Category: Art as Resistance

The Palm Sunday Peace Parade: Pasadena, CA

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Palm Sunday PeaceTriumphant and victorious is he,
humble and riding on a donkey.
Zechariah 9:9

By Bert Newton

Below is a history of what is now the 13th Annual Palm Sunday Peace Parade, sponsored by a coalition of communities: Church for Others, Crescenta Valley Methodist Church, Knox Presbyterian Church, Montrose Peace Vigil, Orange Grove Friends Meeting, Pasadena Mennonite Church, Peace & Justice Academy, Progressive Christians Uniting, Jill Shook & Anthony Manousos, Urban Village of Pasadena.
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We now call it the Palm Sunday Peace Parade; this name not only has the advantage of alliteration, it also reflects the context in which the march actually began. We began the Palm Sunday Peace Parade in Pasadena in 2003 at the outbreak of the war with Iraq, so it was a peace march. Even though the context was war and the death that war brings, we made our event joyful and celebratory, much like the original Palm Sunday; the gospels tells that Jesus marched toward his death and yet entered Jerusalem in celebration of his victory over the forces of death. So we designed our event likewise to be festive and celebratory, a peace parade.
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For Botero, Who Looked at What I Could Not

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boteroA poem by Rose Marie Berger, a peace activist, poet and the Senior Associate Editor of Sojourners Magazine. This piece was first published in Beltway Poetry Quarterly (Volume 7, Number 2, Spring 2006).
——————–
The bodies are fat
corpulent, like the seven-hundred-
pound man in Maryland
who hasn’t stood since 1998
and must lie on his stomach
or his weight will crush
his windpipe. They hang
upside down by a toe or ankle
these bodies,
faces wrapped in a red silk scarf—
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Self-Portrait

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Bob Two BullsRobert Two Bulls is the RadicalDiscipleship.Net artist of the month. “Self-Portrait” (below) is a piece that Two Bulls utilizes to creatively confront stereotypes. He explained this piece five years ago, “I chose the war bonnet and red blanket images in profile because it’s a well-worn, universal image … an image used famously by Hollywood,” said Two Bulls. Although such images date back more than a century, they persist in contemporary culture “as images most folks will now conjure up when thinking of what an American Indian looks like.”
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Godly Play

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Redeemer1From artist Katherine Parent of the Redeemer Center for Life:

These are collaborative icons made by my coworker Helen Collins and I with Sunday School children at Redeemer Lutheran Church in North Minneapolis. We are using the Godly Play method of Sunday school, which involves storytelling and responding to stories through art as sacred practices. Our creative, lively multiracial church is housed in a hundred-year-old building full of stained-glass images of a blond white Jesus–but we as a congregation have many more ways of seeing our savior. Continue reading “Godly Play” →

The 38 Tears of Bishop Whipple

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Bob Two BullsSeven or eight years ago when I lived and served in the Diocese of Los Angeles, I began teaching a class on Art and Spirituality and the marketing of Native American Indian Art. From these two experiences, coupled with my own art-making, I found that individual minds are opened by art. Art can transform the individual. When Native artists create art that is not necessarily tribally themed, non-Native viewers often voice surprise. Continue reading “The 38 Tears of Bishop Whipple” →

Creatively Resisting A Fracked Up California

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CA ProtestExcerpts from a piece by Sarah Lazare of Commondreams.org, reporting from the big climate justice action in San Francisco this weekend:

More than 150 protesters on Friday blockaded the California State Office Building in downtown San Francisco and erected a 16-foot fracking well in the middle of an intersection to demand Governor Jerry Brown cease all drilling and fossil fuel extraction and respect climate justice (photo right from Steve Rhodes).

Campaigners—who hail from labor, indigenous, student, and community organizations—were awaiting arrest at the time of publication…
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