled with dry ice!

4/13 - Pelicans flying over The Chain of Rocks Bridge!

4/14 - The Bricoleur, at 3400 Cherokee street, is always evidence of joy to me when I walk in.

4/15 - Simple and lovely vase of tulips from a friend.

4/16 - I’m driving on Jefferson. I drive on Jefferson a lot. I’m looking both ways as I drive through green lights. You need to do this on Jefferson. I’ve witnessed the reason why a few times. I’m thinking about how Jefferson is this way, and then I see a

delivery lady hand a box to a little girl as I drive past. I see just enough of this interaction to note the body language of both individuals. They are sharing a really sweet moment.

4/17 - On Jefferson again today. I see a new Cbabi mural. He quotes Sandheim, “It’s the fragment, not the day. It’s the pebble, not the stream. It’s the ripple, not the sea that is happening. Not the building but the beam. Not the garden but the stone. Only cups of tea and history, someone in a tree.” I will read this a lot, on Jefferson.

4/18 - A friend tells me about some really sweet moments during the last week of her mother’s life.

4/19 - A friend smiles, tasting a brownie. Her dog died yesterday.

- -How do we smile when we are sad? - April

- - -

4/20 - Matzo Ball Soup.

4/21 - The bride and groom holding hands.

4/22 - Those children love to color.

4/23 - A church group went to the seminary to greet their new pastor as he received his call to their church. They cheered and clapped and later, after the service, they sang, and waved big happy signs around. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Continued on page 45.

Sarah Bernhardt

Canticle of the Sun (excerpt)

St. Francis of Assisi, 1225

All creatures of our God and King, Lift up your voice and with us sing Alleluia, alleluia!

Thou burning sun with golden beam, Thou silver moon with softer gleam, O praise Him, O praise Him, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia!

Thou flowing water, pure and clear, Make music for thy Lord to hear, O praise Him! Alleluia!

Thou fire so masterful and bright, That givest man both warmth and light.

Thou rushing wind that art so strong, Ye clouds that sail in heav’n along, O praise Him, Alleluia!

Thou rising morn, in praise rejoice, Ye lights of evening, find a voice, O praise Him, O praise Him, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia!

SARAH BERNHARDT

STATEMENT: Written almost 800 years ago, this excerpt from the “Canticle of the Sun” penned by St. Francis of Assisi captured my imagination as a child. The daily companionship of the clouds, water in its most exuberant form, has brought joy for centuries. Handiwork, a long term photographic series, visually asks “what would it sound like for these clouds to sing?”

Flying from Lancaster

Bernadette Lamb, 2022

Knowing what I have come to know Is like that moment when the total, shining

Whiteness

Of cloud

Gives way to the Sun

Fields ablaze with snow

Soul alight with love

Trusting Who I have come to trust

Is like the curled paths in furrowed rows

Made

More beautiful

By the view from above

The painting once in monochrome Now laced with peopled streets

Loving Who I have come to love Is like loving the horizon far Beyond,

The tired guitar strings

Stretched across the maw of a heart

Straining to sing to Eternity

Resting in which I have come to rest Is like a homestead encircled with Trees, Maple, mesquite, and river-bark

Leaves to greet, and not shut out Branches to protect and defend

Trunks to climb and be made free

Jill Kyong

ARTIST

STATEMENT:

This was inspired by a WWI artillery battery in Fort Stevens in Oregon. When I visited, a bit reluctantly, I heard the lyrics from “Hallelujah” echoing out. A few students were inside singing, but they sounded like a full choir. Their beautiful sound reverberated through a place that was a reminder of war.

As I worked on this project, I listened to “Hallelujah” on repeat. Over the past few days, I realized this piece was my prayer for Ukraine. Blue and yellow, the colors of the flag, are the doorway and the music pouring out. I pray for the Ukrainians, for the children, who should never see such things. I pray they will be able to sing.

Visit jillkyong.com/hallelujah to hear the music:

Mary-Jo Okawa

ARTIST STATEMENT:

My art is rooted in intuition and emotion, drawn to scenes with vivid colors, interesting textures, and rare shapes. Each piece springs from a moment of inspiration, sparked by the beauty, simplicity, and joy found in nature and love.

The five pieces in this show—Reflections, Mama’s Favorite, Joyful Noise, Wishing, and Antique Lace—are unique stories interconnected by these inspirations.

1. Reflections (page 183) explores light and color in water, evoking calm and introspection.

2. Mama’s Favorite (page 124) pays tribute to love and familial bonds with warm hues and familiar textures.

3. Joyful Noise (page 174) captures life’s exuberance with vibrant, dancing strokes on silk.

4. Wishing (page 37) delves into hope and longing with soft, dreamlike colors.

5. Antique Lace (page 193) celebrates the elegance of history through delicate patterns and muted colors, echoing timeless textiles.

I employ the classical art of silk painting, a technique refined over centuries. Studying under masters, I learned to use traditional materials such as gutta resist, silk paints, and dyes, along with modifiers like salts, sugars, and alcohol to add depth and dimension. These methods allow me to create artworks rich in tradition and uniquely my own.

What sets my art apart is the fusion of these classical techniques with my intuitive, emotional approach. Each brushstroke is deliberate, imbued with the essence of what drew me to the subject—whether it be the gentle sway of a flower or the intricate weave of lace. My work celebrates the natural world’s beauty and human emotion, aiming to evoke similar responses in viewers.

In essence, my art is an exploration of the world through color, texture, and form, capturing fleeting moments of beauty and emotion. This collection reflects that journey, inviting viewers to pause, reflect, and find their own connections within each piece.

Gary Rubin

ARTIST STATEMENT:

While in isolation for two years, my connection with the outside world was primarily through the art I created. I selected subjects that inspired me - that evoked an emotion or tapped into one of the many feelings I had, fueled by the challenges of the COVID and racial injustice pandemics. The subjects all lived within the frame of my television. And, from these subjects, I created compositions with a sketchbook, set of pencils, and an eraser that all reside on a TV tray. I never know what the finished product will look like until I stop drawing. And when I stop, it’s because it feels complete and incomplete at the same time. It is not only what I draw but what I don’t draw, allowing the negative space to complement and oppose the graphite. Less isolated now, my process and commitment have not wavered. I am still inspired every day by pure human emotion and feeling, and driven to capture it with my art.

In my attempt to capture human emotion with my art, I am drawn to draw many emotions that speak to loss, grief and heartbreak. But there is the other end of that emotional spectrum that speaks to all of the emotions that lift us up: joy, happiness, hope, and dreaming. They also lift me up when I draw. And that is my inspiration and connection to this exhibition.

I am honored to be back at Intersect Arts Center.

Ted Washington

A Summer Night in Penrose Park, St. Louis Missouri

ARTIST STATEMENT:

This work is outside of my norm and therefore an adventure. I don’t see fireflies here in San Diego, but I have vivid memories of them from my childhood in St. Louis where I would go to the park across the street from our apartment at night to see them. They are magical.

The search for order in this chaos. Art. Life. I was hoping to draw pretty pictures but something happens. I get carried away. Dots take time, time for my mind to get away from all of this. The pretty pictures get lost in there and this art is what remains. Unfortunately (or fortunately), there is always an alpha for every omega; more ink, more paper and more time. The chaos takes me. Order is for the end.

Summer nights in the park were magical when I was young. This is a recollection of that magic place across the street from my childhood home. There was no fear of the dark when the fireflies were out and about.

A Haiku

Ted Washington, 2024

I have inner joy my eyes closed creation flows no people in here

Evening

Bernadette

Lamb, 2019

I am at a precipice

The sky a moment ago coral and lilac and gold

I am breathing twilight Hay—yes, hay—crunching beneath Bluebells (or lilacs) before Bioluminescent

I don’t care if it’s not scientific fact

Tail lights below are stars Burning out—or in?

The vermillion makes me forget they are a touch out of place in paradise

For once I don’t mind the mosquitos

For once I am alone in the fading light

There is no greater gift Than Imperfection making way for Grace to show her lovely face

Collecting Evidence Continued

4/24 - A shaved ice truck was parked outside of a school with fun loud music, and kids lined up for treats. *Ah* The joy of the end of the school year. I haven’t been in it for so long, but I can still feel it when I see children swirling in it now.

4/25 - At the dentist, the hygienist has purchased a bird feeder that suction-cups to the large window, for me to watch the birdies eat.

4/26 - My husband looking out the window, during breakfast, “Oh, there’s a little baby bunny eating clover.”

4/27 - My friend had dirt on her butt, as she invited me into her home. She’d been gardening. I thought, “There’s probably dirt on my butt too.”

4/28 - A man is practicing his motorcycle in the parking lot across the street from my house. Normally this would annoy me, but now that I’ve been labeling things as “evidence of joy” I’m becoming less irritable. Which is nice.

4/29 - My ten-year-old friend and I found a dragonfly in a bush. I’m glad this is still exciting to us.

4/30 - Someone has invented something called white chocolate tamales, and they are sharing them with us!

5/1 - I saw a woman sitting on her porch, drinking coffee, this morning around 6:30am.

5/2 - My three-year-old sat on the couch singing “everybody’s happy for the eclipse” - softly remembering eclipse day to herself.

5/3 - A young woman entered the park, across the street from my house. Her dog ran in front of her and she put both arms up in a V shape, as if she had been longing for the park for days.

5/4 - A grown man swinging on the swing set, while his child played on the playground.

5/5 - My friend came to visit our church. After the service, she discovered the gardens and was in complete awe and joy at the sight.

5/6 - My three-year-old picked a petunia, brought it inside, and stuck it in the crack where the fridge closes - right at her nose level, so that every time she walks by, she could smell it.

5/7 - On the highway, a giant intimidating pickup truck had a tiny arm sticking out, enjoying the wind. As I passed it, I saw the father in the front, clad in a baseball hat, sunglasses, and an expression of serenity, knowing his child was with him, and she was happy.

5/8 - I asked my five-year-old to think of a time when she felt happy and she said, “I’m happy right now!” - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Continued on page 67.

Memory and Mind

Plop, Smack and Splatter

Michelle Gomez, 2024

However you want to describe it, that dump must have felt so good.

I feel lighter and more fit for a long distance flight, just like how I imagine the bird feels now that it has unloaded on my windshield.

My eyes see “Choose Joy” scrawled onto shiplap via the Cricut, but my brain rejects the message and chooses loathing.

Plop, Smack and Splatter, Michelle Gomez

Webster’s Dictionary definition of joy is an antonym to the joy described in Scripture.

Joy through my human lens is an overwhelming, unachievable, and heavy burden. Webster’s joy is founded on my successful accomplishments.

Biblical joy is a golden egg given in spite of my circumstances.

The low self-esteem, negative self-talkers of the world have been fluttering around like constipated birds since our environment became polluted with decorative signs. Positive quote dumps start with good intentions. Silence and inactivity can be difficult, so we sing songs. The most elegant of birds can produce disagreeable sounds, and the prettiest poster board can place heavy burdens with a sweet-sounding phrase: “Choose Joy.”

When I misplace my car keys, I simultaneously displace any good thoughts about myself. Throw in someone telling me to “Choose Joy“ in my current affliction, and you will find me circling the valley of despair.

In my searching, I’ve found the keys to a sanctuary. Joy is the first Monarch butterfly sighting after winter. Joy is the perfect ratio of peanut butter to chocolate that Reese’s perfected in their holiday shapes. Joy is the elation I feel at work when I walk into the middle school bathrooms and the seat is up, meaning no one has used the stall since the maintenance crew cleaned up. The bird poop on my windshield reminds me that true joy is a smirk in the midst of the murk.

What a relief! I’m no longer bound by Joy obtained by my own output.

God chooses to rain Joy down upon me.

The beauty of a weightless bird in flight matches the melody it sings.

When they saw the bird poop, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy.

Matthew 2:10 - Loose Interpretation

bygone / beyond

Bernadette Lamb , 2022

‘Tis good indeed to be Held in the arms of Love Himself

The gardens and gods Of bygone days are Dust, Mere dust

But past the veil shrouding An eternity of bliss is You.

Always, only, You.

Delro Rosco

A Morning Bathed in Gold

Delro Rosco

ARTIST STATEMENT:

My ethereal abstract paintings transcend what is seen, and through deeply layered impressions of light and the ebbs and flows of sea and sky, reach for the “substance of things hoped for” (Hebrews 11:1). My work is an invitation to living in newness, with freedom, joy, and gratitude.

Through observation and memories of places, I capture ethereal impressions of my natural surroundings to create deeply layered works that hover between abstraction and hints of reality. My process is slow and reflective applying one layer per day over the course of weeks and months. Fleeting moments in time are embedded in each layer with materials such as pulverized minerals, ground shells, sand, silver, turquoise malachite, and gold. Creating this way offers me a space to grapple with truths

A New Day Ahead

Colors of Morning

from my faith journey while living in a broken world. The works are journals of discoveries often filled with wonderment, joy and experiences of searching for hope. In my overarching series New Mornings and subseries (2018 to present), I have created over 800 works that speak of this hope.

On The Layers of Joy:

Part of a series as a response to experiencing the rising light of mornings. Flowing brush strokes, layers of flickering mineral pigments and sometimes silver powder, crushed sparkling glass or finely sifted gold leaf capture the essence of rising shining light inviting us into a new day.

On Reminiscing and What Day is Today?:

The series Memories evolved from reflecting on a season of caregiving for elderly loved ones. The work was guided by spending time with them and observing their struggle to remember simple everyday thoughts as well as sharing the joy of listening to their stories of “the good old days.”

On Colors of the Morning, New Day Ahead and A Morning Bathed in Gold: Pohakalani in Hawaiian means the heaven(s) break forth. It is being in the darkness right before dawn, when those first small rays of light and color flash across the sky. It is a dawning, a new day, discoveries and experiences of hope, a blessing from God.

Stone Peng

Sailing Number 2

ARTIST STATEMENT:

I try to show the Chinese philosophy of life and the aesthetic principles “less is more” and “empty is full” in creating my images. Using primarily white tones in the background lends simplicity and ethereal purity to a subject that gives you a calm, peaceful, infinitely deep, and immeasurable feeling. The empty space offers a peaceful feeling and a chance to focus on what it really takes to find balance in life and capture a little piece of our self. “Tranquility, simplicity and beauty are the essence of my photos.”

I love to catch anyone who is enjoying a moment in nature.

The old wild

Bernadette Lamb , 2020

The thrum of a motorboat motor Was once enough to Set my quiet heart free

The scratch and rumble of Water rushing beneath my back Tubing was the most daring thing

Keep your limbs in, Tuck in your knees

I never did set foot in the sailboat But now I can’t help but dream of That most dangerous tilt and Fall into murky waves

Peg Shaw

Deep Mapping of a Thin Edge (still)

ARTIST STATEMENT:

The first time I stood at the water’s edge I’m sure someone was holding my hand. The sand moving under my feet while the current rocked me back and forth over the years settled me into who I am today. Beautiful and difficult lessons of love and loss are at this intersection of past, present, consistency, and change.

Babies learn to walk, children swim, search for the perfect rock, fires burn late into the night. Laugh, love, and longing. It’s a constantly changing shoreline. This thin edge is home, school, and church.

Everything changes but the lake always remains constant, clear and blue. The wind blows, the water responds with waves big and small - just as it always has, giving hope of everlasting love and connection.

So pick up the rock that catches your eye. Toss it back into the water. Find another and put it in your bucket. One is a treasure. The other a lesson. The deep mapping of a thin edge.

Deep Mapping of a Thin Edge is a layering of past and present images and sounds conveying a universal cycle of a generational love of place.

You can view a five minute preview of the film at www.pegshaw.com/video/deep-mapping-of-a-thin-edge :

Rachel Rose

*Not on view

Dyslexia

ARTIST STATEMENT:

I learned bead weaving in Gallup, NM when I was a kid. I did something different than everyone else and it was admired by everyone. The teachers had me come after school and taught me how to make my own loom. I was a very shy child, so this was very good for my ego. I have learned several on and off loom techniques like: twisted cord, peyote stitch, netting, Cheyenne stitch, straight stitch and many more. I also know embroidery, knit, and crochet. I create and teach with these techniques. I have dyslexia and my daughters also have dyslexia. I wrote a poem and argued about it with my family. Then, I decided the words needed to be readable, but obscured. I graphed it, then, I threaded on the pearls, glass shells and crystals on the warp thread. I wove like crazy for about a month. It was fun, although my family might not agree. When I got the feel of the poem right, I threaded the beads on the warp thread because I wanted to interrupt the words. Then I threaded the loom and wove 12 hrs a day for about 6 weeks. My back hurt. I am very happy with this piece.

My BFA is in painting from the Univ. of KS, and I love painting. I was trained as a figurative artist, but I do a lot of plain air and still life work. With dyslexia and ADHD I tend to move from one thing to another. I love learning new techniques, and I teach several older techniques which I find very enjoyable.

Delaney Rogers

ARTIST STATEMENT:

We all experienced significant loss and grief while the health of our society crumbled in a global pandemic. In August of 2021, on my orientation day of graduate school, I lost my father. In my work, I want to call adversity to attention, not spreading negativity, but communicating with my viewers within this system. I’ve studied semiotics and created my own symbol system for my emotions and life events. In my prints, I use these symbols to illustrate narratives exploring how I have been affected by grief and social pressures. Familiar images in my work, such as smiley faces, gummy bears, and thumbs-up symbols, provide entry points for viewers to understand my work despite its personal emotional significance. I work within sets of rules, layering and combining symbols, and using technology to create clean lines and shapes to make sense of the world and find control while coping with grief. I have begun to reframe grief in my mind as love in a new form. Grief is evidence of the joy that once filled my life.

The process of making my work allows me time to process my emotions. It brings me relief from all the hustle and bustle and lets me slow down to savor good moments. In making work about my struggles after the death of my father, I have had time to reflect on the beautiful and joyful moments we shared when he was alive.

