During recent Pinterest travels I synchronistically tripped across this beautiful portrait of an expectant Mary by artist/photographer Krystin Brown. Based in Pennsylvania, she is currently working on TheSaintsProject - Modern Portrayals of Catholic Saints. A click on her name brings you to Krystin's Etsy page.
Visit Recuerda mi Corazon for more about 12 Days of Mother Love and to see offerings by other participants.
Madonna
Photo by SheepInABottle on Flickr
Passersby leave rosaries on this madonna in a gas station. I found her originally on Pinterest. Does anyone know where the gas station is?
If you would like to see the work of other participants in Rebecca Brooks annual Twelve Days of Mother Love, go to Recuerda mi Corazon.
When I was on a pilgrimage trip to Israel five years ago, one of the highlights was a visit to Bethlehem in Palestine where many holy churches and landmarks are located. The site of Jesus's birth is inside one of the oldest known churches, The Church of the Nativity, in Manger Square. As you probably know, there is a high wall around Bethlehem and before we entered the city two painfully young Palestinian soldiers in uniform and carrying automatic weapons boarded to check us out. The bus parked and we walked by the heavily graffitied wall into Bethlehem. One of our first stops was The Lama Brothers shop featuring carved olive wood items and other religious items. This basket holding a variety of hand-carved icons immediately caught my eye. Twice during our pilgrimage we ate family style at Ruth's Field restaurant in the Shepherd's Field area of Bethlehem.
CARVED OLIVE WOOD
MARY, JESUS, ANGELS, SAINTS
ON MY MASTER CARD
It's Friday so Twelve Days of Mary at Rebecca Brooks Recuerda mi Corazon combines with Haiku My Heart.
This is L. A. photographer Chris Haston’s "110 Mary." For those of you unfamiliar with the term 110, it is the Harbor Freeway that runs from San Pedro, through downtown L.A. to the mountains on the opposite side of the city. Chris has perched Mary on the edge of the 4th street bridge downtown with the city as a backdrop. Though not a religious man, Chris found this statue of Mary in a trash can and was inspired to create a project he calls “Riding With Mary.” Chris lives down the street from me and if you click on Chris's name above, you can see the documentary he made about how the project came about. I own this print and it hangs in my bedroom.
I am one of several women joining Rebecca in celebrating her 12 days of Mary love at her blog. Everyone is invited. While this is not about religion, it is about sharing, opening hearts, rejoicing in ultimate mother love. It is about light, compassion, inspiration, and the sweet chance to begin each day together in beauty and peace. Thanks, Stephanie at Mango Studio for the words in this paragraph.
I was born in Los Angeles and am extremely proud of my heritage. Though highly touristy, a favorite place to visit is the El Pueblo de Los Angeles downtown where Los Angeles began in the 1700s. There are excellent docent tours offered by the L.A. Conservancy. Olvera Street itself is the biggest tourist attraction, but the simple original La Placita Church is also in this square. The mural of Our Lady of Guadalupe below sits near the church and a picture of the church is below Our Lady.
La Placita is the oldest Catholic Church in Los Angeles. It was first established in 1784 as a chapel. Nuestra Señora la Reina de Los Angeles (Our Lady Queen of the Angels Church) or Old Plaza Church as it is also known was completed in 1822. The newer minimalist-style Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels is only a few blocks from here as well. Initially opposed to its construction, I love it now as a central gathering place not only for Catholics, but a community resource for all of Los Angeles. It's archtecture and art is a post for another day. By the way, though I later converted, I was not raised as a Catholic child, but all California kids are steeped in our founding traditions. We study California history in the fourth grade, including the founding of the missions throughout the state. Fourth grade kids for generations build replicas of missions. Incidentally, an excellent exhibit on Father Junipero Serra and the missions is currently on display at the Huntington Library in San Marino. I will definitely visit during the holidays.
The original La Placita Church still serves as an active parish. Under the leadership of Father Oliveres in the 1980s La Placita declared itself the first Catholic Church to be a sanctuary for refugees from the civil wars in Central America in defiance of the I.N.S. To say this was controversial is an understatement. Although Father Oliveres was transferred to Bolivia in 1990 two new priests, Father Steve Niskanen and Arnold Abelardo, re-declared the church as a sanctuary for immigrants, began the Centro San Juan del Immigrante to give legal and medical aid to immigrants and more in 2002 and later.
There are surveyor posts in front of La Placita Church that mark the first mapped boundaries in 1858 of the village that became Los Angeles. Two Bicentennial Historical Plaques (one in English the other Spanish) were dedicated by then Mayor Tom Bradley in 1981.
I worked downtown for four years in the 1980s and often ate lunch or went to social functions on Olvera Street. I just love the gathering of families there for baptisms, weddings and funerals, many of them colorfully dressed more in the Latino tradition vs. the fashionistas seen on the westside of L.A. Our Lady plays a huge role in early L.A. as well as the L.A. of today.
Yesterday's Daily Breeze, the local paper, ran a fascinating feature talking about Our Lady's role in the city's culture, "A Timeless Image, Our Lady of Guadalupe Brings Hope to Devotees Around the Southland," if you are interested.
I adore California, every square inch of it, and Los Angeles is wondrous to me, in spite of the traffic. We are so much more than our consistently glorious weather and the entertainment industry. I encourage you to visit someday if you haven't already. Thanks to Rebecca for hosting us on our Journey of Twelve Days of Mary leading up to the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
You'll have to admit that you probably have never seen this particular photo of mother and child; I certainly hadn't, but I've fallen in love with it and a few others by professional Russian photographer Nathalia Edenmont. I tripped across it at the Wetterling Gallery website in Stockholm. Heads up, if you check the link. She is known for pushing the boundaries of art. Three-quarters of her work I love and the other quarter I find disturbing. There are dozens of articles about her and her motivations to create the kind of art she does.
