As a conservative Protestant raised in a Rockwellesque New England farming community, Sandra Bowden is acutely aware of the Protestant preference for words over images. As an artist, it has caused her no small concern that her signature motif has always been fragments of words layered into every work of art she signs.
“At one point I had to deal with some very distressing questions. Here I had spent my whole life in a church focused on words,” Bowden explains. “I used to think, ‘What have I done? Isn’t this art just compounding the whole problem?’—until I began to ‘get’ the theology properly. By the Word of the Lord the heavens were made; Jesus as the Word-made-flesh points far beyond the physical [emphasis hers]. So the Word must have a power beyond cognitive thought, beyond logic. That’s the mystery I’ve spent a lifetime hunting for in my art—that veiled kind of expression which doesn’t explain itself right away.”
Choose any work from Bowden’s prolific output and you uncover fragments of Hebrew calligraphy and segments of timeworn antique Bibles or commentaries, and in as many as 40 languages.
LAYER UPON LAYER Fascinated by the form and historical weight of Hebrew, Bowden began studying it in 1972 with an orthodox rabbi. In 1980 she made the first of four visits to Israel and immersed herself in ancient Israelite culture, archaeology, geology, and ritual—admitting she is “always the student, but never a scholar.” What eventually emerged was her Israelite Tel Suite, cross-sectioned profiles of Canaanite cities conquered by Joshua in the thirteenth century b.c. Concealed archaeological features or important artifacts layered into the strata of Tels Megiddo, Hazor, Gezer, and Lachish relate directly to Old Testament references. Tel Megiddo, for example, is overlaid with a royal lion seal mentioning King Jeroboam. Excavations of Tel Gezer, part of Solomon’s dowry, revealed Israelite burial sites and a potsherd inscribed with an agricultural calendar.
Bowden later researched colors mentioned in the Torah, attempting to identify historically accurate dyes that could have made Joseph’s coat, or the hues of precious gems used in the ephods of the levitical priests.
Bowden’s work crosses boundaries between synagogues, churches, and seminaries particularly well; her primary clientele on the east coast is, in fact, Jewish. Her ambassadorial finesse has allowed her to forge close ties with Jewish art dealers and rabbinical mentors over the years at annual Judaica conferences and synagogue art exhibits. “Probably the most significant meal I ever had in my life,” says this attractive, well-traveled grandmother of four, “was Shabbat supper with a Jewish couple in Israel. This was not ‘put on’ for me. This was every Friday night.
“The world stopped; we ate ceremoniously, and they sang songs they had sung in their families for generations. They were absolutely in love with God. At that point I understood that differences could only be resolved by Jesus.”
Yet, Bowden confesses, “In any Christian setting I can show all the Jewish stuff, but in the Jewish setting I am more careful. I’ll still use Greek text, gorgeous Bibles from the 1850s layered underneath Hebrew and English, even Vietnamese. But I won’t show crucifixion imagery. If I’m in a Jewish show I’ll have a binder that explains my Christian background. The work is strong enough—it has enough integrity that I don’t have to hide my Christian faith. But I would never make Jewish people uneasy by evangelizing [overtly]. My life is a testimony in front of them.” And, as Bowden insists, “We share a common text”—figuratively as well as literally.
By now, Bowden’s penchant for layering has extended into the very paper that forms the foundational base of each work of art; she claims she is “going medieval.” Recent works are set on paper made from a blend of shredded Bible commentaries. The diptychs, reminiscent of pages from illuminated manuscripts, or medieval altarpiece panels, seem to float over Torah pages and English translations of the Ten Commandments, shining out from gilded sheaves of paper.
A PROCESS OF PERSONAL INQUIRY Bowden is also front and center in the dialogue regarding contemporary Christian art. She is an active advocate for Christians in the Visual Arts and has been involved in CIVA since the group’s founding. Her ambassadorial role as CIVA president since 1992 has taken her to the Vatican, Jerusalem, Berkeley, Montreal, and New York City. This year, after moving her home studio from New York to Cape Cod, Massachusetts, along with her entrepreneurial husband, she has begun preparations for CIVA’s twentieth anniversary celebration in 1999.