Joy in the Valley

by Jenny Gastler, 2024

Good Friday, 2024, found me at the bedside of my 92-year-old mother who we knew was passing through the valley of the shadow of death. Very slowly passing through that dark valley. She would linger through two more long dark nights before her soul joined her Savior in paradise on Easter Sunday afternoon. I made a conscious effort to smile at her as I administered medications from the hospice comfort kit. But MaMa made me smile as she listened to the Good Friday evening service from Holy Cross. I remembered to access that service at just the point where my husband and daughter were singing as part of a quartet. I whispered to her, “That’s Katherine singing the high notes, Mom!” I don’t remember a response from her at that point, but after their anthem, the organ introduced the hymn, “Stricken, Smitten, and Afflicted,” a beloved Lenten hymn. Mom’s fingers started moving in time to the music, and I smiled a genuine, spontaneous smile. Mom had played the organ for church services from the time she was 14 until Christmas of her 92nd year. What joy in the shadowed valley to see her play-along to a hymn she had played for worship hundreds of times!

Katie Calfee

ARTIST STATEMENT:

When this show gave me an opportunity to examine the idea of joy, I went searching for the places where happiness lives. In my search, I learned that joy cannot always be found: sometimes it must be created or conserved. Serotonin Tokens documents my personal strategy for storing joy in a curated treasury of gratitude. Framed in a Hamilton letterpress drawer, a prussian blue cyanotype captures dozens of artifacts that activate memories of success, pride, and peace in me. A Northern flicker feather found by my mother reminds me of her curiosity for nature. A champagne cork captured in a locker room celebration recalls sweet camaraderie and team love. And a tiny bottle of sand summons a bond of sisterhood and a blazing-hot beach day in New York.

This assemblage reminds me that I’m a collection of unique moments. We all are. When we believe in the value of our story and potential, we can inspire others to amplify the good in their lives and share elements they find fascinating.

Of Captain Crunch, Tacos, and Joy.

by Hannah Wieting, 2022

I am sitting in a room filled with blue plastic chairs and mentally unwell people, of whom I am one. Our occupational therapist and group leader, a spindly woman in khaki capris with a neon pink stripe running down the side, is informing us all that we will be doing an activity together.

“We are going to have debates,” she announces a bit too brightly, and I hear the misgiving in her voice. She wants to see how her patients will react to this news.

“Don’t worry - we’re not going to debate politics. Just fun things like which food is better. It will help you practice your communication skills for when you go back to the real world.”

This is my second time in the mental hospital, and I have to admit, I am having more fun here this time. For one thing, the doctors have adjusted my meds, and I’m feeling like a real human. For another, there’s Crazy Mitch.

Crazy Mitch has white, matted hair, a pot belly, and a persistent smile. He’s given himself that name, and he sits in the corner of the room filled with blue plastic chairs - only his chair is turned towards the wall. He says that it is his dunce chair, and that he has to sit in it because he has been bad. Apparently, when he faces real people, he cannot help but interrupt the group leader and cause general mayhem. It’s the interruptions that I find entertaining. He talks about his life in one unending run-on

sentence - “It was the fall of 1954, and Miss St. James was a lovely teacher…” - or finds ways to create silly looks for himself out of old wrappers from his lunch. Yesterday, he placed two straws on his head as if they were horns, then strung his mask between them like a hammock. The group leader had no idea how to react to that, but the other patients and I found it quite amusing.

I’ve taken it upon myself to support the group leaders during my time here, so when the current one announces that we are going to debate each other, I say, “Sounds fun!” in a voice that is perhaps a trifle too enthusiastic.

Unfortunately, the first two patients to debate each other are significantly overwhelmed by the task, and mostly stare at the ground. Next, it is my turn. The subject of my debate is “Who Would Win in a Fight - Captain Crunch or the Trix Rabbit?” I believe that I have this one in the bag, as I am arguing for Captain Crunch, and obviously this is the stronger side on which to be. My opponent is a 21-year-old woman with borderline personality disorder named Hailey, and I like her very much. She bounces her leg up and down and twists her hands together as I state that Captain Crunch would obviously win because first of all, he is the captain of a ship and has military training, and second of all, I would imagine he carries a gun. I think that I have this debate in the bag.

When I finish, Hailey twists her hands together for a moment more, then launches into an admirable tirade about how the Trix rabbit would be too fast to be caught, and that he would use his tricky skills to set a trap for the Captain. When she completes her argument, we both stare at the group leader expectantly, waiting for the winner to be declared.

It is then that we find out this is the mental hospital, and there are no winners, and this is just an exercise, and that we both did great.

I would at least like a participation trophy.

It is during the next debate that the wonderful thing happens.

The next two participants are Tricia, a 50-something year old woman with brown hair who wears plaid pajamas, and Rob, a short man with a gnarly dark beard and back problems. They both have bipolar depression. Tricia is convinced that I am one of the two twins she miscarried years ago, so we are naturally quite close. Tricia and Rob are to debate whether tacos or burritos are better. Rob goes first.

“I think that tacos are better, because…because there are lots of toppings, and you can put anything you want on them, and then you get to eat them, and they taste real good,” he says gruffly. “And…”

He glances up, a smile playing on his face.

“And that’s all I have to say.”

He grins, and then begins to chuckle. Everyone else does too, including me. Laughter ripples around the room, waves of joy washing through us. None of us have any idea what’s so funny, although I suppose that the funniest thing of all is that a bunch of full-grown adults are sitting in this room playing a child’s game because life is too difficult for us to function in the real world at the moment.

Tricia says, “Well, what can I say to that?”

We all agree, and the debate is called. Rob looks at us and says, “I haven’t laughed that hard in a long time.”

It is a beautiful thing to see a room full of people, healing from despair, laugh. I make a mental snapshot of the moment, and tuck the memory in a corner of my mind for safekeeping. It will stay there, glowing and jolly, until I need it again.

Collecting Evidence Continued

5/9 - Me! Singing in the car with the windows down. And on the street on the way to and from my car. And in the garden. I’ve been guided into pure joy, lately, by the song Manchester by Kishi Bashi. It’s been a relief. I’ve been swimming in and out of deep waves of grief over the past year. Today I can pick joy up again, hold it, and carry it with the lyrics, “I haven’t felt this alive in a long time.” Perhaps someone will hear one note of my song as I drive by and go home to write this new clue in their Evidence of Joy notebook, dating it 5/9.

- - -

5/10 - Me... Singing. Fighting to still sing. Singing joy, with tears on my face. Don’t put the joy down. Don’t put the joy down. Fix it and then don’t drop it again.

What Are You Carrying, and Why?

After my reflection on singing yesterday, I came home to learn, potentially, the most tragic news I’ve ever learned in my life.

- - -

Trigger warning: infant loss, still birth, miscarriage.

- - -

(This is a rock that I painted last year for The Gardens at Holy Cross. I painted one for each of the fruits of the spirit. This May I noticed that all of them were in practically pristine condition, except, perhaps mystically, this one. On May 25th I brought it home to repaint it, and meditate on what it means to carry the weight of joy.)

Last year, at this time, I was pregnant. I had found out about a week earlier. A month later, I wasn’t pregnant anymore. About five months later, I was pregnant again. A month passed and I was, once again, not pregnant anymore.

In January of this year, I decided I was going to stop hoping for another child. At least for now. The hope was too heavy to carry along with the weight of the grief I was already carrying. So I laid hope gently down. And when I did, many people picked it up for me. At least three, that I know of. Probably more. I know they’re still holding it for me now. And that brings me comfort.

Yesterday, I found myself carrying joy, fully, for the first time in a very long time. Joy is also heavy, and it takes strength to carry it. I think I’ve been given that strength by God and many many loved ones who have carried my grief, my hope, and me, over this past year. And I’m only just now realizing, I think they’ve been carrying joy for me, as well.

As I read the news of a friend who had given birth, that morning, on her due date, to her first child, born asleep, the joy fell out of my arms and cracked on the floor into a million pieces.

- - -

During my darkest storms of grief, this past year, seeing the joy of others, specifically around the growth and births of new babies, brought me pain. These are the sorts of experiences we don’t like to write down or say out loud. But many people experience this emotion. The emotion of sadness triggered by others experiencing joy. And it’s not wrong to have this emotion. It’s not always wrong to experience pain when others experience joy. My pain was simply a reflection of the unnaturalness of death. It was wrong for my babies to die.

Was it wrong for others to experience joy in the birth of their babies? No. A thousand times, no. Was it wrong for them to display their joy to me, with the full knowledge that I had had two recent miscarriages? A millions times, no.

- - -

As I walked, early this morning, just after sunrise, I listened to Manchester by Kishi Bashi some more.

“All the streets are warm today” he sang into my ears.

No they’re not. Not today. They will never be warm again. Not when tragedies like this happen. Not when a woman can carry her son for nine months, in perfect health, and then the morning he is to be born, he is no more. The streets will never be warm again.

But they have to be. We have to keep them warm for eachother.

I started to pick up the shattered pieces of my joy. I’m putting them back together, slowly, expensively, using a formula of lacquer, tears, and gold. I’m going to hold on tight to it. Tight, but also gently. I’m going to hold it for my friend. It’s heavy. But I’m going to hold onto joy, alongside many other friends and loved ones, so that it’s here for her when she has the strength to hold it again.

- - -

I used to not think much about joy.

Now I believe joy is a strength that we must share with one another. And I think it’s our duty to fight to hold it and to carry it.

We need to carry it, so that it’s there, waiting, for the ones who can’t carry it right now. What if they came back, and we had all buried it forever, in the hopes that our burial of joy would bring comfort to our grieving loved ones?

- - -

Thank you to all of you who have carried my griefs, hopes, and joys, over this past year. I’m going to rejoin the team for a while now.

- - -

And now, we interrupt your regularly scheduled programming to bring you this breaking poem:

Opera Singer

by Ross Gay, 2011

Today my heart is so goddamned fat with grief that I’ve begun hauling it in a wheelbarrow. No. It’s an anvil dragging from my neck as I swim through choppy waters swollen with the putrid corpses of hippos,

which means lurking, somewhere below, is the hungry snout of a croc waiting to spin me into an oblivion worse than this run-on simile, which means only to say: I’m sad. And everyone knows what that means.

And in my sadness I’ll walk to a café, and not see light in the trees, nor finger the bills in my pocket as I pass the boarded houses on the block. No, I will be slogging through the obscure country of my sadness in all its monotone flourish, and so imagine my surprise when my self-absorption gets usurped by the sound of opera streaming from an open window, and the sun peeks ever-so-slightly from behind his shawl, and this singing is getting closer, so that I can hear the delicately rolled r’s like a hummingbird fluttering the tongue which means a language more beautiful than my own, and I don’t recognize the song though I’m jogging toward it and can hear the woman’s breathing through the record’s imperfections and above me two bluebirds dive and dart and a rogue mulberry branch leaning over an abandoned lot drags itself across my face, staining it purple and looking, now, like a mad warrior of glee and relief I run down the street, and I forgot to mention the fifty or so kids running behind me, some in diapers, some barefoot, all of them winged and waving their pacifiers and training wheels and nearly trampling me

when in a doorway I see a woman in slippers and a floral housedress

blowing in the warm breeze who is maybe seventy painting the doorway

and friends, it is not too much to say it was heaven sailing from her mouth and all the fish in the sea and giraffe saunter and sugar in my tea and the forgotten angles

of love and every name of the unborn and dead from this abuelita only glancing at me before turning back to her earnest work of brushstroke and lullaby

and because we all know the tongue’s clumsy thudding makes of miracles anecdotes let me stop here and tell you I said thank you. - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Collecting Evidence will continue on page 99.

Community

Before I Forget

Bernadette La mb, 2019

baby’s cry, toll of the bells, bicycle chime, sparrows oven smoke, musky humidity, oregano two girls two-stepping down an alley the clock is a moon a twelve-year-old in a purple sundress conspires with her friend

Teresa Getty and Camille Silverman

Blossom

ARTIST STATEMENT:

SeaChi Projects is a collaboration between Seattle artist Teresa Getty and Chicago artist Camille Silverman. They have been mailing work back-andforth to each other since February 11 of 2020. Since both are painters and mostly work in solitude, this collaboration has given them a place to be in regular dialogue with another artist, bounce ideas around, find connections, challenge each other, explore meanings, and laugh a lot. In addition to the mailing correspondence, they meet by Zoom 3 – 4 times a month.

The collaboration began by fiddling around with the ideas of subtraction and addition, arranging and rearranging drawings and mixed media paintings in both organized and chaotic stacks. The subtraction focused pieces eventually earned the nickname ‘puppies’ because they had become so unruly, and the addition stack took on its own life like a walking figure. The process has become so much richer than we ever imagined.

Over time, the stacks have taken the form of paper sculptures that hang or rest on shelves, 2-d multi layered paintings. In a way these are parallels to our own stacked lives - but, in our work we can shuffle them around, turn them upside down, not take them too seriously, just play.

Recently, the two artists began a new series using both artist-built and prefabricated wooden boxes as a challenge and to deal with a more rigid structure. We are interested in how a wall sculpture plays both with its own interior space as well as how it engages with the surrounding wall. Surprisingly reimagining and deconstructing the structure of a box is just as freeing

and improvisational as the rest of the organic stacks of loose drawings and paintings.

Blossom is the first of our deconstructed boxes, enlivening our collaboration with childlike joy. Deconstructing a box, and then puzzling painted upon pieces into new forms was like playing a game or solving a riddle. The parts were mailed back and forth, until finally put into their completed state by Teresa in Seattle.

Bold crisp colors like playground memories, vertical planes of shapes, along with the soft and hard shadows that those planes created became a visual wonderland of surfaces. Making this work was richer than either of us imagined; it definitely took us on an unexpected ride and opened us up to a new series; we bloomed.

Bryce Holt

ARTIST STATEMENT:

April 23, 2024 - Pharmacists have to have an encyclopedic memory of drugs, their uses, their side effects, and proper dosages. They are typically the most accessible health care providers, as they are there to answer questions and provide advice to make sure that people know how to use the medicines prescribed in order to create the highest efficacy.

Working day-in-and-day-out with hundreds of medications, I pictured that knowledge leaking into the dreams of a pharmacist. In this painting, I have dozens of pills and capsules falling behind the dreaming pharmacist. The silver background is symbolic of the blister packs that so many pills come in. Her hair is intertwined with flora, representing the amazing power of natural sources that have historically given us our medicines.

It’s no surprise to me that the ancient people who understood how to create and use medicines were considered shamans, as modern drugs seem magical in their ability to ward off or cure diseases. Pharmaceutical sciences have grown at an amazing pace, and I can’t even contemplate the medicinal breakthroughs that will be made throughout my lifetime.

CURATORIAL NOTE:

Hey, it’s April.

I have Type-1 Diabetes. Because of this, I interact with a lot of pharmacists on a regular basis.

I am one of those artists who finds myself accidentally observing humans very closely, and then observing how I interact with them, also quite closely.

Based on my own observation of pharmacists, I imagine their jobs are fairly stressful.

A few months ago, I needed to ask a question about my medication. I had my two young daughters with me, and several tasks that I needed to complete at home, before I could make it out of the house. So instead of driving to talk to my pharmacist directly, I called Walgreens, like a typical customer, who, according to American standards, should be treated with the utmost respect and attended to in a timely and efficient manner.

The phone rang for an hour. I didn’t get frustrated. I’ve had a lot of practice not getting frustrated about things like this. When I finally was able to leave my home, I drove up to the Walgreens pharmacy window, and my phone was still ringing. I did not feel impatient with the people working there. I know that they are understaffed and overworked. But I was worried that, perhaps their phones were off, by accident, and other customers, who were not able to drive in, may be experiencing appropriate levels of

frustration, and perhaps even despair, which is a very dangerous emotion, and one that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy, if I had one of those.

I spoke with the pharmacist about my needs. He was very helpful. Then, for the sake of other customers, I did my best to gently ask him if their phones were turned off, by accident.

He seemed to take this as an attack. He responded with very clear frustration and anxiety about how he was unable to answer the phones at this time, because he was the only person on staff, that day, and he needed to spend all of his time filling prescriptions and attending to in-person customers.

- - -

The American Pharmacists Association reports that the rate of suicide among pharmacists is 20 per 100,000, which is higher than the rate of suicide among the general population.

I was already aware of statistics like this, leading up to the interaction with this pharmacist. I also have personally witnessed a lot of disheartening changes in pharmacies, since Covid.

I’m worried about pharmacists. And I’m worried about my pharmacist. I don’t know his name. I can barely hear him, when he talks to me through the little intercom, as his small voice competes with the loud street, yards away from us. I can’t even make eye contact with him, because there is always a glare on the window.

My Walgreens is a three minute drive from my home. After this interaction, I decided not to call them anymore. I know what it’s like to work in a high-stress customer-service environment, where the customers can’t tell how many of them you’re juggling at once. I was bad at it. It turned me into a mean person, so I quit.

Our current medical system has a lot of pharmacists somewhat forced into a position where they have to juggle customer service alongside their vast and extremely complicated wisdom of medication. When I worked customer service, no one’s life was at stake. For a pharmacist, they have legitimate reasons to feel stress when they are interrupted in the middle of filling a prescription.

It’s hard for me to feel gratitude and love for my pharmacists, and their staff, when they treat me with unkindness and impatience. But, when I look at my life, I can say that I experience a great amount of joy because of pharmacists. And not only joy, but security and peace.

Pharmacists have changed my life, as well as saved it, many times. I am thankful for them, and I am going to work hard to take care of them. Because, even though I don’t know their names, and I can barely see or hear them, they are a part of my community.

Maybe next time I’ll be brave enough to park my car and go inside the store, so that I can look them in the eyes and hear their voice, across the counter. I might even bring them some brownies, just in time for their lunch break.

Morgan Burton Johnson

ARTIST STATEMENT: In Neon Shade , people from all directions have come to experience a common and communal joy, sunbathing. In their congress of umbrellas, their exuberance bounces from one brightly colored sunshade to another, forming a mass of shared happiness. It features how color can populate our human imagination in both the competition of attention and willingness to allow others to share our happy place.

