Every year, SJB gallery opens its doors to artists who create
their interpretations of the Mother of Christ
By JENNIFER COLBY
Special to The Pinnacle
The Virgin Mary, who goes door to door looking for a place to
spend the night every year in Christmas Posadas celebrated around
the region, has found a permanent holiday home in San Juan
Bautista.
For the past 11 years Galeria Tonantzin has offered a room, so
to speak, for the Virgin by gathering together for display images
of her by women artists from across the United States and
beyond.
Every year, SJB gallery opens its doors to artists who create their interpretations of the Mother of Christ
By JENNIFER COLBY
Special to The Pinnacle
The Virgin Mary, who goes door to door looking for a place to spend the night every year in Christmas Posadas celebrated around the region, has found a permanent holiday home in San Juan Bautista.
For the past 11 years Galeria Tonantzin has offered a room, so to speak, for the Virgin by gathering together for display images of her by women artists from across the United States and beyond.
The showing in the historic gallery has become a holiday tradition in the Mission City, where saints line Third Street and the Mission stands sentry in a town Christmas display rich in religious symbolism.
Today, for instance, locals will rise with the San Juan Bautista roosters and celebrate holy mass at the Mission in honor of Our Lady of Guadalupe’s feast day.
“Images of the Virgin” are art works in many media that have expanded understanding of the most intriguing symbol of Christmas, the Virgin Mary. Artists and scholars will gather Saturday in San Juan Bautista, as they have each December, for an annual conference to explore why the image of the sacred female is so important to women today.
At GalerÃa Tonantzin, this year’s offering of Virgin images range from paintings of the traditional icon by Maria Chaviel to complex collages by Marie Pietra Lalore that challenge the Virgin as a prescription for female submission. The iconography of the Black Madonnas of Europe, Africa and Latin America are mixed with Kali from Asia. This multicultural view of the Virgin Mary is centered on images of the Mexican Guadalupe, so important to the local community.
Chicana artists explore Guadalupe’s indigenous roots and her syncretic relationship to Tonantzin and Coatlique. This year’s image by Carmen Leon depicts the mother as corn goddess. Anglo artists also depict Guadalupe embracing her cross culturally. One painting depicts the Guadalupe shrine at Pinto Lake near Watsonville celebrating Guadalupe’s local apparition in 1992 to a Mexican woman who was a laid off cannery worker through a silhouette left emblazoned on an oak tree.
A visit to the gallery can be a transforming experience in which the Virgin is interpreted by the artist, leaving an image with multiple meanings, something that is discussed at the accompanying conference on Saturday.
Can female artists re-image the Virgin, make her less passive, endow her with characteristics of powerful, everyday women?
Many have. Black Madonna’s are icons revered in special places across Europe, often where the church was built over an earlier sacred site; a healing well, a place where the goddess was worshiped.
College professors, young Chicana poets, grandmothers turned artists, therapists and business leaders will gather this weekend to contemplate images of the sacred female. This year’s special focus is on the Guadalupe of Spain. Lucia Birnbaum will speak about the Dark Mother of Spain and the Spanish musician Juan L. Sanchez will open the conference with a concert, open to the general public.
The core of what this yearly gathering has discovered over 10 years is that as women connect with images of the empowered sacred female, they connect with their own power and sacredness. The images become a counter to the media exploitation of women as sexual objects. Women become subjects, agents of their own lives, as they explore the Virgin, a woman who sought a place to bear her child of light, a woman who appeared to the people of Mexico. Mother of God, or goddess herself, she brings a sacred story into a sacred landscape.
Artists have asked “what’s under your skirts Guadalupe?” and found a powerful earth based, compassionate mother who calls her people to work for justice.
Guadalupe has been the “estandarte” the banner leading the Mexican revolution and the farm workers struggle for rights. Here in our part of Aztland, the sacred homeland of the Mexica/Aztec, she calls us to offer room in our hearts this season for compassion, care for the earth and justice.
GalerÃa Tonantzin is a home for these images of the Virgin.
“Images of the Virgin” exhibit runs through Jan. 12 at 115 3rd St. San Juan Bautista
Hours noon– 5 Friday – Sunday. Call 623-ARTE for holiday extended hours
Juan L. Sanchez Trio in Concert is at 7:30 pm Friday. $10. Under 12 free
Virgin Image Conference: Saturday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. $60 includes lunch.
Art reception free and open to the public Saturday, 4-6 pm
Jennifer Colby is an artist and owner of GalerÃa Tonantzin. She teaches Culture and Cultural Diversity at Cal Sate University Monterey Bay and finished a PhD in Humanities writing on Women’s Art and the Image of Guadalupe. She lives in Aromas.
