“Interconnection and Companionship” Outreach through Art
We invite you to visit our emerging virtual exhibition:
Invitation
ARAS and the Art and Psyche Working Group, in collaboration, have developed a new project, Art in a Time of Global Crisis: Interconnection and Companionship, as an international outreach through art. Our intention is to create a network of mutual support through art during this difficult time. Colleagues and friends from around the world, representing various cultures, geographical locations and life-styles, have been asked to contribute artistic images with commentaries that represent companionship, resilience and hope in the face of threat, fear and struggle.
Goal
We plan to post one image with brief commentary each day (five days a week) in our curated “virtual gallery.” With a consistent presence of art that expands with each new contribution, we hope to weave a web of interconnectedness during this current time of global upheaval. You can join this worldwide community (without cost) by visiting:
“Interconnection and Companionship” on the ARAS.org website
OR SIGN UP BELOW TO RECEIVE DAILY IMAGES from the virtual gallery:
Art in a Time of Global Crisis: Interconnection and Companionship
directly to your inbox BY CLICKING HERE.
Sample Image and Commentary
The image with commentary below offer a sample of how entries will be produced and presented. Along with image submissions, we have requested that the invited contributors provide simply and clearly written commentary texts in English and in any other languages with which they are fluent. (*See request for translators at conclusion of this announcement.)
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (c. 1749), Ceiling Fresco
An Angel Saving a Falling Craftsman from Collapsing Scaffolding
Sala Capitolare Hall
Scuola Grande dei Carmini, Venice
During moments of fear and anxiety, I bring forward this image that I first saw in Venice many years ago. It helps me to remember that there are often unexpected, even surprising and
miraculous helpers who come forward from the outer world and from within. Often, strong aspects of myself that I had forgotten about but who have not forgotten me emerge at such times. Even just the memory of this painting and the day in Venice when I first encountered it, eases the suffering.
Linda Carter
Carpinteria, CA
Email: lindacarter5066@gmail.com
Mission Statement
The arts of all kinds, like viruses, transcend and transgress mundane boundaries and time. Fundamental patterns in stories, paintings and music connect us across cultures and metaphorically resonate with rhizomatic systems such as those that connect trees across many miles. We are in a time of global crisis as the spread of the coronavirus accelerates, political problems abound and stock markets crash. Quarantines and lock-downs world-wide are putting up confining walls and we are increasingly isolated from one another and the natural world. Collectively we are being infected by a virus but, also, we are psychologically infected by profound global/archetypal anxiety. To ease acutely felt aloneness and fears of contamination, we will publish daily images that may offer companionship during this time of great suffering and struggle. Through content, color and form, we hope that a spectrum of artistic representations will allow viewers to experience empathic interconnectedness: ranging from those conveying hope, solace, and comfort…to others reflecting /amplifying the disruption and turmoil that we have come to know all too well. Living images and symbols (carrying inherent paradoxes, sometimes implied/subtle, at other times direct/clear) potentially offer connectedness as an alternative to feelings of isolation. Belonging is essential to well-being and ultimately, to survival. Art expresses what often cannot be communicated with words alone. For now, our project focuses on visual images (and descriptive commentary, not interpretation) that may stimulate and move us beyond language to a sense of community that extends to other humans and to the environment as a whole.
With regret, we are no longer seeking translators for this project.
In the spirit of inclusivity, we had hoped to offer commentaries in multiple languages but given the technical complexity of trying to add multiple translations and our limited resources, this will not be possible. We are grateful to the many generous volunteers from around the world who have offered to help in this way and we are so very sorry that doing so is beyond our capability at this point.
Please feel free to distribute this announcement and we hope that you will join our worldwide community through engaging with shared artistic representations that may offer companionship during this difficult time.
With hope,
Linda Carter, Caterina Vezzoli, Billy Brennan and Justin Hamacher
The Art and Psyche Working Group
Tom Singer, Ami Ronnberg and Allison Tuzo
Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism (ARAS)
For further information or questions, please contact:
LINDA CARTER: lindacarter5066@gmail.com
ALLISON TUZO: allisonltuzo@gmail.com
AMI RONNBERG: aras@aras.org
*Logo: Wreath, a collage on fabric, was created by Ami Ronnberg in 1991. She has been the Curator of National ARAS for many years as well as a founding and ongoing member of the Art and Psyche Working Group since its inception in 2006. All members of both collaborating groups offer our sincere gratitude for her generous permission to allow this lovely and meaningful circle-of-life to represent our current project; it subtly blends and blurs boundaries allowing for play with imagination and evokes wide-ranging emotions through the interconnecting figures brought together in a mandala-like form that holds beauty, comfort and suffering. Over her years of dedicated commitment to each organization and, at times serving as the lynchpin linking the two, Ami has quietly and steadfastly brought out the best in others and touched so many lives with her remarkable talents, enthusiasm and great kindness.