*Not on view

Morgan Burton Johnson

ARTIST STATEMENT: In Expectations , the joy is expectant as a shadowed body waits outside a window: perhaps surveying an unexpected surprise for someone else; or the figure is expected, but those who put out the candle display will be the surprised party; or there is the possibility that the figure is unexpected and will “crash” a celebration planned for those unseen. In any case, the amount of candles compared to the place settings suggest a celebration, a reunion, or moment of commanding intimacy beyond the norm. Expectations suggests we’re about to be surprised by someone else’s thoughtfulness.

Expectations

*Not on view

John Hendrix

The Biscuit Tin Eden

John Hendrix

The Inklings at The Eagle and Child, 1 and The Inklings at The Eagle and Child, 2

ARTIST STATEMENT:

Two selected pages from "The Mythmakers: The Remarkable Fellowship of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien," Abrams Books, 2024. In this book, through narrative and comic panels, Hendrix chronicles Lewis and Tolkien’s near-idyllic childhoods, then moves on to both men’s horrific tour of the trenches of World War I to their first meeting at Oxford in 1929, and then the foreshadowing, action, and aftermath of World War II. He reveals the shared story of their friendship, in all its ups and downs, that gave them confidence to venture beyond academic concerns (fantasy wasn’t considered suitable for adult reading, but the domain of children), shaped major story/theme ideas, and shifted their ideas about the potential of mythology and faith. In writing aimed at scholars, adults, and young people, these two tweedy academics altered the course of storytelling and embraced the concept that fantasy writing for an adult audience was an accepted form of literature.

As an illustrator, I aim to communicate clear ideas using images made with pen and ink on paper. The heart of my practice has always been, simply, making drawings. But, I have come to realize the real activity at the center of the wheel lies beyond the drawing—in the act of translation. Similar to adaptation, a visual translation extends and transforms the existing content. An image that is paired with text is not merely a pictorial caption. Illustration fuses both word and image into a single whole; creating entirely new paths for accessing ideas, learning history, describing experiences, and communicating stories.

Garden of Joy

April Parviz, 2021

Most of my life when someone has told me that I was good at something, there’s been a louder voice in my head yelling about why that was a lie. That voice is gone for now, and I finally have the freedom to experience joy in my abilities, which I’m discovering is also bringing joy to others and even helping some to quiet that voice as well.

If you have that voice, please know that you are not the only one. That helps to make it go away a little. Then listen to the actual genuine human person talking to you. It takes courage to give a compliment, which they have just done. Now it’s your turn to also be courageous by accepting the compliment and using it as fertilizer for your garden of joy that you now have all the tools and knowledge to grow.

Cognitive distortion credit : discounting the positive

Bernadette Lamb

Joy on Linden Street (zine): 4x4” (printed booklet)

Bernadette Lamb

Orvieto and Assisi

ARTIST STATEMENT:

In my work, I habitually wonder at the beauty of the human person and creation. Memory and scenes with loved ones are often the crux of my poetry and fiction. Whether they are set in our world or another, the stories I write and illustrate are a collection of musings on the complicated business of growing up.

While reflecting on the things I have made in times of joy, I realized that they encapsulate a paradox: what is both explosive and ordinary. It is almost as if joy is a supernatural light bleeding through into the mundanity of our daily lives…but if we saw with God’s eyes, we might not call them so mundane. As G.K. Chesterton says, our lives are indeed filled with “moments of eternity.”

The wonder of making art comes in the smallest of moments: the little turn of phrase, the curved line or brushstroke. Joy is surprising, I’ve found, but rarely hidden out of sight! It is just when I heed the Lord’s invitation to look that I see it…

I rarely share my poetry with others, as it is often born of prayer in silent chapels and other moments of contemplative pause. Although the subjects are, at times, materially unremarkable, I love using words to paint a picture of their underlying beauty. Often, I will return to these “word-images” as a reminder of God’s generosity and faithfulness.

The zine “Joy on Linden Street” and my travel sketchbook pages are visual attempts to convey the whimsy of daily life.

In a small off-campus house in Arizona, my roommates (one of my brothers and two dear friends) and I lived rather ordinary college lives. Ordinary, yes—but I also find myself characterizing those years as halcyon days. We may have weathered intense study, a global pandemic, and personal struggles during that time, but we also found great cause for joy. Whether it was watching Star Trek over mugs of tea, repurposing an unsalvageable piano as a flower box, or playing host to a family dog, we fostered a little community which could take itself and the oddities of life lightly.

My sketchbook from time spent studying abroad in Orvieto, Italy was a delight to keep. I appreciated the chance to take stock of unusual (and some maybe not so unusual) moments in a way that was low-pressure creatively. It was also a fruitful exercise in moving back and forth between the processes of writing and illustration—both of which I pray will continue to bring me joy in the years to come!

Stars (flash fiction)

Bernadette Lamb, 2020

Stars are hungry.

At least, I imagine they are. How else would they feel, the way they coldly observe the earth and are always outshone by the moon? Hungry for attention, for the spotlight. But they’re always just “a blanket,” “a backdrop,” “a swathe.” All I’m saying is, if I were a star, I wouldn’t feel very important. No one cares about you if all they’re looking for is the constellation.

Karinn is all right. She and Dale try to make me feel special, like my place in the sky matters. I don’t really believe it, not when they have eight other mouths to feed and I’m the foster with the biggest stomach. Is that selfish? Saying I, the seventh-grade nobody, want more love than little Flora or Johnny or Gwen?

I half-heartedly kick the old pallet board behind the shed, almost wishing I was barefoot and would get splinters so I’d feel something in the cold. Winters upstate are no joke.

Squinting at the dark sky, I wonder if I should’ve paid more attention to astronomy in class. Maybe knowing a Greek hero or two would buy me...what?

Disturbed, I pick at the seams of my pockets. Family isn’t supposed to be a business transaction. Leave it to my folks to make me believe that sort of thing. Baby for some cash and a pack of cigarettes to keep it quiet? Sure. Why not.

“Caleb! Gwennie’s got drool all over Amelia’s scarf and we’re gonna go sledding tomorrow—” Flora skids around the house from the glow of the back porch. “And Mama’s washing it now but we still need a story so will you come?”

She heaves for breath and I crack a smile, taking her hand.

Maybe being part of a constellation isn’t so bad after all.

Gary Rubin

*Artist statement on page 41.

On Cloud Nine

Somewhere Over Idaho

Gary Rubin, 2000

She lay fetal-like with her head tucked securely in his lap

Gently with his fingertips he caressed her forehead her eyelids and around her eyes

Hair that had fallen to her mouth he carefully looped behind her ears

He tried to kiss her once I recall but he could not reach her with his lips So he kissed his own hand and placed it quietly upon her He loved her I could tell

I saw this in an airplane somewhere over Idaho

Henry Moyerman

ARTIST STATEMENT:

My artistic journey is a perpetual exploration of scale and perspective, delving into the interplay between these elements to convey the complex emotions I experience. I use thousands of LEGO bricks to create sculptures that can be continually broken down and sustainably reformed into new works of art. Through the building process, I externalize my emotions, shifting them from the intangible to the tangible.

On Secret:

Secret is a mosaic based on a picture of my partner smiling at me as I took her photograph. The artwork depicts a face with a half smile that appears to be watching over the viewers. The expression on the face suggests that the subject knows something that others do not know. The face is partially in shadow, symbolizing the part of ourselves that we keep hidden from the world. The act of photographing my partner brought her joy, and seeing the final mosaic brings me great joy.

Collecting Evidence

5/11 - A friend has discovered a love for woodworking. I saw his eyes sparkle with the joy of it. Then, as he verbally envisioned a new creative dream, the sparkle grew.

5/12 - A friend of mine, who runs a dance company, was working really hard to make sure a young mother could participate in an upcoming show. I know how much this woman loves to dance, and watching her work hard to make sure others can do what they love also, was really beautiful to me.

5/13 - A grown-up brought bubbles to the park. As she blew them, all the children were drawn to them and away with them. It was so lovely. You could tell that many of the children came from varying backgrounds. Sometimes I think people might feel like the word diversity is overused, but when I see it in such an authentic setting, I understand why some of us run so passionately to it.

5/14 - Me again. Standing in the park at 6:30am. Staring up into the tree to see what the Mississippi Kite will do next. (It flew out of the tree with a large twig in its beak and flew to another tree.)

5/15 - A line of neatly and recently planted marigolds trails down the top of the hill to greet me on the sidewalk.

5/16 - On the way to the car, a line of three-year-olds waved at us from across the street.

5/17 - My niece graduated and gave a really lovely and genuine speech to her mother, who home-schooled her the whole way through.

5/18 - My three-year-old brought the new hand towel up to her daddy’s cheek, to feel its soft newness.

Continued on page 116.

Childhood

Ice Cream Soup

April Parviz, 2024

My niece just turned seventeen.

I ask, “what did you get?”

She says, “ten dollars, from Plop Plop.” (Plop Plop is what she calls her grandpa.)

I ask what she will buy.

“Ice cream...”

“That’s great! Ice cream is so yummy. What a great idea!”

“...for my family.”

My heart is ice cream soup.

Sarah Armbrust

ARTIST STATEMENT:

Curiosity, captures my initial experience of joy in finding a very strange piece of wood. I stumbled upon it while looking for scraps in my studio’s woodpile, and I was struck by the perfect hole drilled through the central top part of the board. I had such a wonderful time trying to piece together a wooden plank’s history. I decided to capture this moment on that very same wooden plank, so I could invite others to pause, and find a little joy in a simple piece of wood hole as well.

Height, follows the same story. My professor enjoyed Curiosity so much, he gave me two long, thin Masonite pieces to see what I could come up with. I pondered their size and without hesitation, stacked them on

Sarah Armbrust

top of each other to see how tall they would stand. Then, like a middle school boy after a growth spurt, I stood on the tips of my toes to see if I could reach the top. Again I derived a great burst of joy from such a simple interaction, so I decided to paint it. Height is a life sized self portrait pondering the ageold question of “am I tall enough to reach that?”

The Previous Lives of Used Books

Théa Rosenburg, 2024

Years ago, I approached a local bookseller as he sat behind his counter, vigorously scrubbing the cover of a well-trampled book with some sauce that took the grit off—voila!—like magic.

“What is it?” I asked, probably bouncing a baby in a carrier and possibly holding a toddler by one hand.

He twitched his eyebrows at me and rumbled, “Lighter fluid.”

“Oh,” I said. I couldn’t imagine cleaning the cover of a new-to-us picture book with lighter fluid and then handing it to my toddler to munch on. Which might have occurred to him, too, because he twitched those eyebrows my way once more and (still scrubbing) said, “Or lemon oil.”

That bookstore was an odd one: it occupied what had once been a house, so small rooms extended back warren-like from the entryway. Nonfiction and cookbooks filled a narrow, lowceilinged sunroom to the left; literature lined the walls of a small bedroom to the right. The hallway shelves held books that didn’t fit anywhere else: a few dozen “esoteric” books, a smattering of celebrity biographies, a shelf here and there dedicated to obscure branches of science. The owner told me once that he’d deliberately shelved the romance novels near the back bathroom, in a dimly lit corner, because who wants them? And he shrugged.

That bookstore is gone now—along with Latte Books, Cozy Corner Books, and Michael’s—but back when the owner was still padding from room to room in his stocking feet, I liked to explore the corners of the warren, finding odd genres in little closets and bringing home books with other people’s names in the cover.

Because that’s my favorite part of collecting used books: they belonged to someone else first. One of the first things I do when I buy a used book is flip to the inside front cover where, on a good day, I’ll find a name—inscribed in ball point or pencil or subtly translucent fountain pen—or an ex libris sticker or an address stamp.

On a better day, I’ll find an inscription, though these are bittersweet, since the book has only reached my shelves because whoever received that heartfelt note no longer wants (or can keep) the book. I recently found a book inscribed to someone who shared my name which, if you are also named Théa, you know is an incredibly rare occurrence. Naturally, I bought that book.

But on the very best days, I find a bookmark—some little remnant of the previous owner’s life pressed between the pages. A complementary bookmark from some other bookstore, perhaps, or a folded receipt, or a business card printed either on vellum or on paper so well-handled that it’s grown translucent.

Once: a photograph, a candid shot of two children. Once: a wallet-sized 1980 calendar from the Hallmark in Anchorage. Once: a pressed leaf. Once: an ink drawing I’d done during my riot grrrl days. I felt sure I hadn’t given it to my dad—it was too moody and weird for that—but here it was, preserved in his book like it was a pretty row of tulips drawn when I was six.

What a reader tucks in a book’s pages tells you one thing about them; what they highlight and underline and star and dialogue with in the margins, though—that tells you something else. I have friends who cringe when they hear the word “underline,” and I understand—and yet, I do it compulsively and unapologetically. And when I encounter someone else’s notes as I read, I find that my reading feels suddenly less solitary and more communal.

One of my favorite books was a gift from a friend—a book on writing by two professors we both studied under in college. She gave me a copy years ago for my birthday, but it was only once I began reading it that I realized she’d given me her copy:

I recognized her handwriting in the margins and her stars alongside certain passages. I’m re-reading that book right now, and I love the layers its built up, between her notes and mine, made in separate passes over the years as I’ve read and re-read.

The books with my maiden name in the cover, or the ones with my mom’s maiden name, or that English grammar, bound in blue, with my grandmother’s name on the title page—these books become more to our family than the stories they contain. They are the strata of family history, a map of where we have been and what we have read.

This is why our girls have their own ex libris stamps and why, when I gift my daughters books, I always inscribe the cover. Maybe one day, these books will end up in a used-book store, sure, but maybe—like the copy my mom gave me of Amy the Dancing Bear—they’ll end up well-handled almost to the point of translucency, loved by another generation or two of our family.

It gives me a certain pleasure to smooth the dust and smudges off the covers of used books—I use lemon oil, and to me it’s the smell of a new-to-us book preparing to join our library. But what’s inside stays: the names and the inscriptions, the bookmarks and the dogears and the underlined passages—and the history.

Dear Théa,

As I read this book, I started to think of you. As I finished the book—Amy was you. I love you dearly.

Love, Mom 7th birthday, 1990

Susan Ferguson

MATILDA NOTE:

“My name is Matilda Ummbie. Let me tell you a little something about myself so we can get to know each other better. I’m from a little rural town in Pennsylvania. I was from Pittsburgh originally, but when the pandemic started I quit my teaching job and moved to Mill Run, where only a handful of people live. It’s a pretty place. Most people know it as the town close to Fallingwater, the Frank Lloyd Wright house. I raise a garden, and I have three cats and a little dog. During the winter, I crochet baby blankets that I donate to a children’s hospital in Pittsburgh. I have two grown-up children and four grandchildren.”

Matilda Ummbie

Susan Ferguson

EUNA NOTE: “Hi. I’m Euna Ummbie. I’m a little princess. And I love puppies and cats. I want to be a puppy vet when I grow up. And a cat vet. I love puppies and cats that much! In the meantime, I go to school. I’m in first grade. I like art. I draw puppies and cats in art. And sometimes trees and my house. What kinds of things do you draw? I used to live in a house in a forest, until the snow came last year. Then we had to move because the snow was too high for the car to drive in. If we would have had puppies living with us, they would have disappeared in the snow. Now I’m looking for a new family. I hope they will have puppies and cats. Do you like puppies and cats?”

Susan Ferguson

SYMONE NOTE: “Hi. I’m Symone Ummbie. You probably can’t tell by looking at me, but I’m a genius. I’m going to be a doctor some day. My grandma is a doctor and my dad was a doctor, so it’s kind of a genetic thing that I’m going to become a doctor like them. Unless of course I find something else more exciting to do. Right now, though, I’m studying all the normal stuff that kids study in hool. And I’m learning to play the clarinet. My fingers need to grow a bit more, but it’s a fun thing to do. I play soccer with my friends when I’m not being a brainiac. My life is never dull. I’m always getting involved in some sort of big adventure.”

Susan Ferguson

WALLACE NOTE:

”My name is Wallace Ummbie. Here is a little something about me so we can get to know each other better. I’m from a little town called Prescott, kind of up in the desert in Arizona. Me and my sibs lived there with my mom until she decided she needed to be somewhere else, so that’s why I am looking for a new family. I have my whole life ahead of me, but right now I’m thinking I would like to be a landscaper and gardener, like for a park, ‘cause I like digging in the dirt. I also want to learn how to play the trumpet someday. My favorite place to go is the natural history museum in Mesa. They have dinosaurs there, and dinosaurs rock!”

Wallace Ummbie

Susan Ferguson

SCOOTER NOTE:

”My name is Scooter Ummbie. Ima tell you something about me so we can get to know each other better. Ima crazy about cars! Ever since I was little, I’ve been saving up to buy me a crazy superduper car that I could race in the Grand Prix or at Nascar or someplace. So far, I’ve saved up $412. That’s a big deal. When I was really little, I collected Hot Wheels. I have about 100! My grandpa gave me a bunch of his old Transformer cars last year, and he took me to see

the Indy 500, which was very cool. Seeing that race made me sure Ima be a race car driver when I grow up. Or maybe somebody that builds race cars. That would be amazing! Ima pretty amazing, too!”

Scooter Ummbie

ARTIST STATEMENT:

Digging my way out of depression and a creative block meant pushing back against the complicated tangle of overwrought thoughts that put me there: competition, anxiety, neediness, fear, insecurity, and on and on. As I redirected myself, I recalled the kinds of things that in the past had made me smile and laugh and feel happy in the way a child feels happy. I thought about the times I had intuitively shared happiness and joy with my children and grandchildren -- by making up characters and creating silly stories about their lives. Out of this process the Ummbie doll family was born. Each Ummbie doll is unconcerned about perfection or fitting in or looking just like all of the other dolls. Each Ummbie carries with it their own style and a simple story about their personal search for activities and opportunities that will bring them contentment. Each Ummbie who has found a forever home has brought joy to their new family and friends. And that is what makes each Ummbie beautiful.