The Wetterling Galley is one of several representing her and their site says, "Probing and provocative, the work of Nahtalia Edenmont explores popular culture through the medium of photography. Through the juxtaposition of opposing subjects and aesthetics, Edenmont’s work is rife with a characteristic tension as she explores themes including the deceptive nature of cultural norms, conformity, the repression of the individual, and double standards in western society. With a strong embrace of symbolism, and clear references to historical genres of art, Edenmont’s artful, and frequently beautiful, arrangements can be viewed as a modern expression of traditional iconography.
Born in Yalta, Ukraine, 1970, Nathalia Edenmont received her art education at Yalta Art School for Children, Yalta, Ukraine, State Art School of Kiev, Kiev, Ukraine, Simferopol State Art School, Simferopol, Crimea, and Forsberg’s International School of Design, Stockholm, Sweden. Her work has been exhibited throughout Europe and the United States, and has been featured in publications including Étapes Magazine, France, Black Book Magazine, NY, Beaux Arts Magazine, France, and TANK magazine, London. Edenmont has resided in Sweden since 1991.
I have long wanted to use my beautiful granddaughter as a photographic model for a madonna shoot and Edenmont's works in this genre are inspirational to me.
To see other people's offerings today in Twelve Days of Mary, visit Rebecca's Recuerda mi Corazon site.
It's been a while since I've posted at Rebecca's Postcards from Paradise, but here I am late on a beach summer night and very much aware that I live in paradise: Redondo Beach, CA. The window is open and the sea must be calm; I hear no buoy bells or sea lions barking tonight. Just the hum of traffic somewhere a few blocks away.
I remember distinctly the night I took this photo of Redondo at sunset in 2004. I had taken my then dog Cookie (who has since crossed the rainbow bridge) for a walk at the beach and took lots of photos of her with the ocean as backdrop. And then there was this.
Be sure to visit Rebecca's link above to see all the versions of paradise.
Several weeks ago our rector at Christ Church Redondo Beach told me about a professional photographer who lives across the street from the church and a half block from where I live. His name is Chris Haston. Chris has an affinity for the Blessed Virgin Mary, and so do I so I quickly found him on the Internet.
This is a print of Chris's he calls 110 Mary, taken at the 4th Street Bridge in downtown L.A. with the old Bonaventure Hotel on the left and the California Bank Tower on the right.
Not a Catholic himself, Chris found a cast-off statue of Mary on top of a copy of the L.A. Times in the recycling bin. You can read the whole story of his Riding With Mary project that started him on his journey. You can see a marvelous gallery of his images at his own website, Chris Haston. You can also see images at LensScratch.
I had e-mailed him some weeks back saying I really admired his work I had seen online and he said to knock on the door sometime when I was walking Mollie. I did that tonight and I am so glad that I did. He introduced me to his girlfriend and they showed me some of his prints--and the top half of the original Mary he found. She got broken in a desert photo shoot and on a copy of his documentary, he shows her "being laid to rest."
And if you have an affinity for Mary, too, you will love the story of how he has portrayed her. There is a link to the short documentary at his website as well although I haven't been successful in running it there. He gave me a copy of it, however, and I'm Googling to see if I can find it somewhere live. (My Cyberfriend priti.lisi at Priti Studio found a copy of Chris's documentary here.)
Thanks so much, Chris. I just love what you are doing!
At work today at Chadwick School, when I was sorting several years of digital photography into their proper categories, I ran across several marvelous photos taken on outdoor education trips over the years. This one is from the senior trip in 2004 and I don't know the person, but assume it is one of the wilderness instructors as I don't recall a student back then who looked like this. I don't know who took this photo either, but the department said it was OK to use it.
It seemed like such a classic photo to me--the young man with intricate blond dreadlocks, the sunglasses reflecting whatever is going on around him, the scarf tying his hair back and keeping the sweat off his face. We all talk frequently about the challenge in our busy society of staying in the now moment. Since it's 2004, I assume he is not texting to a buddy back home. He's focusing, I imagine, on whatever the group is encountering in the Southern Sierra at that moment--hiking, taking a food break, possibly writing in his trip journal. If he is a student and not an instructor, he has by now undoubtedly finished college, maybe grad school, and he's out working in the world.
What do you think he might be thinking or doing? I hope he got to see this sunrise that day. It's another photo in the series.
Or maybe they were all taking a break by this field of flowers.
Our current seniors are out in the Sierra right now for a few weeks and this trip is considered a rite of passage. Whatever they are doing, I hope they are able to stay fully in the moment because when they return, their new lives will take them all across the country and into new layers of learning and living. For all of us who work in education, the winding down of the academic year is both a relief--and it is very poignant. At least it sure is for me.
It's time for Rebecca's Postcards from Paradise Sunday. One of the most beautiful places I've ever visited was the Greek island of Santorini. Though I have photos of my own, none are as spectacular as this one from one of the Greek charter boat companies.
This photo of a young couple watching the sun set on Santorini is one I took. They seemed to epitomize romantic love to me.
Ah, I hope they are as happy now as they were almost four years ago when I shot this photo. But, I digress.
Sometimes people assume that older people don't like younger people's music. They would be wrong on my case! For instance, I love Coldplay. (But, I also love the Stones, The Who, and so many other groups from the 1960s and 1970s.) So, while I was thinking of Santorini, I decided to play Paradise by Coldplay. Now I feel like a kid again!
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