Because the foundation underlying all her work is the eternal God, this artist feels free to ask unlimited questions. “Sometimes art is a process of personal inquiry,” Bowden says. “My work is a record of questions I’ve had all my life, and the work continually raises new questions. I just follow it along.” Apart from the fact that her natural curiosity and rabbinically insistent questions never cease, Bowden seems to have an infinite number of ideas for future series. But then, since the source that unifies all her work is the infinite God, who should be surprised?
For more information, contact CIVA, P.O. Box 18117, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55418-0117.
The Muse of the Mountains, by Wendy Murray ZobaWhat do the mountains sound like?
Jerry Smith, musician and artisan, knows. They sang to him. Smith heard the Great Smoky Mountains when he visited western North Carolina for the first time. “I drove into these mountains and was moved as deeply as anything that has ever happened to me in my life,” he says.
Leaving college, girlfriend, home, and dog, Smith moved from northeastern Ohio to Asheville, North Carolina, for the muse was calling him. He heard it again when he walked into the student union center at Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa, North Carolina (where he subsequently enrolled), and heard David Holt, head of the Appalachian Music Program, playing the banjo along with fiddler Lynn Shaw and John McCutchin on the hammered dulcimer.
“I was immediately drawn to the hammered dulcimer,” Smith says. “I sat down behind this dulcimer player and watched him play. I was flabbergasted.” Smith, who had never studied music and couldn’t read it (and still can’t), asked where he could purchase this trapezoidal instrument with its 40 to 100 strings, played with mallets. The reply was, “You couldn’t buy one anywhere.” Still, the suggestion was made that he could order information through the Smithsonian Institution. So he sent 50 cents and received a brochure that explained (more or less) how to make a dulcimer.
LIKE DANCING WITH YOUR HANDS Smith built his first hammered dulcimer out of plywood and cement nails. (A hammered dulcimer should not be confused with a mountain dulcimer, which has three to six strings and is plucked.) His second dulcimer was better, and he decided to try playing it. “First of all, it worked. That surprised me,” he says. “I was also surprised at how easy it was to play. Every time I pulled it out I was surrounded by people. I couldn’t play beans on it, but everybody thought I was a genius. I would get a melody in my head and then find the notes on the dulcimer.
“Playing a dulcimer is like dancing with your hands. You’re dancing the melody out. It’s the most wonderful way to play a musical instrument,” Smith says. Today, some 23 years later, he has built more than 670 dulcimers and has a waiting list.
Smith has made three recordings—a “trilogy”—that bring expression both to his spiritual longings and to his love for the mountains. The first, The Strayaway Child (1981), produced with Tom Fellenbaum, bespeaks, in classical Celtic hymns and jigs, the restlessness of his heart during his pre-Christian days. Though “The Dancing Dog/Blarney Pilgrim” ends discordantly in nonresolution, it segues into “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring,” which suggests, says Jerry’s wife, Lisa, that “he felt he was ‘straying away’ from something”—as if the mountains were crying.
Heart Dance, the second in the trilogy (1986), was recorded after Smith’s conversion and suggests a gentler but more resolved longing. Both his father and a close friend had recently died, giving the music a quiet, reflective feeling.
Lisa Smith accompanies her husband on the lute for the third recording, Homecoming (1992), which begins and ends with “What Child Is This?” The Brentwood Musiclabel has recently taken over all three recordings.
Smith continues to be consumed with building dulcimers in the workshop behind his house, and he has turned down attractive offers for special projects in order to keep his heart close to God’s. “I’m trying to experience his joy, hear him, and worship him,” he says, “because I know the kind of joy and the kind of peace this music can bring to people.”
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