My artwork is all about a variety of colors and textures. Most of my artwork relies on bright colors to influence viewer reaction and response. Bright colors are also more satisfying to me as I create. I also want my audience to be able to visualize the surfaces and “feel” the textures of the different materials I use. Some of my oversized pieces are exceptionally shaggy and messy, which also creates a sense of movement that I find pleasing.

The swing

Bernadette Lam b, 2020

Isn’t it something

How the sun shines through strands of hair

Like the warm glow behind an earlobe?

Strokes of paint can’t

Quite convey the feeling of Weightlessness

When rusted chains press into palms

And the white sun blinds as The known world slips Away

Do you remember when your worst enemy Was a terrorizing cloud of mosquitos and Not

The crippling fear that You are not enough?

Bryce Holt

ARTIST SHORT STORY:

May 7, 2024 - When I was younger, I dreamed of going to sea. I envisioned pirates and kraken, sirens and far-flung lands. Whenever I told friends or family of my passion, they said I was silly. It didn’t take long until I packed that dream away in a little bottle, and left it just east of my heart.

So I became an accountant, and my greatest adventure was the week-long vacation I would take each year to Florida or the Rocky Mountains, and once I even went to Europe. Then everyone told me how sensible I was, and that brought me respect.

But it did not bring me joy. Joy only came when I would take a random Wednesday off from work, ensuring that not one member of my family would be home. Alone, I would uncork that bottle, slip inside, and explore the seas as the white sails billowed above me. I met all sorts of creatures in my adventures, made friends I could revisit each year, and even met the love of my life. She would visit me in dreams every now and then, but she was the most real when I went to her in the bottle.

If I told your brother or sister about this, they would think it absurd, just like everyone else did. But I see adventure in your eyes. Don’t bottle it up. Go live your adventure every day. Leave this family behind, and send me postcards when you get to a port. Don’t let them kill the explorer in you. They live to kill dreams, so ruin their day by living yours.

Collecting Evidence Continued

5/19 - My daughters burst out of the car to hug their grandpa, who they hadn’t seen in a month and a half.

5/20 - My mom visits from out of town with gifts for my girls.

5/21 - My dad visits from out of town with lettuce for us all.

5/22 - Leaving the art museum, a friend and I stopped to watch a sea of mysterious white fluff sailing on the gentle wind. She took a video. Then she showed me a video of petals falling outside her apartment on a walk the other day.

5/23 - Colorful graffiti on a train slowly moving past my waiting car.

5/24 - Me - crying for 30 minutes as I printed funeral programs for a baby who never breathed air - cleaning the office as I waited for the prints to finish - discovering a half-made gift from a friend, the aunt, to me, and our five friends; a lovely documentation of our friendship.

5/25 - Two friends laugh about emojis. One laughs so hard, she almost cries. Two hours earlier, she said the eulogy for her baby.

- - -

I don’t know how it’s possible for us to not lose our minds through things like this. I don’t. But I also do. It’s because Jesus hold us and carries us when we can’t move. And then He gives us the strength to smile, and even laugh. - April - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Continued on page 144.

Flip book over to continue with part two.

PART TWO

Parenthood

Diane Bush

ARTIST STATEMENT:

Inspired by great street photographers of the 50s and 60s, these works are a tribute to that genre and that time.

Joy is often spontaneous, and that is what I was seeking when I took these photographs.

Diane Bush

Paula, Manchester

Diane Bush

Hide and Seek

Tiia Corzine, 2024

We play. You hide.

“Find me! Find me!”, you shout. Your shrieks of laughter fill the air, and I am found.

Single Mum in Salford

Delaney Rogers

*Artist statement on page 61.

Not a lot, Just Forever

Mary-Jo Okawa

*Artist statement on page 38.

Mama’s Favorite

Bryce Holt

ARTIST STATEMENT:

Apr 17, 2024 - My wife had a high-risk pregnancy. When my daughter was born, she was undersized and was taken directly to a heat lamp and weight table. No skin-to-skin with mom. No being held by dad. She needed professional care in order to ensure her survival and proper development.

In this painting, I placed a baby in a futuristic incubator surrounded by a surreal environment of plant life and light bulbs to symbolize nature and technology combining to help the tiniest of babies grow into healthy children.

Research has shown that from 300 BCE to 1900 CE, 48% of children did not survive beyond puberty. By 1950, advancements in medical care dropped the global child mortality rate to 27%, and today that number is 4.3%. In the past 100 years alone, science has allowed hundreds of millions of children to reach adulthood who would have otherwise perished.

This painting recognizes the medical professionals who care for our children. ObGyns. Neonatologists. Pediatricians. Specialists working with children. And the hundreds of thousands of nurses who care for our kids. We are blessed by you as you push advancements in care forward for the future of humankind and the preservation of our children. You all are beautiful! Thank you for giving my daughter, and all the children who need care, the opportunity to develop and grow.

Joy and the Old Philosophers

Benjamin Parviz, 2024

One of the times that I felt the most joy was in 2012 when the Polyphonic Spree played a show in the Duck Room at Blueberry Hill in St. Louis. The Polyphonic Spree are a band from Texas that variously utilizes a mix of 10, 15, 20, or more performers: trumpets, harps, tambourines, French horns, and more, with guitars and drums, of course. The music is forcefully joyful, energetic, optimistic, uplifting, and dance inducing, with lyrics often involving themes of love and light. I really love the Polyphonic Spree. I have seen them perform live several times and would be eager to do so again.

Another experience that comes to mind is October 27, 2011, which was game 6 of the World Series between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Texas Rangers. The Rangers led the best-ofseven series 3-2. In the bottom of the 9 th inning, the Cardinals were down 7-5 and were only one out away from losing the game and the series. David Freese hit a deep triple to right field to tie the game and to send it into extra innings. In the bottom of the 11 th , Freese would hit a walk off home run to win the game and send the series to game 7, where the Cardinals would beat the Rangers and win the World Series. But Game 6. Oh man, Game 6. Joe Buck’s call of Freese’s game winning home run—“And we will see you…tomorrow night!”—was pure ecstasy. Remembering it even now makes me emotional.

Joy is a tricky emotion because, though it is pure pleasure, it is typically mixed with other less pleasant emotions. Game 6 was a rollercoaster of joy and anxiety as the Cardinals found themselves on the chopping block multiple times. The joy of the Polyphonic Spree concert was tinted with sadness of the fleetingness of the

experience. Indeed, the Polyphonic Spree have not returned to St. Louis since and rarely play shows outside of Dallas.

The mixture of unpleasant emotions with joy characterizes my memory of some of the most important moments in my life. The joy of the birth of my oldest child was mixed with the fear of labor complications that endangered the lives of both my wife and my daughter, and with the confusion of the baby being whisked to the NICU before we even got to see her face. The joy of the birth of my second child was mixed with the fear and confusion of Covid-19, and the uncertainty of what we would experience in the hospital. For some time during the pregnancy, we were not even sure that I would be able to be in the delivery room with my wife. Probably the closest experience of pure and unmixed joy that I have had is that of watching my soon-to-be wife walk down the aisle on our wedding day. That day was mostly a blur, and, though it was only a little over eight years ago, I fail to remember most of it. The memory of my wife walking down the aisle is still clear, but as I remember it now the joy of the memory is mixed with awareness that it will fade. Whether by time, disease, or disability, that memory of pure and unmixed joy will one day be gone.

Joy is an emotion, or, as the old philosophers used to call it, a passion. Passions are called “passion” because they are something that happen to you. You are a passive agent in the experience of the emotion, an experience that must be endured or even suffered. We often have little control over our passions. Giddy laughter can burst forth at the most inappropriate times and painful grief can come about by the most unexpected sources. Passions are fickle and unreliable. Though we have little control over our own emotions, it seems as though they are often under the control of things outside ourselves. One’s genes might make one to be more stoic or more sensitive. One’s culture teaches different emotional responses to different objects. Passions are easily manipulable, as contemporary advertising and politics know all too well. As addicts will readily report, joy can come from objects that are bad and bad for us, even destructive to us. In this light, joy is not something to be specially honored.

Joy causes pleasure that seems like an unambiguous good. Yet joy responses, like all passions, are inherited, taught, manipulable, and potentially harmful to ourselves and others.

There needs, then, to be a distinction between joy and happiness. Joy is a passion, but happiness is a state of being, or a condition of one’s whole existence. For example, it is easy to imagine little moments of joy that break into an otherwise unhappy and miserable life. If one can experience joy and still be miserable, then joy and happiness are not the same thing. Joy and happiness are distinct from one another, but they are related. Joy and happiness seem to be like a square and a rectangle. All happiness is joyful, but not all joy is happiness. And though joy may be good, it is happiness that we are all after.

If happiness necessarily involves joy, then perhaps joy points us toward happiness. One sense of this could mean that objects that cause us to experience joy—concerts and baseball games— might be the sort of objects that could be the foundation of a happy life if only we experienced more of it. If the Polyphonic Spree show caused me such joy, then perhaps I ought to commit myself to seeing every show that they perform. Similarly, perhaps I ought to buy season tickets to the Cardinals and be first in line for postseason tickets whenever they are available. The problem with this approach to happiness is that these joy-inducing objects are never sure. Today the Polyphonic Spree rarely play shows and rarely outside of Texas, and approaching the 2024 All-Star break, the Cardinals are not a good baseball team. If the joy of the Polyphonic Spree or of the Cardinals is the foundation of my happy life, then I can’t be very happy, or perhaps not happy at all.

It is possible that these joy objects are too particular and that objects on a more general and stable level are better suited to happiness. Rather than the Polyphonic Spree, maybe music generally is the object of joy that can be the foundation of my happy life. Yet even here, the possibility of hearing and memory loss produces joy mixed with fear as I recognize that the music that is the foundation of my happy life can be stolen from me.

Even the joy of my family is mixed with the fear that any one of us could die at any moment. Objects of joy that are contingent and fading must always produce experiences of joy that are mixed with unpleasant emotions: anxiety about how to protect the joy we experience, anxiety about how to experience more joy than we currently do, and fear over the impending loss of the object that brings joy.

Happiness seems as though it must involve joy, but it also seems as though real happiness must not involve things like anxiety or fear. We all desire to be happy, but it is difficult to know how to attain happiness. Joy points us toward happiness, but the objects of joy that produce joy themselves cannot give happiness. This is the challenge that we all face. In our search for happiness, we surround ourselves with the objects that produce experiences of joy—material objects of pleasure, transcendent objects like art and music, the people that we love, the commitments that are at the roots of our identity—and yet these can become not the foundation of our happiness but the foundation of our misery. My wife knows this. She always says that she has to be the one to die first. This is at the same time a statement that communicates the joy that she experiences from me and from our marriage and the fear that she experiences as she anticipates the moment when through death do us part.

There may be another way that joy points us to happiness. If it is the case that the problem of joy is that we often find joy in contingent and fading objects, then maybe joy points us to some other object that is neither contingent nor fading, but which can truly be the foundation of happiness unmixed with any unpleasant passion. If such an object exists, then it must be something that produces an experience of joy when one has it, and that one is able to continue to enjoy without fear of losing it or anxiety about needing to protect it or possess more of it. It would be possible of producing abundant joy for everyone such that the other’s joy does not come at my expense, nor mine at his. It would have to be an object that is good and good for me. It would have to be an object the joy of which time, fading memory, and even death could not threaten.

It is possible that this kind of happiness cannot exist. It is possible that “joy” simply refers to pleasure and that “happiness” is an example of what some recent philosophers have called an “empty signifier,” meaning that it points us toward nothing with its own objective meaning; everyone gets to supply the concept of happiness with his own content. If the recent philosophers are correct that all that exists is material and everything that occurs is physical, then all that exists are fading and contingent objects from which to find joy. Happiness would be either impossible or meaningless in any objective and true sense.

On the other hand, it might be that our concept of happiness as pure and unfading joy is reason to question the conclusions of the recent philosophers. It may be that the reason why we can conceive of the possibility of pure and unfading joy is because there does, in fact, exist an object that can produce such joy. Perhaps our longing for this joy points us outside of the material and physical world to a transcendent object capable of producing transcendent joy.

The old philosophers had a name for this object: God, the infinite and eternal, unchanging, unfading good, the good that brings true joy and happiness. If joy points us to happiness, and happiness points us to God, then the little moments of true joy that break into the world are themselves signs of God, a God who breaks into the world and who’s in-breaking brings Joy to the World.

Taylor Yocom

Tuesday May 14, 2020 (flowers), Friday May 15, 2020 (flower), Monday May 18, 2020 (flower), Tuesday June 9, 2020 (flower), Tuesday June 16, 2020 (flower), and Tuesday June 30, 2020 (flower)

ARTIST STATEMENT:

When I went out to grocery shop right as the 2020 pandemic hit, my mom texted me to always have fresh flowers around. As quarantine hit, I didn’t have the energy to keep up with the

Taylor Yocom

projects I was working on in the months prior. I committed to a daily practice of creating a collage of flowers in a vase - and another collage of the scraps. This series touches on the ways productivity and creativity was carried out in different ways for me over the year 2020.

Tuesday May 14, 2020 (scraps), Friday May 15, 2020 (scraps), Tuesday May 18, 2020 (scraps), Tuesday June 9, 2020 (scraps), Tuesday June 16, 2020 (scraps), and Tuesday June 30, 2020 (scraps)

Jill Katherine Kuanfung

All That She Carried

ARTIST STATEMENT:

When I made this work, I was thinking about the phrase “the joys of motherhood” which often pops into my head in a very tongue-in-cheek manner. Motherhood, as I experience it, is very misunderstood, existential, and painful. All of the joy of it is also infused with the most devastating parts of being human and witnessing what it is to be human, to watch humans enter the world and transform. I thought, “what does it look like to create work about the joy of being a mother?” My answer is that it would include joy in a raw form--which is to say that the joy would be encrusted with longing, emptiness, awe. The devastation of the body, the forgetting of the self. Joy as unequivocal change. My work takes the form of a zine because, to me, the zine represents accessibility. Zines are a grassroots way to inform the public; they are for everyone. Motherhood, though it is a vastly individual and personal experience, is also something that has been essentialized, put on a pedestal, watered down, and distorted. My zine is meant to go against that. Sometimes I imagine zines with little bits of truth in them falling from the sky or hidden around town, full of forbidden information. My zine is just one small truth to help other mothers feel seen.

Oxygen Mask

by April Parviz, 2022

I was walking on water and flying on the wings of an eagle.

Then I got sick for over a month. And so did my family, which included two little girls under the age of three. It was a string of sinus infection, possible Covid, and then flu ending in debilitating depression after finally hyperventilating for fifteen minutes one morning.

My spirit was crushed. I felt it could never be revived. I couldn’t function for a week and a half. It was more than just physical exhaustion. It was also my soul. My soul felt “wrecked” and “shredded” were the two words that kept coming to mind effortlessly. It was the only thing that was effortless.

Why does this happen to people like me? Our spirits are weak. They are weak because we overwork them with extreme sensitivity and empathy. I know many other people like me. We are wonderful. We can feel the depth of another person’s soul more deeply, it seems, than they themselves can sometimes. But if we’re not careful, we can really hurt ourselves doing it.

As a mother and a person with this type of personality, it is important for me to focus most, if not all, of this “skill” on them. If I don’t, I literally find myself suffocating.

I had never hyperventilated in my life. Then one night I read a positive pregnancy test for the first time. My husband arrived home that night to find me on the floor of the kitchen, unable to breath and equally unable to resolve the situation. I don’t know what would have happened if he didn’t come home when he did.

I have now hyperventilated four other times since then. Each time, I believe, the dominating thought in my mind was how I’m not a good enough mother.

- - -

I often see dependent relationships inside the metaphor of the safety instructions at the beginning of an airplane flight. Passengers are instructed to put the breathing mask on themselves before they put it on children. This always sounds so selfish but it also makes complete sense.

It’s harder to see the moments in parenthood where the “selfishness” makes sense. But if I was better at seeing it, maybe I wouldn’t hyperventilate anymore. I’ll have to keep an eye out for those moments.

- - -

I have figured out something, though. And I’m writing it now so I don’t forget.

Last week, a friend and I reflected on how I need to put the oxygen mask on myself first.

Since that conversation, I’ve been asking myself lots of questions.

“But what if I can’t figure out how to put it on?”

“What if I take too long to put it on?”

“What if I don’t put it on in time?”

But I wasn’t asking “but what will I breathe?”

That’s because in the metaphor, the answer is obvious. When you put on an oxygen mask, then you breathe oxygen.

- - -

After a week and half of debilitating depression, I didn’t believe the oxygen mask was working. All I could do was sit, an empty shell with no emotion or care to give my children. I had been physically “resting” but it wasn’t doing anything. I was praying and praying for God to help me, but I was trapped in this frozen state of subtle pain. I could feel myself squeezing all of my veins inside of me. How? I don’t know. I suppose this is what we mean when we say we’re “putting too much pressure on ourselves.”

- - -

Then one afternoon, I received some Bach music in the mail. I had ordered it a week prior. My soul was so desolate, when my mind suggested playing music, the idea sounded foreign. I think Bach and my mind knew that playing music would be good. But my heart couldn’t believe that anyone would even suggest such a notion. It was almost insulting, if I could feel insults, which at this point, I could not.

That night, my children went to bed early and my husband needed to work. I was alone. But it was too early to go to sleep. I lay in my bed as my heart continued to slowly grow heavier and heavier. I prayed “should I go play my flute?” But before I even started the prayer, a loud resounding “YES” came into my mind as more of a foundation to the question than as a response.

I reluctantly uncrumpled out of bed and moved into the other room with my flute and music in hand. I didn’t really know how I was going to play, since up until this point, I believed that my heart was the gasoline that fueled my music, and if I was running on empty, how could I spare anything for my flute?

