BY Allie Grasgreen
news reporter
This summer, art and spirituality will flow through Eugene, giving people the opportunity to explore the relationship between the two.
The University’s Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, in conjunction with the Oregon Bach Festival, will host a six-day event focusing on the relationship between “Art and Spirituality.” The event will run June 27 through July 3.
“I wanted to create something that blended nature, music, and the visual art of Carl Morris,” said museum Director of Education Lisa Abia-Smith. “I hope this event will foster a better collaboration between the Bach Festival and the museum as well as reach a more diverse audience.”
Larry Fong, museum associate director and curator of American and regional art, said the finished product is a result of “the museum’s desire to share how inspiration influences artistic expression. The Oregon Bach Festival is excellent in building this understanding with music.”
Bach Festival players also had the audience in mind when planning the event.
“Our real objective is to create a deeper experience for audiences who are already aware of the Bach Festival and patrons of the museum,” said George Evano, the Oregon Bach Festival’s Communications Director. “Collaboration always makes experiences richer.”
The event will combine visual art and music with the hope of allowing participants to gain a better understanding of spirituality. Abia-Smith said art or spirituality can inspire the other.
“Some people find solace in creating art and it is extremely spiritual,” Abia-Smith said. “Others are deeply spiritual and art is a vehicle for expressing their spirituality.”
Debbie Williamson-Smith, art museum spokeswoman, also suggested that the two are interrelated.
“Spirituality and faith have an impact for artists’ creativity,” she said. “Art, whether it’s visual or performing, is something that creates an emotional impact in a person. Everything is inspiration for art.”
Williamson-Smith also said this development presents a great opportunity to the people of Eugene.
“The museum and Bach Festival are two entities that exemplify what we can offer to the community,” she said. “Anytime you can find another entity that wants to promote cultural programs, it benefits both organizations.”
Although the six days will involve several different activities, including botanizing native plants along the Willamette River and a Chinese calligraphy workshop, the central component of the art experience is “History of Religion in Oregon,” a collection of Portland artist Carl Morris’s murals.
Evano said the mural exhibit has a sense of “universality” to it, making it relevant and valuable to everyone.
“(The paintings) had to deal with Protestantism Buddhism Catholicism Judaism,” he said. “That’s not one specific religion, these are things about faith, matters of the soul. It’s expressions of faith through art forms, and I think that’s something we can all relate to, no matter what our personal beliefs.”
Fong said Morris’s undertaking was a challenging one. The nine “virtuosital” murals, he said, resulted from “a very spiritual understanding of his own experiences. His own experiences led to his ability to take this challenge of expressing the religious thought or religious belief of what it is people find so essential of spirituality in the state of Oregon.”
Another major draw will be the Bach Festival’s choral-orchestral concert. Conductor Helmuth Rilling will lead Brahms’ German Requiem on the festival’s opening night at Silva Concert Hall.
Evano said the concert “speaks on a really great deep spiritual level,” and expects the seats to sell out.
He also noted the relationship between art and music, and said the two can be created synonymously.
“Going back through history, you can see how movements in art were similar to movements in music,” he said, “like the baroque period, the classical period, the romantic period. I think there’s a cultural context of the times that gets expressed in different forms, in different modes.”
Abia-Smith agreed, and, to exemplify the relationship, cited an incident in which the accomplished musician Wagner inspired the visual artist Ceanne.
“Rhythm and movement are found in both the visual arts and music,” she said.
The Oregon Bach Festival is two weeks of choral-orchestral concerts centering on Bach’s music. Rilling leads the festival, which also includes chamber music, family events and educational programs.
Contact the higher education reporter at [email protected]
Museum, music festival combine forces for summer event
Daily Emerald
February 18, 2007
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