The Cody Center is a complex of spaces dedicated to the arts: a gallery, performance space, and two outlying art studios. Experiencing the arts in this setting is an integral part of retreats at Laity Lodge.
This exhibition revels in the idea of attention as devotion, perception as prayer. These artists, each in their own way, seek to see this holy ground, responding in an act of creation to help you inhabit the landscape that enfolds your imagination. In doing so, perhaps you can see yourself—and be yourself, here—in fresh, renewed ways.
“Through the years, we have dreamed, visualized, and yearned for Laity Lodge to foster creativity in every individual associated with us–to enable our guests to reach new creative potential.”
Howard Butt, Jr.
Matt Kleberg’s architectonic works—portals, entryways, domes, grottos, and curtained alcoves—are meant to create dynamic spaces, where questions abound and answers hide. Such is the case with the works included in his Cody Center exhibit A Slog and a Joy.
Stature of Waiting is a collection of paintings and drawings by Vienna-based artist Daniel Domig. In looking at these, it can be hard to know what we’re seeing. This should come as no surprise since Daniel explains that “waiting for the work to appear” is the primary posture he maintains in the studio.
This small group of paintings, by artist Bruce Herman, is part of a larger series of works entitled Building in Ruins—created after my house and studio fire in the late 1990’s. Following our rebuilding, in the early 2000’s, I made these paintings, attempting to get at the reality that our lives are fragile and yet shot through with the possibility of redemption and healing and release—we are “redeemed from fire by fire” as the poet said.
Dana Tanamachi is a designer. Accustomed to working at the behest of clients, her standard concern is delivering what it is they want to say. So the opportunity afforded by the Laity Lodge Residency—to live onsite for a full month and create new work that expressed precisely what it was she wanted to say—represented an unprecedented challenge, both professionally and personally.
Ordinary Saints is a collaborative project featuring the work of Bruce Herman (painter), Malcolm Guite (poet), and J.A.C. (“JAC”) Redford (composer). They have turned their collective attention toward a series of ordinary faces —“people in our immediate circles who are often overlooked, and who are dear to our Lord”—and have responded through their respective mediums. With JAC in California, Malcolm in Cambridge (U.K.), and Bruce in Massachusetts, perhaps it seems surprising that the first public manifestation of their project would emerge in a remote Canyon deep in the Hill Country of Texas.
June 2018 “I am a photographer. I stand in front of things and hope. Looking for pictures. Listening for voices. This collection of pictures has come about by looking through more than thirty years of pictures. Working on these pictures has been like putting my ear to some imagined wall, listening close for voices. Pictures have very small voices. The pictures are a harvest of disparate moments—passing glances and overheard voices.
September 2017 “When I could still see clearly, I’d start every morning of each day by painting a portrait from my imagination. As my eyesight began to fade, the way I work had to adapt to suit what I could see. I decided to proceed without glasses or magnification of any kind knowing fully I must embraced my blindness if I were continue making art without headaches that accompanied the use of a loupe, magnifying glass, or glasses.”