I began to play. I had never played most of these tunes before. But I had heard them my whole life. And many of them were the reasons I chose to pursue flute playing twenty years earlier.

I was not only able to play. I played, possibly the most beautifully I’ve ever played.

This was my oxygen mask.

I didn’t need physical rest. I needed spiritual rest. Of course I did. I’m only just putting that together now as I type. I knew that what I was experiencing wasn’t a physical exhaustion. That was the one thing I knew. That my soul was “wrecked’ and “shredded” right? So the “oxygen” that I needed was not physical rest. It was spiritual rest. And I find spiritual rest in music. I always have. I think everyone does.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Thank you Bach.

Soli Deo gloria indeed, my friend. Soli Deo gloria indeed.

Thank you God.

Sara Maichel

ARTIST STATEMENT:

Slowing down is easy for me. I like to meander. I never had to be told to stop and smell the flowers, it’s what I love best to do. Being tied down is hard for me. What if you plan an event and something you want to do more comes up later? Best not to make plans so you can stop whenever you want. Having a baby was scary for me. There was no return policy, there was no way out. And 3 months after our baby’s birth, I can definitely say it’s by far been the hardest and most miserable thing I’ve ever done. But it has also been the most amazing thing I’ve ever been a part of. I used to think happiness came through being free, but I now believe that joy comes through commitment. I haven’t found joy in the struggles, I’m not spiritual enough for that, but joy has found me where I least expected to find it - in being tied down.

Joy is something I have been searching for probably the last 15 years of my life. I have read and reread C S Lewis’s Surprised by Joy and have asked God for His unquenchable joy so many times. I’m not exactly sure when it started, maybe it was when I met my husband, but a small light of joy began to glow in my heart. It grew over the 2 1/2 years Joel and I dated and were married. I was terrified when I got pregnant that changing our lives would snuff out the new joy I had found and so carefully guarded. But instead, the life of our daughter Sallie-Cecilia has brought blinding joy into my life.

I took this photo of my daughter Sallie-Cecilia laying in her dear father’s hand a month after her birth. She was so small, but already her life had begun to bring new meaning to mine. She was my daughter - I was her mommy. I am still shocked by the gravity of those two statements. Suddenly my life purpose was no longer ambiguous. It was to pour into this little life. To keep alive, to create a home for, to love and protect and teach this little person to love God. God calls Himself our father. He says He loves us like His children. He gave His actual child to make us His. And the gravity of those statements are beyond my comprehension. But if they are true, then God Himself is promising to watch over us with (if this is even possible) greater love than I have even for Sallie. We are safe in our dear heavenly Father’s hand.

Debra Disman

ARTIST NOTE:

This work speaks to the safety, security and stories we seek from the Mother, as we form our identities as women, as people. My mother, a ceramicist, made me tiny masks of clay upon request when I began working in book form, complete with sewing holes, so that I could incorporate her work into mine.

ARTIST STATEMENT:

Springing initially from the form of the book, my work traverses textiles, sculpture, installation and performance to push the familiar into forms that arrest, baffle and bewilder, while simultaneously offering moments of rest, solace and contemplation.

I employ the materiality of fiber to engage the senses and invite altered ways of experiencing the world and our place in it, both soothing and confounding the eye with uneven visual repetition. Through this means of stabilizing and destabilizing, I hope to instigate fundamental questions that encourage an examination of what we think we know and are.

Devoted to material labor and the inherent substance, sensibility and tactility of the handmade, I love nothing more than to be immersed in material manipulation, which inevitably yields some kind of distilled meaning. The evocative, visceral and profoundly physical quality of materials drives my work, permeating and charging it with emotional resonance. I am compelled to bundle, braid and bunch, tangle, twine, twist and tie, layer, loop, wrap, wind, stitch, sew, knot and glue, as well as paint, draw and write, intuitively developing, complicating and disrupting the surface to add levels of meaning.

Often, the meaning becomes clear during or after this process rather than as a directive beforehand, as if it had been there all along, and simply surfaced during the act of making.

Collecting Evidence Continued

5/26 - Our bible study leader laughing as we teased him.

5/27 - Petunia skirts with clover heads:

5/28 - A friend of mine, who plays piano and directs choir, got lost playing piano on a particularly wonderful part of a piece, during choir practice. It was like he forgot the choir was there. I’ve never seen him do that before. He’s usually very on task and sensitive to respecting people’s time.

5/29 - “I love my truck” sticker on a Prius.

5/30 - A stranger and I share a moment of solidarity when we both admit to our high anxiety of shipping while we are treated very well at our local Fedex, where neither of us ever go. Michelle takes very good care of me. I go home and fill out a survey on how nice she is, which I also rarely do.

5/31 - Today my friend posted a bunch of photos of the sky on facebook. Then she practically apologized for posting so many photos of the sky on facebook. Don’t apologize for posting photos of the sky on facebook : )

Continued on page 203.

Creation

Melissa Gwyn

Melissa Gwyn

Flora Boundary

Melissa Gwyn

ARTIST STATEMENT:

During the pandemic I joined the national effort to minimize clutter and started with my studio. I came upon a box of small paintings of bouquets I’d made in the late nineties, a period in which I struggled to recover from grief and creative inertia. Each painting documented a page of the National Garden Club weekly calendar. My paintings were an homage to the older women who bore witness my condition and implored me to grow flowers. That was good advice, but I had no garden, so I cleaved to that floral register to help reorient myself to calendrical time and my painting discipline. I made one painting per week. With each modest painting I eased myself out of creative paralysis and eventually let go of the weekly ritual to create large paintings about nature, reproduction and my appetite for visual pleasure.

Although I rarely shared those modest bouquet paintings, I valued them as a tribute to Manet’s and Fantin Latour’s flower painting, and as a remembrance of the wisdom shared by elderly women who sought joy and regeneration in their gardens.

However, as I looked at that box of paintings in 2021, each piece seemed lacking to me, so I decided to work back into them, deploying the gardener’s equivalent of “interplanting”. Working back into the surface of those paintings 25 years later, during a time in which people around the world were dealing with grief and isolation, enabled me to tap into the joy of creative inquiry I’d lost and found in the past.

I often think about those kind older women who mentored me to find solace by growing a garden. I now have a garden where I find composure and compositions for new paintings. My garden also served a lab where I taught color theory to my students during the pandemic. It is also the place where I hold “office hours” for visits with current and former students.

Here is one of my Color Labs: www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5v9JpRMjtE&t=7s

Debra Disman

ARTIST NOTE: Narrow Bridge is an “Artists’ Book”, which can be opened to about 16+” wide, but can be displayed opened to 8-10”, standing upright. It is a flag book structure and is made of board, paper, linen thread, and fabric. It says, “All the world is a narrow bridge, the important thing is not to fear.”

*Full artist statement on page 143.

Narrow Bridge

CURATORIAL NOTE:

I love the message in Narrow Bridge. When I first read it, I wasn’t sure how closely it spoke to the idea of joy. But as I started developing this “Creation” chapter, which is all about trees and flowers and gardening, I realized this piece was exactly what I needed to hear right now, in order to experience joy as a gardener.

I’ve been a gardener for about eight years now. My gardening habits ebb and flow every year, depending on where I am as a parent, and where I am in my journey with fear, regarding our swiftly changing environment. I often find myself despairing and crying when I see how quickly the world is changing. It’s really hard not to notice, when you’re a gardener. This experience can often cause me to “freeze” in my gardening.

As I’ve started engaging in the readings of various positive naturalist gardeners, I’ve been feeling very encouraged to continue to channel my joy and love into the soil I’ve been given to care for. The more I do that, the less I fear, and the more I am able to join in the community of other people living in this same place as me, who have their hands in the beautiful dirt too, connecting us through some sort of invisible and lovely underground grid.

As a person who believes in God, this is a game I’ve been playing my whole life. I fear something terrible that I know I have some control over, and then I can’t move because I don’t see any way I can fix it. Then I remember that the first commandment is to love

and fear God above all things. This doesn’t mean we should be afraid of the malicious or “badguy” sorts of things He’ll do. He doesn’t do that sort of thing. It just means, we need to remember that He is bigger and more powerful than anything. And He is also in control. And He is doing good things.

One of the good things He has done for me is to introduce me to the writings of Robin Wall Kimmerer. Through her, and many other naturalist gardeners, I’ve received many encouraging words helping “unfreezing” me from despair. Then I plug my fingers back into the soil with peace, love, and joy, and join in the work of my neighbors, who also find joy in the soil.

“But it is not enough to weep for our lost landscapes; we have to put our hands in the earth to make ourselves whole again. Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair. Not because I have my head in the sand, but because joy is what the earth gives me daily and I must return the gift.”

—Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants

Habitat OasisThe Gardens at Holy Cross

by Patrick Greenwald, Ongoing

Patrick Greenwald is a horticulturist from St. Louis Missouri. Having obtained a Master’s in Plant Science degree from Missouri State University, he has worked in horticulture for the past 11 years. Inspired by St. Louis City’s horticulture past, he founded the Gardens at Holy Cross in March of 2015 with the creation of two original display gardens. In the years following, an azalea woodland garden was added in 2016, Miami Street Glade in 2019, the Ohio Street Woodland Slope in 2021, and the Ohio Street Savanna in 2022. He specializes in native Missouri rock gardens which provides a habitat Oasis for wildlife. Still actively involved in the maintenance of the Gardens at Holy Cross, he currently is a Senior Horticulturist at Longwood Gardens, Kennett Square, PA.

March, 2015: Non-native Fescue turf grass covers 1.9% of the U.S and supports very little wildlife. 1 When the first garden at Holy Cross was established, the greenspaces were dominated by turf grass and juniper covered garden spaces. In a span of 9 years, now over 15% of the potential green spaces have been converted to wildlife supporting landscapes.

May, 2020: Established in 2019, the Woodland Gardens are dominated by Flame azaleas (Rhododendron calendulaceum) and native spring ephemeral wildflowers. Woodland ephemeral flowers take advantage of early spring sunlight shining through the branches of deciduous tree canopy; providing nectar and pollen rewards to early emerging pollinators and migrating hummingbirds.

May, 2020: There are three native lilies to Missouri, Prairie lily (Lilium philadelphicum) being the smallest and is very rarely found in Missouri.2

When beginning a gardening project, try to remember that “We are Natures Advocates” and creating a habitat in the middle of a concrete jungle can bridge the gap between remnant wildlands, creating a nature corrido that includes your own backyard.

June, 2020: Michigan lilies (Lilium michiganense) are much more commonly found in Missouri. Native lilies provide stunning beauty to the garden while providing a nectar source for hummingbirds, moths, and butterflies.3

June, 2020: Wildlife abounds on the Miami Street Glade 1 year after conversion from turfgrass. This pair of mourning doves feed on the abundance of seeds from native plants such as annual Plains Coreopsis (Coreopsis tinctoria). Native grasslands are the most endangered landscape in the world 4 , and as a result, bird species dependent on grasslands as their home are the most threatened 5

June, 2020: Prairie Blazing Star (Liatris pycnostachya), Missouri Coneflowers (Rudbeckia missouriensis), and Plains Coreopsis (Coreopsis tinctoria) provide valuable food and cover to wildlife in midsummer on the Miami Street Glade.

August, 2020: Cardinal flower (Lobelia cardinalis) is a coveted nectar source of active hummingbirds preparing for migration in late summer.

August, 2020: Monarch on Eastern Blazing Star (Liatris scariosa) and Monarch on Butterflyweed (Asclepias tuberosa). One of the greatest migratory creatures in the world, Monarch populations are at their lowest numbers in recorded history. Monarchs depend exclusively on Milkweed (Asclepias species) for their caterpillar food source. The rise in use of herbicide resistant crops and associated increase in herbicide use is directly linked to the decline of milkweed

throughout agricultural fields in Monarch summer breeding grounds and has led to crashing Monarch population numbers. Planting more native milkweed species in home gardens can help to preserve this gorgeous migratory butterfly for future generations.6

Monarch on Eastern Blazing Star

Monarch on Butterflyweed

April, 2021: Jacobs Ladder (Polemonium reptans) another early spring wildflower supporting early spring awakening pollinators in the woodland garden.

April, 2021: Prairie Blue-eyed Grass (Sisyrinchium campestre) a stunning, yet overlooked plants on the Miami Street Glade. Monocultures do not allow wildlife to thrive, organized chaos is natures way.

April, 2021: Shooting Star (Dodecatheon meadii) in the woodland garden. A wildlife habitat garden can also be a stunning work of art utilizing native plants.

May, 2021: Wild Hyacinths (Camassia scilloides) blooming on the Miami Street Glade. On the Miami St. Glade, there is hardly a time during the growing season that flowers are not blooming, providing for foraging pollinators. It is important to plant a diversity of flowering plants in a native garden to provide food and habitat to pollinators throughout the seasons.

May, 2021: Prairie Blue-eyed Grass (Sisyrinchium campestre) and Eastern Beebalm (Monarda bradburiana). Native plants are adapted to the St. Louis climate and not hard to grow. What ever soil type you have, there is a native plant to fill the niches.

June, 2021: The Miami Street Glade really came alive the 3rd summer after initially planting. Native plantings take a few years to establish before taking off. Plant a garden for wildlife habitat and beauty.

June, 2021: Some plants such as this Trelease’s Larkspur (Delphinium treleasei) you would have to travel deep into the Ozarks to find in nature or like the 5-20 Photo 19 Flame Azalea (Rhododendron calendulaceaum), you would have to climb on top of an Appalachian mountain to see in nature. At the Gardens at Holy Cross, these plants are on view for all to see. You too can create a habitat oasis.

June, 2021: Habitat gardens exhibited at the Gardens at Holy Cross include: Glade and prairie habitat (Miami St. Glade), woodland garden (Ohio St. Woodland and Azalea Border gardens) and woodland savannah (Ohio St. Savannah), bog, and crevice garden. Towering over the gardens, century old oaks and hickories can be found at the gardens at Holy Cross and over 25 shrubs and trees ready to take steps to become future arboretum.

June, 2021: Did you know plants and wildlife love rocks? Not only can rocks outline and formalize an informal/wild landscape, but rocks provide homes for wildlife, keep plant roots cool and moist creating niche habitats.

1 https://www.chicagotribune.com/2015/08/05/lawns-are-a-soul-crushing-timesuckand-most-of-us-would-be-better-off-without-them/ https://www.nytimes.com/video/ us/100000006542254/climate-change-lawns.html

2 https://www.missouriplants.com/Lilium_philadelphicum_page.html

3 https://www.illinoiswildflowers.info/prairie/plantx/mich_lilyx.htm

4 https://www.newswise.com/articles/great-american-prairies-the-most-endangeredecosystem-on-earth

5 https://www.audubon.org/our-work/prairies-and-forests/grasslands-report#:~:text=Not%2 surprisingly%2C%20grassland%20species%20are%20among%20the,Prairie%2DChicken%2C %20hover%20at%20the%20brink%20of%20extinction.

6 https://xerces.org/monarchs/conservation-efforts

You are invited to visit The Gardens at Holy Cross, on Miami Street any time from dawn to dusk. You are welcome to go up the steps and enjoy all the gardens around the church. There you will find a small fountain, some small walking paths, benches and picnic tables, amongst the gardens. Spend your time there however you like. Maybe you can pack a picnic. Or perhaps you’d just like a peaceful spot in nature, to read a book. It’s a wonderful space to enjoy a drink with a friend. However you enjoy the gardens, we’ll be glad that you came.

Brian Mitchell

Brian Mitchell

ARTIST STATEMENT:

Most of my artwork deals with social challenges. It is more serious and can be emotionally charged. These pieces can take several months to design, build and finish. By contrast, when I make works that focus on joy, they are often spontaneous, require practically no planning and seem to come together in a single sitting. While there isn’t as much meaning below the surface, people seem to instantly relate to them. I can see in their faces that they find enjoymenteyebrows raise, a smile appears, and people go to work trying to identify all the little pieces - wrenches, nuts and bolts, saw bladesthat make up the piece.

I commonly go days or weeks without making anything. Eventually, I find myself frustrated with some aspect of life and decide in the moment that I’m ready to drop everything and make something fun. I generally start by dumping a pile of pieces on the floor of my shop. Some piece or another grabs my eye and I recognize that it is the start of a flower, a person’s head, a kitty’s tail... then the challenge is uncovering where the rest of the pieces are hiding! My wife helps me figure out when it is complete. When she’s satisfied, that’s how I know it’s done! Initially I had to search for materials. Car parts, garden tools and silverware are some of the more common parts I use. Now as more people recognize my interest, I’ve built a small network of people who save their metal scraps for me. Nothing makes them happier than to see the final product and to see some parts they provided incorporated. They feel like participants in the process. I love to see their reactions.

This series of metal flowers is primarily made from metal scraps and castoffs from the community. I love making these flowers, but the real joy is in sharing them with others. I have given away dozens of these flowers and intend to continue making them and giving them away for as long as I’m able.

Mary-Jo Okawa

*Artist statement on page 38.

Joyful Noise

Kelly Kruse

The Images of God For us, his creatures

The Sixth Day

Genesis 1:24-31

Then God said, “Let the earth produce living creatures according to their kind: livestock and crawling things and animals of the earth according to their kind”; and it was so. God made the animals of the earth according to their kind, and the livestock according to their kind, and everything that crawls on the ground according to its kind; and God saw that it was good.

Then God said, “Let Us make mankind in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the livestock and over all the earth, and over every crawling thing that crawls on the earth.” So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” Then God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you; and to every animal of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to everything that moves on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food”; and it was so. And God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

All things

Psalm 8:3-8

When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, The moon and the stars, which You have ordained; What is man that You take thought of him, And the son of man that You care for him? Yet You have made him a little lower than God, And You crown him with glory and majesty! You make him to rule over the works of Your hands; You have put all things under his feet, All sheep and oxen, And also the beasts of the field, The birds of the heavens and the fish of the sea, Whatever passes through the paths of the seas.

Holy Sonnet XII

John Donne, 1609

Why are we by all creatures waited on? Why do the prodigal elements supply Life and food to me, being more pure than I, Simpler and further from corruption?

Why brook’st thou, ignorant horse, subjection? Why dost thou, bull and boar, so sillily

Dissemble weakness, and by one man’s stroke die, Whose whole kind you might swallow and feed upon?

Weaker I am, woe’s me, and worse than you; You have not sinn’d, nor need be timorous. But wonder at a greater, for to us

Created nature doth these things subdue; But their Creator, whom sin, nor nature tied, For us, His creatures, and His foes, hath died.

ARTIST PRAYER:

Good Shepherd, what adoration thunders through your seas and skies—what glories are flung through your forests as the trees clap their hands! Though their chorus of praise is lovely, there must be some part of you that finds their ensemble incomplete, because you did not stop with their voices. Did the dust cry out to you—did you dream of the day you would hear its devotion carried to your ears in hymns of praise? Beyond your desire to shape the clay, you also guide, gather, and carry. Were you a shepherd before there were sheep, or did formation of wool and flesh bring forth a new aspect of your vocation?

You delight in giving all of your creatures purpose. The bee reminds me that the rewards of work aren’t always visible in the midst of my busyness—will you help my work to become something that feeds and nourishes others? The caterpillar reminds me that while there is exquisite beauty in this life, death is only a transformation. Like the caterpillar, I need a particular food to nourish my body as I prepare to be transformed. Sustain me with yourself and your word—the only food that can give me strength to make that great traversal.

You created the noble beasts—lions, bears, wild oxen—to remind mankind that your creation possesses some shadow of its glorious King. But for all their regality, these beasts cannot form poetry—they don’t delight in the sunrise or wonder at their place in the cosmos. The circle of your creation was not closed until you formed creatures in your likeness. You gave us the creative capacity to form language so you could speak to our hearts through sound and symbol. You are perfect in plurality—you made mankind after your nature, male and female.

Jesus, you crowned creation when you entered the world through woman to become a man. Oh Great Shepherd, you put on the

veil of creaturehood to carry me home on your shoulders, in the sight of all creation! If I am to reflect your nobility, let me learn from your rule. If your dominion is marked by sacrificial care, give me gentleness and grace for all your creatures. Give me eyes to see your glory in every human soul.

Lori Marble

ARTIST STATEMENT:

For as long as I can remember I have loved summer. I equate happiness with the sounds of birds in the morning and cicadas at night. My fondest memories include climbing mimosa trees as a young girl and wearing the pink billowy blooms behind my ears, of taking meandering drives by the river for no reason, of celebrating the first sighting of a firefly. June brings the joy of summer barbecues and lingering poolside conversations. June brings the colorful return of day lilies.

June marks the completion of the first half of one year, the acknowledgment of accomplishments, some subtle, others personally grand. Joy is knowing there are six more months ahead to celebrate, to swim in the deep end; to laugh, love and enjoy.

Stone Peng

*Artist statement on page 54.

Mary-Jo Okawa

*Artist statement on page 38.

Reflections

Christina Schempf

Virginia Lake

Unnamed Lake

Christina Schempf

Baron Lake

Cramer Lake

Christina Schempf

Alice Lake

Lake Ingeborg

ARTIST STATEMENT:

This set of photographs was taken in the Sawtooth Mountains of Idaho. They are simply an invitation to you to move more slowly through the world. To pause and admire. To revel in a suspended moment. To listen to quiet. And to take those gifts into your own life that you might more deeply love this good world that is our home.

I slept a night at each of these lakes: Baron Lake, Cramer Lake, Virginia Lake, Lake Ingeborg, and one unnamed. The atmospheric magic created by their reflective surfaces was afforded only by the slow steps of the day before. You cannot hurry past a lake so perfectly still. In the words of the beloved poet, Mary Oliver, they “call out, ‘Stay awhile.’ . . . ‘It’s simple,’ they say, ‘and you too have come into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled with light, and to shine.’

Notice

April Parviz, 2021

Did you see that there’s a reflection?

It goes deeper than the actual water.

If it holds still, you’ll fall into the sky.

Cramer Lake (detail), Christina Sc hempf (page 185)

Jean Howard

ARTIST STATEMENT:

I sew textile art to express my appreciation of nature, as well as my excitement in exploring the interaction of color, shape, and line. Through my work, I pay homage to my family’s rich traditions in quilting and farming, while pushing the boundaries of what can be accomplished with needle and thread. I incorporate bold color and intuitive composition in the abstract quilts I sketch and construct, as they evolve over time on my design wall. Using hand-dyed fabrics along with commercial cotton provides my textile art with original and interesting tones and hues. The colors sewn together for my series “Botanicals” reflect the shapes and hues found in flora of all types--flowers, weeds, leaves, vegetables. Watching seeds sprout into living plants is delightful, exciting and awe-inspiring. The flower and leaf shapes found in “Botanicals 2” and “Botanicals 9: The Singers” do not represent any particular plant, but are whimsical creations drawn from imagination. The quilts immerse viewers in a garden of visual delights, where radiant hues intertwine to depict a lively dance of petals and leaves. My life on fifty acres of woods, fields, and gardens provides me with endless inspiration and joy to return to my studio daily.

Sarah Guthrie

The Quiet That Comes Gradually

ARTIST NOTE: Painted in my friend’s studio in Santa Fe, The Quiet that Comes Gradually was inspired by a small red chile resting on a window sill. It took my breath away—this simple point of Joy—against the background of warm wood, blue sky, and the spring green leaves of the tree growing in the courtyard outside. As I built up the layers of colors in the piece, the red and aqua went back and forth—more red/less blue, more blue/less red—and in the end, the blue emerged—quietly and gradually. But that bit of spicy red on the window still gules.

*Full Artist statement on page 27.

Mary-Jo Okawa

*Artist statement on page 38.

Antique Lace

Stephen Schubert

ARTIST STATEMENT:

One of the things I like to do is go deep into an Aspen grove and lay down on my back staring up at the trees while their leaves shimmer and trunks sway. I can spend hours doing this. May these two versions of trees delight and provide a natural high for you.

Aspens with Friends

Matins No.554

Christina Schempf, 2023

Leap into the day, my love!

Find your vigor. paddle strongly. run steadily! Your rest will come when you are weary. But shake off the sleep and join the living throng. the groundhog doing her work. the turtle hers. We must love the world with all the strength we can muster. with all the courage we can carry. with all the hope we can bear. Begin the work of the day, beloved. joy awaits.

Michelle Schwengel-Regala and Lisa Asagi

A Leaf is a Platter of Pigment Strung with Vascular Lace

ARTIST STATEMENT:

In response to a found object and reading botanical writings, A Leaf Is But a Platter of Pigment Strung with Vascular Lace (2016) emerged, marking major shifts in my practice. This piece was the first time I explored knitting metal around another artist’s work. And it sparked the idea of collaborating with specialists in other media. The green glass core (created by Dana Brewer at University of Hawai‘i) somehow ended up in the UH FreeStore; knowledge of Dana’s leaf series linked it to a passage I had just read in “Lab Girl” (a book written by Dr. Hope Jahren, former UH Biogeochemistry professor).

Stephen Schubert

*Artist statement on page 194.

Michelle Schwengel-Regala and Lisa Asagi

soundings no.4 (cetacean and sound)

ARTIST STATEMENT:

soundings no. 4 demonstrates ways I honed my knitting technique and cultivated rich relationships with colleagues. Lisa Asagi and I met almost a decade ago; during the pandemic, we began creating conceptual mixed-media sculptures amplifying our shared interests in biodiversity, marine ecology, and science communication. Living on O‘ahu has us reconsidering our rates of consumption and carbon footprints, prompting us to reimagine and repurpose materials whenever possible. This fourth in our “soundings” series utilizes recycled items and encourages conversations about making similar changes in various aspects of our lives.

Our use of the term “soundings” refers to modern bathymetric mapping with multibeam sonar systems; I reclaimed and knit scrap metal into a net of sound. Within it, Lisa’s earthen sphere. Made of two extremely fine copper strands coated with enamel, the wire is built to withstand weathering by the ocean. Used by research vessels visualizing the ocean floor, it conveys water column data to the ship to adjust the mapping equipment to varying conditions. These acoustical processes have similarities to marine creatures’ communications.

soundings no. 4 asks, As living beings, have we evolved as open forms? This is how we sense and connect with the world. What does it mean for us, the whales, and all fellow creatures to now be inundated with unprecedented nets of sound?

This ceramic open form is as hard as bone. Like living bones, its structure contains intricate, entangled pathways of traveling micropulses - information received from the environment. Humans evolved with sight as primary sense. Only recently are we learning that our planetary kin sense the world in ways we may never fully understand.

The deeper we listen, the more we hear. One of the most complex bioacoustic systems has been developed by cetaceans. Adjacent to their skulls is the melon, an organ for

echolocation. This is how toothed whales and dolphins navigate, find prey, and each other in the vast darkness of the ocean depths.

Cargo ships. Human sonar technologies. Mining machines tilling billion-years-old blobs growing on and within the seafloor. Galaxies of zooplankton disappearing in a single seismic blast. How do they survive these waves of sound?

Through our concern about increased volume and frequency of anthropogenic sounds, we are still drawn to the water. Once submerged, we tune out human influence and tune into whale sounds to find joy. May their complex chorus infinitely reverberate around the world.

Jean Howard

*Artist statement on page 190.

Botanicals 9: The Singers

Collecting Evidence Continued

6/1 - My 5-year-old in the car to her sissy, “the squiggly man is about to be out your window!!!” (The squiggly man is one of those tall colorful blow-up “men” with wavy arms, who wiggles outside our local fried chicken place every day.)

6/2 - When the church service was over, which had a lot of really beautiful music, my friend, from the Philippines, tells me, “I am having a goosebump!” as she showed me her arm.

6/3 - My three-year-old picks a flower for me on the way into a rest stop. We go into the family restroom. I begin to set my flower down, only to find that another mom has left a flower from another daughter. Later, my five-year-old insists that we all look out into the dark sky because the stars are beautiful. She’s right.

6/4 - My niece got into fire camp early! She jumped and squealed a lot. This is really exciting.

6/5 - We’re in the Atlantic ocean. An old lady comes down regularly to “take a quick dip.” It’s very cold. She doesn’t want to do it. Then she does.

6/6 - We’re on a walk. My daughter says, “there are dogs everywhere!”

6/7 - A five-year-old pulled up a chair to reach a wind-chime. “I like how it sings,” she said.

To be continued...

Some reflections on my personal experience with collecting evidence of joy:

• It’s difficult to collect evidence of joy when I am busy.

• It’s difficult to collect evidence of joy when I don’t leave my house.

• It’s difficult to leave evidence of joy when I’m afraid people will think I look silly or crazy.

• It’s difficult to leave evidence of joy when I’m afraid people will believe I’m showing off.

• Children seem to not concern themselves as much with these “problems.”

Thanks for joining me on this little trip : ) I hope that you find yourself collecting all the evidence of joy now.

- April

Don’t Hesitate

by Mary Oliver, 2017

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.

Armbrust, Sarah

Curiosity : NFS | 2021 | 10 x 36” | Oil on wood

Height : NFS | 2022 | 12 x 96” | Oil on Masonite

As a studio artist who focuses on realism, I create work that communicates beauty and truth, often in the simplest forms. My current focus is in Liturgical art for the benefit of the church and the world. My next series of paintings will focus on the communicating the Gospel.

Instagram @Armbrust.art

Asagi, Lisa

soundings no. 4 (cetacean and sound) : $1,600

2023 | 5 x 18 x 12” | Recycled clay and upcycled copper bathymetric wire

Hawai‘i-born Lisa Asagi‘s scope includes literary composition, mixed-media sculpture, film/video production, and programming. Interdisciplinary collaboration has been an integral and meaningful part of her artistic life. She and Michelle met through Hawai‘i Craftsmen nearly a decade ago and began collaborating during the pandemic. This is their fourth piece in their “soundings” series.

Website : www.Lisa-Asagi.com | Instagram @Lisa_Asagi

Bernhardt, Sarah

Handiwork : Price upon request | 2014-2024

Varying sizes | Photography installation

Sarah Bernhardt is a St. Louis based artist, educator, and administrator exploring photography, video, installation, and social practice. She received her MFA from Washington University in St. Louis and taught at University of Missouri St. Louis, and

St. Louis University. In 2013, Bernhardt founded Intersect Arts Center, an arts space focused on nurturing accessibility to the arts and relationship building across diverse communities. Bernhardt continues to direct the space, developing exhibition and education programs, maker spaces, artist studio spaces, and community events and projects.

Website : www.SrBernhardt.art

Burton Johnson, Morgan

The Jubilant Self : $600 | 2023 | 20 x 16” | Oil on canvas

Neon Shade : $500 | 2024 | 14 x 18” | Oil on canvas

Expectations : $1,200 | 2023 | 17 x 24.5” | Oil on board

I am self taught, and while I have studied the evolution of art and use various styles, my work is often considered ‘outsider’. I try and capture the poetic moments in life that we all can relate to. My favorite quote is “Art is long” to which I would add: follow your awe.

Websites : www.MorganJ.com, and www.MorganJArt.com

Bush, Diane

Linda and the kids : 500 | 1979 | 16 x 20” | Black and white photography

Paula, Manchester : $500 | 1978 | 16 x 20” | Black and white photography

Single Mum in Salford : $500 | 1979 | 16 x 20” | Black and white photography

These images are from a 10 year study of the British, taken between 1968-1978 while I resided in the UK during the Vietnam/ Cambodia War, with a draft dodger who was denied conscientious objector status. Since returning to the states, I received a Master’s Degree in Photography, ran a college level

photography department, and worked as an art curator and public art administrator. Now retired, I am a fiber art-activist, who embroiders feminist and inspirational activist slogans.

Website : www.DianeBush.net

Calfee, Katie

Serotonin Tokens : $250 | 2024 | 16 x 32” | Wood, Cyanotype photogram, canvas, and metal

Katie Calfee, a St. Louis based artist, is a curious explorer of the natural world and visual storyteller. Her work is a collection of crisp and bold expressions, predominantly utilizing the unique techniques of Cyanotype printmaking and watercolor painting. By infusing her pieces with a positive energy, Calfee aims to spark an encouraging message about how we find balance in chaos.

Website : www.KatieCalfee.com

Instagram @CloaknDragher

Corzine, Tiia

Hide and Seek , 2024

I’m Tiia. A Finnish mom of three kids, living in Saint Louis. I enjoy playing hide and seek, even though my kids always hide in the same place time after time.

Disman, Debra

BedTime Story : $600 | 2018 | 12 x 28 x 8.5” | Book board, textiles, cloth, clay, beads, hemp cord, and watercolor paper

Narrow Bridge : $400 | 2016 | 5.5 x 16 x 3.5” | Board, paper, linen thread, and fabric

Debra Disman is a Los Angeles-based artist known for her work inspired by the book, both as a solo practitioner and in the

public sphere of community engagement. As a maker, social practice artist and writer she investigates states of being and connectiveness through intensive engagement with materials, attempting to fully employ their haptic properties.

Her work is shown across museums, galleries, universities and art centers including ArtShare LA; The Irvine Fine Arts Center; The New Bedford Art Museum, The Brand Library and Art Center, ReflectSpace Gallery, Craft Contemporary, The Long Beach Museum of Art, UCLA, The University of Puget Sound and the LA Municipal Art Gallery.

Disman was the featured artist for the Big Read in LA in 2016 and is the recipient of an inaugural WORD: Artist Grant to create “The Sheltering Book”, a life-sized community creativity catalyst . She was commissioned by LA’s Craft Contemporary Museum to create an interactive book for “Chapters: Book Arts in Southern California”” (2017)and 18th Street Arts Center to create the artists’ book, “Unfolding Possibilities” (2021). Her book, “CONCURRENCIES Charlotte Salomon and Eva Hesse: Genius, Trauma and the Creative Imagination” was published by ReflectSpace Gallery in 2023.

She was a 2018 Studio Resident at the Camera Obscura Art Lab at 1450 Ocean in Santa Monica and has served as an Artist-inResidence with the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs since 2017. A Santa Monica Artist Fellow in 2021-22, she has been an artist-in-residence at 18th Street Arts Center since 2018.

Website : www.DebraDisman.com

Instagram @ArtifactoryStudio | Facebook @Debra.Disman

Donne, John (1572 - 1631)

Holy Sonnet XII , 1609

John Donne was a leading English poet of the Metaphysical school and dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral, London (1621–31). Donne is often considered the greatest love poet in the English language. He is

also noted for his religious verse and treatises and for his sermons, which rank among the best of the 17th century. 1

Ferguson, Susan

Euna Ummbie : $98 | 2023 | 24 x 12 x 9”

Fiber and textiles

Matilda Ummbie : $98 | 2023 | 24 x 12 x 9”

Fiber and textiles

Scooter Ummbie : $98 | 2023 | 25 x 13 x 9”

Fiber and textiles

Symone Ummbie : $98 | 2023 | 22 x 12 x 9”

Fiber and textiles

Wallace Ummbie : $98 | 2023 | 24 x 10 x 9”

Fiber and textiles

I’m a visual artist with passions for fiber and textiles, painting, mixed media and encaustics. I gave up a lifetime of work in the literary arts to create visual art because it brings me relaxation and joy. I am mostly self-taught. I recently moved to southern Arizona from the midwest so that I could experience and learn about a new place and create art that reflects my experiences. My work has been exhibited in Arizona, Kansas, Missouri and New Mexico.

Website : www.SusanFergusonArtist.com

Instagram @SueFergToday

St. Francis of Assisi (1181 - 1226)

Canticle of the Sun (excerpt) , 1225

St. Francis of Assisi was the founder of the Franciscan orders of the Friars Minor (Ordo Fratrum Minorum), the women’s Order of St. Clare (the Poor Clares), and the lay Third Order. He was also a leader of the movement of evangelical poverty in the early 13th

century. His evangelical zeal, consecration to poverty, charity, and personal charisma drew thousands of followers. In 1979, Pope John Paul II recognized him as the patron saint of ecology. 2

Gastler, Jenny

Joy in the Valley , 2024

Jenny (Hansen) Gastler grew up in a South Texas farm community where she was active in her country church, 4-H club, and school. Her degree in Home Economics prepared her for a variety of paid and non-paid vocations, including early childhood director and elementary art teacher. Her vocations of wife, mother, daughter, and volunteer continue as her life’s focus. Discovering forgotten resources and leveraging them for good is her delight, along with creating items with needles and thread, yarn, or floss.

Gastler, Katherine

the twelve | woven together : NFS | 2023 | 4 x 3”

Pysanky: aniline dye on goose eggshell

trillium : NFS | 2024 | 2.5 x 2” | Pysanky: aniline dye on chicken eggshell

ascension : $100 | 2024 | 4 x 3” | Pysanky: aniline dye on goose eggshell

Katherine Gastler studied art and graphic design at Concordia University Chicago. Leaning to use a Mac for designs fostered a love of technology, so she pays for her health insurance with a career in software training. Katherine looks for joy and beauty in everyday life through modern batik egg dyeing (pysanky), fiber art, and photography.

Instagram @KatherineGastler

Gay. Ross

Opera Singer , 2011

Ross Gay is interested in joy.

Ross Gay wants to understand joy.

Ross Gay is curious about joy.

Ross Gay studies joy.

Something like that.

Website : www.RossGay.net

Getty, Teresa I

Blossom : NFS | 2023 | 20 x 13.5 x 8” | Acrylic, ink, foam, and graphite on deconstructed wooden box

Teresa Getty and Camille Silverman met at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2000, lost touch for a while and then after reuniting in 2019, began working together, solidifying their artistic collaboration under the name SeaChi Projects in 2020.

SeaChi’s hope is to facilitate ambitious time-based and sitespecific works that serve to challenge individual artists and grow new collaborations within communities. Current projects involve a 4-year correspondence, group shows, an art portfolio mailing project, as well as large scale installations.

Camille is a Seattle born artist currently living in Chicago, IL. She received her MFA from Cranbrook Art Academy in 2006 and was recently published New American Painting 2019 Studio Visit Magazine 2018. Camille has worked for nonprofits in Colorado as a curator and executive director at the Western Colorado Center for the Arts in Grand Junction, CO and most recently for Riverside Arts Center in the greater Chicago area.

Teresa is a Seattle based artist and educator who moved between scientific and creative fields before receiving her BFA at the

School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2004, then her MFA at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2007 where she taught as an adjunct professor for four years. Getty has received two Lincoln Center for the Arts Teaching Grants and has also been awarded residencies at Paintings Edge and the Vermont Studio Center.

Beyond being artists, Teresa and Camille share the joys and challenges of being caretakers to two amazing individuals. Teresa’s daughter, Miranda Getty-Salazar, has a rare condition called Bohring-Opitz Syndrome, while Camille Silverman has become a part-time helper and driver for her forever curious and energetic mother.

Website : www.SeachiProjects.com

Instagram @SeachiProjects

Greenwald, Patrick

Habitat Oasis - The Gardens at Holy Cross , 2015 - present

Patrick Greenwald is a horticulturist from St. Louis, Missouri. Having obtained a Master’s in Plant Science degree from Missouri State University, he has worked in horticulture for the past 11 years. Inspired by St. Louis City’s horticulture past, he founded the Gardens at Holy Cross in March of 2015 with the creation of two original display gardens. In the years following, an azalea woodland garden was added in 2016, Miami Street Glade in 2019, the Ohio Street Woodland Slope in 2021, and the Ohio Street Savanna in 2022. He specializes in native Missouri rock gardens which provide a habitat Oasis for wildlife. Still actively involved in the maintenance of the Gardens at Holy Cross, he currently is a Senior Horticulturist at Longwood Gardens, Kennett Square, PA.

Website : www.HolycrossSTL.org/Gardens

Gomez, Michelle

Plop, Smack and Splatter , 2024

Learning and maturing happen authentically when songs and speech collide with something I see. I’ve dabbled in photography, crafting mosaic artwork, and giving presentations on the spiritual parallels between Monarch Butterfly-rearing and the Christian Scriptures. Socially, I share the unrefined version of myself through photos and short anecdotes as a way to process the world around me. If you’re looking to add a bit of quirkiness to your social media life, you are welcome to follow me on Facebook @mvossengomez, or on Instagram @mic_gomez

Guthrie, Sarah C.B.

Discordant Harmony : $1,475 | 2022 | 24 x 24” | Acrylic

The Quiet that Comes Gradually : $1,475 | 2022

24 x 24” | Acrylic

Sarah C.B. Guthrie’s paintings have been part of solo and group shows in museums, galleries, and businesses in Seattle, Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, Missouri, and Washington DC, including at the prestigious Phillips Collection and Bainbridge Island Museum of Art. Her works are held in private collections in Seattle, New York, London, Washington DC, California, and around the world.

With her parents, she immigrated to the States from England when she was a toddler. She holds an MFA in Visual Arts at the Vermont College of Fine Arts, an MA from The George Washington University, and a BA from Davidson College. She is married to a retired U.S. Marine, Tom, and they live in Seattle with their beloved senior rescue Golden Retriever, Tobson.

Website : www.ArtistGu3.com | Instagram @ArtistGu3 Facebook @ArtistGu3

Gwyn, Melissa

Flora Boundary : $1,000 | 2024 | 9 x 12” | Oil paint on panel

My Display 4 : $800 | 1998/2024 | 7 x 4” | Oil paint on panel

My Display 6 : $800 | 1998/2024 | 7 x 4” | Oil paint on panel

My Display 7 : $800 | 1997/2024 | 7 x 4” | Oil paint on panel

My Display 8 : $800 | 1998/2024 | 7 x 4” | Oil paint on panel

My Display 9 : $800 | 1997/2024 | 7 x 4” | Oil paint on panel

My Display 10 : $800 | 1998/2024 | 7 x 4” | Oil paint on panel

Melissa Gwyn teaches drawing and painting at UCSC. This year she was nominated for a Rydell Fellowship in Santa Cruz County and she is a nominee for the SECA award, a contemporary art award program organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Melissa received her MFA from Yale in 1989. She’s had solo exhibitions at Feigen Contemporary, Stux Gallery and White Columns, as well as the Kohler Art Center and the Tang Museum. Her paintings have been reviewed in Art Forum, Time Out New York, Village Voice, Art News, and The New York Times and other journals. She has given presentations on her work to audiences Emory University, USC, UC Davis, Carnegie Mellon, The Tang Museum, The Palmer Museum at Penn State and other institutions.

Website : www.MelissaGwyn.com/home.html

Harold, Ellie

Heart Spring : $1,200 | 2023 | 16 x 16” | Oil

Avian Joy Ride : $2,300 | 2020 | 24 x 24” | Oil

A former RN and ordained Unity minister, when I was 52 I followed a strong intuitive nudge and began teaching myself to paint using oils. 20 years later, as a prolific full-time artist, intuition continues to guide my work. I work primarily from my home-based studio/gallery in Frankfort, MI where serendipitous meetings have allowed my work to find homes in collections both locally and abroad, including exhibitions in the American

Embassies in Bratislava, Slovakia and Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. In 2018, I began the creation of a migration-inspired, avian-themed multimedia immersive exhibition, BIRDS FLY IN: A Human Refuge, which is currently traveling to its third installation. In addition to the full color Exhibition Catalog for BIRDS FLY IN, I’ve authored 2 art-related books: 7 Habits of Deeply Fulfilled Artists: Your Aesthetic Needs & How to Meet Them (2012) and Monet, Mitchell & Me: A Painter’s Pilgrimage (2023).

Website : www.EllieHarold.com

Instagram @EllieHaroldMichigan

Facebook @Ellie Harold (Artist)

Hendrix, John

The Biscuit Tin Eden : $100 | 2024 | 18 x 24” | Pen and ink, digital

The Inklings at The Eagle and Child, 1 : $75

2024 | 20 x 28” | Pen and ink, digital

The Inklings at The Eagle and Child, 2 : $75

2024 | 20 x 28” | Pen and ink, digital John Hendrix is a New York Times bestselling author and illustrator. His books include The Faithful Spy: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Plot to Kill Hitler , called a Best Book of 2018 by NPR, Drawing Is Magic: Discovering Yourself in a Sketchbook , The Holy Ghost: A Spirited Comic , Miracle Man: The Story of Jesus , and many others. His award-winning illustrations have also appeared on book jackets, newspapers, and magazines all over the world. His upcoming graphic novel, The Mythmakers: The Remarkable Fellowship of J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis , will be out in fall 2024. He is the Kenneth E. Hudson Professor of Art and Chair of the MFA in Illustration and Visual Culture program at the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis.

Website : www.JohnHendrix.com

Instagram @JohnHendrix

Holt, Bryce

Greenhouse : $2,450 | 2024 | 36 x 48” | Acrylic on canvas

Vessel : $1,650 | 2024 | 48 x 24” | Acrylic on canvas

The Pharmacist’s Dream : $4,450 | 2024 | 48 x 36”

Acrylic on canvas

Storytelling is at the heart of my work. Each painting I create has a narrative behind it before it is started. I’ll create about 70 paintings each year, and I want to create as much work as possible. I truly started creating art in my forties, so I feel like I’m working against the clock. So much to paint and so little time.

Website : www.ThePatrons.com | Instagram @ThePatrons Facebook @ThePatrons.Art

Howard, Jean H.

Botanicals 2 : $1,000 | 2021 | 36 x 28.5” | Hand-dyed and commercial cotton fabric, thread, and batting

Botanicals 9: The Singers : $1,850 | 2021 | 36.5 x 50.5”

Hand-dyed and commercial cotton fabric, batting, and thread

Although she began as a traditional quilter, Jean Howard found that creating an original design and using an array of colorful fabrics to sew a quilt was much more interesting than traditional patchwork. While her love of science led to a 40-year career as a registered dietitian, she now has time to enjoy flower and vegetable gardening, managing the acreage she owns with her husband, and making textile art as expressed in quilts. Handdyeing some of the fabrics she uses adds exciting colors to her artist’s palette, and many of her organic designs are inspired by the kaleidoscope of shapes, colors, and lines found in nature.

Website : www.JeanHowardQuilts.com Instagram @Jean_Howard73 | Facebook @Jean Howard

Kruse, Kelly

The Swarms / Songs of praise : $2,880 | 2022

40 x 40” | Acrylic ink dyed kozo collage, paperclay, and mica powder on canvas

The Images of God / For us, his creatures

$2,940 | 2022 | 40 x 40” | Acrylic ink dyed kozo collage, paperclay, and mica powder on canvas

O Mirabile Mysterium Book | $75 | 2022 | 11 x 8.5” | 110 pages, signed and numbered by the artist. Hardcover with a velvety matte finish. You may purchase it at: kellykrusecreative.com/store/p66/O_Mirabile_Mysterium_Book Kelly uses her work to explore the painful, beautiful experience of human transience, longing, and suffering. In response to her battle with depression, she developed a visual contemplative practice through which she wrestles with the complexities of faith and theology. Kruse describes her work as contemporary illumination. Like historic artists who perfected the art of illuminated manuscripts, she seeks to cultivate the inner world of those who engage her work. Her first exposure to the idea of illumination came when she studied Medieval and Renaissance music in Italy. Her background in classical music and opera puts her in a unique position to explore the intersections between scripture, poetry, musical works, and the visual arts. She has exhibited her work at galleries and institutions across the country and her work is featured in collections around the world. Recently, she completed her first public commission after winning a nationwide competition at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. The commission is installed permanently at the Iversen Center for Faith and explores the complexity of the immortal human soul as inspired by the writings of the apostle Paul. Kelly lives and works in Kansas City, Missouri, where she is Curator of the Four Chapter Gallery and maintains an active private voice studio.

Website : www.KellyKruseCreative.com

Instagram @KellyKruseCreative

Kuanfung, Jill Katherine

All That She Carried : NFS | 2024 | 3.5 x 5 x 27”

Watercolor and ink pen on paper

Jill Kuanfung is a queer, mixed race artist living in St. Louis. She has made work about her mixed ancestry, mental illness, and motherhood. Her work follows whatever is heaviest on her heart at the moment. Right now, she is halfway down a rabbit hole, exploring illustration. Jill’s first love was drawing with pencil on paper, but has had her heart stolen by ink, paint, gouache, and most recently, clay. Jill is a teacher of children and adults in her local community and she is the mother of her most favorite child.

Website : www.Jill-Kuanfung.squarespace.com

Instagram @Waxing_Gibbous_Studios

Kyong, Jill

Hallelujah : $2,800 | 2022 | 33 x 33 x 3” | Bleached

Boxelder, Yellow Heart, ebonized Cherry, and oil paint

In a world that often feels disconnected and fast-paced, Jill Kyong’s art serves as a reminder of the profound and slower beauty inherent in nature and the need for human connections. Her work is a celebration of these elements, creating a visual dialogue that invites viewers to pause, reflect, and reconnect, reminding us that amidst the chaos, there is always room for wonder, peace, and hope.

Jill starts each piece by abstracting the world she sees around her, often from a photo she has taken. She flattens the threedimensional views in her photos to abstracted geometric shapes, then uses her precision wood working skills to construct and build up layers of carefully selected woods to create three-dimensional spaces to start a dialogue between light and shadows. Jill intersects the visual elements in her pieces with human

experiences both near and far to bring a poignant narrative to each piece. She designs each piece to be a source of calm, a reminder of the natural world’s restorative power and beauty, with the reminder that art can make us all be better.

Jill Kyong has a BFA from the University of Minnesota with a focus on metal casting. She taught woodworking at the Arkansas Art Museum, now the Windgate Art School, in Little Rock, AR. She currently lives in Moscow, Idaho where she creates sculptural wall reliefs, studio furniture, and sculpture primarily out of wood.

Website : www.JillKyong.com | Instagram @Jill.Kyong

Facebook @Jill Kyong

Lamb, Bernadette

Joy on Linden Street : NFS | 2023 | 4 x 4” | Pen, digital Orvieto and Assisi : NFS | 2019 | 5.4 x 8.4” | Pen and colored pencil

Before I Forget, 2019 bygone / beyond, 2022

The old wild, 2020

Evening, 2019

Flying from Lancaster, 2022

Stars (flash fiction), 2020

The swing, 2020

I am a Michigander-turned-Arizonan who moved to St. Louis to study for an MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture at WashU. Currently, I teach art, literature, and theology at Chesterton Academy of St. Louis, a new classical Catholic high school. My personal practice revolves around writing and illustrating literature for young people (especially ages 10-16). Through genuine and whimsical narratives, I hope my work will foster

wonder and relational healing in families. Off-duty, I can be found critiquing movies with friends, searching antique malls for children’s books, or getting hopelessly sidetracked by yet another boba tea shop.

Website : www.BernadetteLamb.com Instagram @TheJoyfulBear

Maichel, Sara

Delight : NFS | 2024 | 16 x 24” | Photography

I love capturing moments in photographs that you can hold in your hand. The fading beauty of a flower petal, the radiance of a bride about to see her groom, the laughing joy on a toddler’s face - time continually presses us forward leaving us with only fleeting memories of the past. Each photograph is a sliver of that time, a moment caught and held.

Website : www.SaraBurnsPhotography.squarespace.com

Marble, Lori

June : $600 | 2019 | 24 x 18” | Acrylic paint, Stabilo pencil, Posca pen, Caran d’Ache Neocolor II

In February 2019, following surgery to implant a deep brain stimulation (DBS) device to treat hemi-dystonia, I began exploring the brain/creativity connection by painting in the abstract style with my left hand (the side impacted by the dystonia/aided by DBS and certainly not my dominant side). My initial plan to paint 20 left-handed abstracts between the one-month period from the initial insertion of the DBS antenna to turning “on” the device, morphed into a daily painting practice that continues to this day.

Website : www.LoriMarble.com | Instagram @LoriMarble Facebook @LoriMarbleArtwork

McGinnis, Grace

Bliss : NFS | 2024 | 8 x 8” | Gouache

Grace McGinnis is a mixed media artist and illustrator based in St. Louis, Missouri. Though largely self-taught, she studied figure drawing and design intermittently at St. Louis Community College and Webster University from 2010-2017.

Grace uses a variety of mediums including colored pencil, graphite, acrylic, gouache, digital media, and textiles to create vibrant illustrations. Through her work, she explores themes such as healing from generational trauma, abuse, and addiction, the pursuit of peace amidst chaos, and fostering a deeper connection with the natural world.

Website : www.GraceMcGinnisArt.com Instagram @Grace.McGinnis.Art

Mitchell, Brian

Flower garden : NFS | 2018-2024 | This work consists of many different separate flowers ranging from 1’ - 7’

Metal scraps and discards

I am a St. Louis native who loves to build things and hates to see things go to waste. As a boy, my father taught me that rust is beautiful. I leave a lot of my pieces as bare metal specifically so that they will rust as they sit outside and develop a wonderful patina over time.

Instagram @SteelCraftStudio

Moyerman, Henry

Secret : $2,000 | 2021 | 46 x 16” | LEGO Elements

Henry Moyerman, also known as “The Brick Sculptor,” is a visual artist based in St. Louis, Missouri. Henry studied contemporary

art as part of his music education at Berklee College of Music. Inspired by his coursework and the museums he frequented in Boston, Henry found his artistic voice in contemporary art. Using LEGO bricks and elements, Henry creates original sculptures and photographs that explore the themes of scale, perspective, and human emotion using a combination of conceptualism and minimalism. His work has been exhibited in dozens of nationally juried exhibitions, including invitations for gallery-specific live installations. Henry continues to study contemporary art, providing him with immense artistic inspiration.

Website : www.TheBrickSculptor.com Instagram @TheBrickSculptor

Okawa, Mary-Jo

Reflections : $2,177 | 2023 | 24 x 36” | Handembellished print on Heavy Satin, gallery-wrapped over canvas, signed and numbered Limited Edition Print 1/100, includes Certificate of Authenticity (COA)

Mama’s Favorite : $2,155 | 2022 | 24 x 36” | Handembellished print on Heavy Satin, signed and numbered Limited Edition Print 3/100, includes Certificate of Authenticity (COA)

Joyful Noise : $2,520 | 2023 | 24 x 36” | Handembellished print on Silk Charmeuse, gallery-wrapped over canvas, signed and numbered Limited Edition Print 1/100, includes Certificate of Authenticity (COA)

Wishing : $2,028 | 2023 | 24 x 24” | Hand-embellished print on Heavy Satin, signed and numbered Limited Edition Print 2/100, includes Certificate of Authenticity (COA)

Antique Lace : $2,112 | 2024 | 24 x 36” | Handembellished print on gallery-wrapped canvas, signed and numbered Limited Edition Print 1/100, includes Certificate of Authenticity (COA)

Born in Mountain View, California, MJ Okawa is the youngest of nine children and grew up immersed in imaginative play and artistic pursuits. She earned a Bachelor’s degree in Musical Theatre from Lorettor Heights College and holds a teaching certification in Visual and Performing Arts from Santa Clara University. With over two decades of teaching experience, MJ has now shifted her focus towards painting, with her work inspired by nature and artists like Open Impressionists and artists like Van Gogh and Kahlo. Her art, known for its vibrant colors and intricate patterns, aims to evoke joy and connection. MJ’s process involves meticulous planning and execution, reflecting a blend of scientific precision and creative flair.

Website : www.MJOkawa.com | Instagram @OkawaArts

Oliver, Mary (1935 - 2019)

Don’t Hesitate , 2017

Mary Oliver was an American poet whose work reflects a deep communion with the natural world as well as a belief that poetry “mustn’t be fancy.” Oliver, who had a devoted following, was known for her use of plain language and accessible imagery. In 1984 she won a Pulitzer Prize for the collection American Primitive (1983).

Oliver stated that she grew up in a “very dysfunctional family” and had a “difficult childhood.” She later attended the Ohio State University and Vassar College but did not earn a degree. She worked for a time as a secretary for the sister of Edna St. Vincent Millay. Millay’s influence is apparent in Oliver’s first book of poetry, No Voyage and Other Poems (1963). These lyrical nature poems are set in a variety of locales, especially the Ohio of Oliver’s youth. Her childhood plays a more central role in The River Styx, Ohio, and Other Poems (1972), in which she attempted to re-create the past through memory and myth. The Night Traveler (1978) explores the themes of birth, decay, and death

through the conceit of a journey into the underworld of classical mythology. In these poems Oliver’s fluent imagery weaves together the worlds of humans, animals, and plants. 3

Parviz, Benjamin

Joy and the Old Philosophers , 2024

Benjamin Parviz is a philosopher-bioethicist and PhD candidate at Saint Louis University. His work focuses on how to resist temptation to despair in order to find and abide in hope. He is also April’s husband.

Peng, Stone

Sailing Number 2 : $600 | 2019 | 18 x 24” | Original fine art photography

Morning Sailing : $600 | 2016 | 18 x 24” | Original fine art photography

Stone Peng is a Grand Rapids, Michigan-USA based national and international award-winning photographer. Stone Peng’s work has been presented in numerous publications throughout the USA. Stone Peng’s photos are in public and private collections throughout West Michigan, the United States and beyond. You can also see Stone Peng’s photos at www.stonepeng.com.

I have been taking photos since the early 1990’s. I try to catch the moment of beauty, when dramatic displays of color and light shine in the landscape. Every landscape has its own life and different meaning, depending on the viewer’s mood. I try to catch the emotional feeling at specific moments in landscapes. I hope that you can see through my photos express the feelings I had when taking them.

Website : www.StonePeng.com | Facebook @Stone.Peng.9

Rogers, Delaney

Traces of You : NFS | 2024 | 22 x 33” | Screenprint, Fineliner pen

Not a lot, Just Forever : NFS | 2024 | 24 x 36”

Screenprint, Fineliner pen

Delaney Rogers is an interdisciplinary visual artist living and working in Johnson City, TN. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Murray State University (2020) and her Master of Fine Arts from East Tennessee State University (2024). Rogers’ work uses techniques that integrate technology into her art process. She makes work using pen plotters, screenprint, and laser cutting, amongst other methods. Rogers is interested in semiotics, social psychology, and examining hierarchies. Symbolic visual language is a cornerstone of Rogers’ work.

Website : www.DrogersArt.wordpress.com Instagram @D_Is_Very_Happy

Rosco, Delro

The Layers of Joy : $1,200 | 2024 | 10 x 7” | Mineral pigments on Yupo paper

Reminiscing : | 2021 | 10 x 7” | Pigments, sand, glass, and mulberry fibers on paper

Colors of Morning : $1,200 | 2021 | 10 x 7” | Mineral pigments and oyster shell white on Yupo paper

New Day Ahead : NFS | 2021 | 5 x 3.5” | Mineral pigments, oyster shell white, and gold leaf on paper

A Morning Bathed in Gold : $350 | 2022 | 5 x 3.5”

Mineral pigments, oyster shell white, and gold leaf on Yupo paper

What Day is Today? : $1,200 | 2022 | 10 x 7” | Mineral pigments, sand, and glass oyster shell on Yupo paper

Delro Rosco is an American artist who was born, lives, and works in Hawai’i. A graduate of Loyola Marymount University he has

been an illustrator for over thirty years specializing in art for food labels for international clients. As a contemporary painter, Delro is inspired by walks on the beach near his home and guided by truths from Biblical scripture, memories of places, and everyday life experiences. His ethereal abstract paintings transcend what is seen, and through deeply layered impressions of light and the ebbs and flows of sea and sky, reach for the “substance of things hoped for” (Hebrews 11:1).

Delro’s use of extravagant pulverized mineral pigments such as azurite, malachite, turquoise, coral, precious metals including silver and gold, and hand-ground sand and oyster shells; resonate with his great affection for his natural surroundings. In his overarching series New Mornings and subseries (2018 to present), Delro has created over 800 works that speak of this hope and have been exhibited nationally and internationally.

Website : www.DelroRoscoArt.com

Instagram @DelroRoscoArt

Rose, Rachel

Dyslexia : $6,000 | 2023 | 24 x 17” | Bead weaving I learned bead weaving in Gallup, NM when I was a kid. I did something different than everyone else and they liked it so my teachers had me come in after school and taught me how to make my own loom.

Website : www.DesigningRose.square.site

Instagram @DesigningRoseStore

Rosenburg, Théa

The Previous Lives of Used Books , 2024 Théa Rosenburg lives with her husband and four daughters in the Pacific Northwest where, when the wind blows from the right

direction, she can smell the ocean from her front yard. She served as co-editor for the book Wild Things and Castles in the Sky: A Guide to Choosing the Best Books for Children , and her work has appeared on Story Warren, Risen Motherhood, and in Every Moment Holy, Vol. III . You can find her at Little Book, Big Story (https://littlebookbigstory.com/), where she reviews children’s books, or at her Substack, The Setting (https://thearosenburg. substack.com/), where she writes about everything else.

Rubin, Gary

Dreaming : $325 | 2022 | 5.5 x 8” | Graphite

On Cloud Nine : $295 | 2020 | 5 x 7” | Graphite

Somewhere Over Idaho, 2000

In my attempt to capture human emotion with my art, I am drawn to the vast spectrum of emotions from loss, grief and heartbreak to all of the emotions that lift us up: joy, happiness, hope, and dreaming. They also lift me up when I draw. I never know what the finished product will look like until I stop drawing. And when I stop, it’s because it feels complete and incomplete at the same time. It is not only with I draw but what I don’t draw, allowing the negative space to complement and oppose the graphite.

I live in Kirkland, WA, I have a BA in Fine Arts from the University of Oregon and I draw every day!

Website : www.GaryRubinArt.com

Instagram @GaryRubinArt

Schempf, Christina

Cramer Lake : $50 | 2021 | 6 x 9” | Photography

Baron Lake : $50 | 2021 | 6 x 9” | Photography

Virginia Lake : $50 | 2021 | 6 x 9” | Photography

Lake Ingeborg : $50 | 2021 | 6 x 9” | Photography

Unnamed Lake : $50 | 2021 | 6 x 9” | Photography

Alice Lake : $50 | 2021 | 6 x 9” | Photography

Matins No.554 , 2023

Originally a native of the rolling farmland of southeastern Wisconsin, Christina is a St. Louis based musician and educator. She received a Master’s of Music in Horn Performance from New England Conservatory in Boston, MA. Christina is an active local freelancer and has played with the MUNY, Winter Opera St. Louis, St. Louis Ballet, the Metropolitan Orchestra, and the Illinois Symphony. Aside from her work as a musician, Christina enjoys dabbling in a variety of creative pursuits, gardening and foraging, backpacking, and reading poetry.

Schiller, Friedrich (1759 - 1805)

Ode to Joy , 1808

Friedrich Schiller was a leading German dramatist, poet, and literary theorist, best remembered for such dramas as Die Räuber (1781; The Robbers), the Wallenstein trilogy (1800–01), Maria Stuart (1801), and Wilhelm Tell (1804). 4

“Ode to Joy” was written in the summer of 1785. It was published the following year in the German magazine Thalia. In 1808, a slightly revised version changed two lines of the first stanza and omitted last stanza.

“Ode to Joy” is best known for its use by Ludwig van Beethoven in the final (fourth) movement of his Ninth Symphony, completed in 1824. Beethoven’s text is not based entirely on Schiller’s poem, and it introduces a few new sections. Beethoven’s melody, but not Schiller’s text, was adopted as the “Anthem of Europe” by the Council of Europe in 1972 and later by the European Union. Rhodesia’s national anthem from 1974 until 1979, “Rise, O Voices of Rhodesia”, also used Beethoven’s melody. 5

Schubert, Stephen

Aspens with Friends : $8,800 | 2023 | 48 x 72”

Acrylic paint, spray enamel, and texture paste on a birch panel

Aspen Evergreen : $6,800 | 2023 | 40 x 72” | Acrylic paint, spray enamel on birch panel

There is a phrase in Japanese that master gardeners use “Kohani Shita Gau” which means follow the request. I thought how perfect a life philosophy too. It involves deep listening and it is from this place I create.

Website : www.SchubertModern.net

Instagram @Schubert_Stephen

Schwengel-Regala, Michelle

A Leaf Is a Platter of Pigment Strung with

Vascular Lace : $750 | 2016 | 4 x 15 x 3” | Knitted copper wire (five colors) over found object (glass) soundings no. 4 (cetacean and sound) : $1,600

2023 | 5 x 18 x 12” | Recycled clay and upcycled copper bathymetric wire

Michelle Schwengel-Regala’s training in taxonomy and conservation biology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison developed in tandem with her first career as a science illustrator. After 15 years, she moved to a remote Pacific island and expanded her practice to include fine art and installation. Her artworks in this exhibition include interactions with works made by other artists; both pieces exemplify and celebrate the artists’ joyful admiration and awe for the natural world.

Website : www.Schwengala.com

Instagram @FloraFaunaFiber

Facebook @Michelle Schwengala

Shaw, Peg

Deep Mapping of a Thin Edge : $500 | 2023 | 44:01

Video/Sound

Peg Shaw is an interdisciplinary artist incorporating video, sound, photography, and mixed media within layered site-specific installations. Profoundly personal and politically aware, her work addresses how we can connect across time and space, be so moved by an experience that isn’t ours, and care for people we will never know – “floating on a membrane of what we have been given, hovering just below what we have to give.” Her work translates, re-imagines, weaves, and layers concepts from family history, the memory of place, storytelling, and the filtered experience of living in a chaotic political time.

Born in Oak Park, IL, Shaw received an MFA in Photography from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she received the Brown Fellowship Award, and a BFA in Painting from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Her work has been shown nationally, including solo exhibitions in Chicago and New York, and has won numerous awards, most recently the Illinois Arts Council Agency 2021 Artist Fellowship Award in Media, and the 40 North Champaign Arts Council 2018 Artist Ace Award. She has curated multiple photography exhibitions of alternative photographic work addressing both historical and new technology – including an upcoming lens-based invitational for the Giertz Gallery at Parkland College.

Shaw is a Professor in Photography/Video at Parkland College, Champaign, IL. She lives in the woods in a timber-frame home they built by hand, where she works in her studio, writes stories, plants trees, and is a shy drummer that only makes noise in her basement. Website : www.PegShaw.com | Instagram @PBShaw

Silverman, Camille

Blossom : NFS | 2023 | 20 x 13.5 x 8” | Acrylic, ink, foam, and graphite on deconstructed wooden box

See Teresa Getty and Camille Silverman’s bio on page 212.

Website : www.SeachiProjects.com

Instagram @SeachiProjects

Washington, Ted

A

Summer Night in Penrose Park St. Louis, Missouri : $400 | 2024 | 6 x 3.5” | Ink on illustration board

A Haiku , 2024

Ted Washington is an artist, author, poet and reluctant businessman. He now lives in San Diego, after spending time as an apprentice draftsman for a beer brewery in St. Louis, an Internal Revenue Service employee in Springfield, MO, a retail sales representative in Denver, CO, and temporarily homeless vagabond turned baker on the beaches of Venice, CA. Ted is the founder of Puna Press and the performance group Pruitt Igoe. Pruitt Igoe was awarded a Synergy Foundation grant and performed in Harlem, NY. Ted Washington won the BRAND 37 purchase award, with the Glendale Library acquiring one of his artworks for their permanent collection.

Website : www.PunaPress.com/Contributors/Ted-Washington Instagram @Ted_Washington_Art

Wieting, Hannah

Of Captain Crunch, Tacos, and Joy , 2022

Hannah Wieting is a wife, mom, and music teacher from southeast Wisconsin. She spends her days mothering her three girls, singing

with her students, and squeezing in some reading time wherever she can. In addition to writing, she loves gardening, baking, and having dance parties in the living room.

Yocom, Taylor

Tuesday June 9, 2020 (flower) : $300 | 2020 | 5 x 7”

Magazine scraps on paper

Tuesday June 9, 2020 (scraps) : $300 | 2020 | 5 x 7”

Magazine scraps on paper

Tuesday June 30, 2020 (flower) : $300 | 2020 | 5 x 7”

Magazine scraps on paper

Tuesday June 30, 2020 (scraps) : $300 | 2020 | 5 x 7”

Magazine scraps on paper

Tuesday May 14, 2020 (flowers) : $300 | 2020 | 5 x 7”

Magazine scraps on paper

Tuesday May 14, 2020 (scraps) : $300 | 2020 | 5 x 7”

Magazine scraps on paper

Monday May 18, 2020 (flower) : NFS | 2020 | 5 x 7’’

Magazine scraps on paper

Tuesday May 18, 2020 (scraps) : NFS | 2020 | 5 x 7’’

Magazine scraps on paper

Tuesday June 16, 2020 (flower) : $300 | 2020 | 5 x 7’’

Magazine scraps on paper

Tuesday June 16, 2020 (scraps) : $300 | 2020 | 5 x 7’’

Magazine scraps on paper

Friday May 15, 2020 (flower) : NFS | 2020 | 5 x 7’’

Magazine scraps on paper

Friday May 15, 2020 (scraps) : NFS | 2020 | 5 x 7’’

Magazine scraps on paper

Taylor Yocom (b. 1992, Des Moines) holds a BFA in Photography from the University of Iowa and an MFA in Visual Art from Washington University in St. Louis’s Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. Based in St. Louis, her practice explores femininity,

the language of flowers, and craft through photography, collage, filmmaking, and weaving. Her work has been exhibited and screened in venues across North America such as Indie Memphis, FilmDiaryNYC, Comfort Station Logan Square, The Times Club, and the Montreal Feminist Film Festival. Recently, her short film “These flowers were for you” won “Best Experimental Film” at the St. Louis Filmmakers Showcase.

Website : www.TaylorYo.com | Instagram @TaylorYocom

Parviz, April

A Call for Joy, 2024

Collecting Evidence, 2024 - ongoing Garden of Joy, 2021 Ice Cream Soup, 2024 Notice, 2021 Oxygen Mask, 2022

Why the Birds Raise the Sun in the Mornings in the Spring, 2022

Hello there! My name is April Parviz. I come from studio 316 here at Intersect. I also work for Intersect and Holy Cross doing a number of various things. For example, I’m the one designing this catalog (hi)! And occasionally I curate for the gallery (also doing that right now (hi))! I’m a mother to two sweet little girls and wife to Ben. He is currently working toward a doctorate in bioethics at SLU, so he brings home all kinds of interesting topics for us to think and talk about. I believe that his work has moved me forward in my work, to some degree. He thinks and talks about hope a lot, with regards to the medical world. This has allowed me to reflect more on my own experience with despair in the year 2014 which brought me so close to death. Life is wonderful. I have an odd case of late-onset type-1 diabetes, diagnosed at 24, which spiraled me into a place of despair, believing my life wasn’t worth living. But it is. At that

time, I could not have envisioned my wonderful life now. I have the most amazing job that is so incredible, it would have been impossible for me to imagine. I have a sweet little house, with a garden where my little girls run and dance and sing, and my husband loves me very much and is constantly offering me encouragement and support in my chronic illness. So if you or someone you know is in a state of despair, know that God loves you and even though you might not understand the plan right now, He is working for your good. Also, if you need someone to talk to about it, feel free to reach out. I love encouraging people and offering support. I know all about the darkness.

Website : AprilParviz.art | Instagram @AprilParviz

1 www.britannica.com/biography/John-Donne

2 www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Francis-of-Assisi

3 www.britannica.com/biography/Mary-Oliver

4 www.britannica.com/biography/Friedrich-Schiller

5 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ode_to_Joy