Amish Quilts and Abstract Art

Posted on August 2, 2018 by jannekenls

Janneken Smucker

When I began researching the relationship of Amish quilts to the art market about ten years ago, I wanted to find the missing link that proved that abstract minimalist artists—like Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Ellsworth Kelly, and others—painting in bold, graphic blocks of color were inspired by Amish quilts. Surely, some of these artists must have noticed Center Diamond and Bars quilts hanging on the clothes lines in Lancaster County while they tooled about the countryside, right? I had heard a rumor that Frank Stella owned and displayed Navajo blankets, so it didn’t seem like such a stretch. And buried in a exhibition catalog I found a reference to Andy Warhol owning a Lancaster County Amish quilt, but his signature pop art shared more in common with the repeat block patterned quilts of the dominant culture, rather than the graphic minimalism of Amish quiltmakers.¹ Maybe, just maybe, there was some hidden connection.

An art historian friend offered to get a message from me to Mark Rothko’s children. I asked if Rothko was familiar with Amish quilts, or if the family ever slept under quilts. His heirs’ answer was an adamant “no,” that this signature color field painter was not at all familiar with the craft. Barnett Newman’s widow fielded a similar question from a folk art curator comparing her late-husband’s work to an Amish bars quilt, stating that his intention was to explore the “subtle relationships between stripes and ground,” whereas a quiltmaker was “carrying out a simple pattern.”²

“No. 61 (Rust and Blue)”, by Mark Rothko 1953. Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

Perhaps it would not be in a prominent living artist’s best interest to acknowledge being inspired by the artistic work of untrained female artists from a relatively closed religious group. The hierarchies between art and craft, between male-trained fine artists and female needleworkers were rigidly defined in the 1960s and ’70s. A Philadelphia Inquirer review of one of the very first exhibits focused narrowly on Amish quilts noted, “It would probably be difficult to secure loans of paintings from abstract artists if the intention were to show them alongside quilts… hard-edge abstract painters…probably would feel chagrined, I should think, to have their efforts compared… with applied arts – albeit excellent, quintessentially American folk arts such as Amish quilts.”³ But these boundaries began to blur as interest in women’s traditional artforms gained prominence, thanks to feminism, the approaching Bicentennial, the counterculture’s interest in applied arts and crafts, and an otherwise expanding art canon.

While Newman and Rothko may not have acknowledged drawing any inspiration from Amish quilts—and indeed I can find no evidence that they did—another artist who painted in a similar vein did. Warren Rohrer, with deep roots in a Mennonite farm family from Smoketown in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, had grown up sleeping under quilts made by his mother and grandmother. Yet despite living in proximity to the Amish in Lancaster County, he never saw one of their quilts until visiting Abstract Design in American Quilts, a 1971 exhibit at the Whitney Museum of American Art. He described the Amish Bars quilt he saw there as “simple in design, like ‘modern art,’ and brooding in color, like Rothko.”⁴

Following this introduction to Amish quilts, Rohrer explicitly drew on the minimalism and graphic simplicity inherent in the bedcovers in his paintings. Rohrer’s mid-1970s paintings reflect both his newfound interest in Amish quilts (his paintings Fields: Amish 1, Amish 4, and Amish 5 share a strong resemblance with Lancaster Amish quilts) and a return to his agrarian roots as his minimalist painting recalled the farm fields of his youth.⁵ This conscious turning to his own Anabaptist, rural history prompted the Inquirer art critic to observe that unlike most abstract painters whose work had been compared to quilts, Warren Rohrer would not mind this association.

Warren Rohrer, Settlement Magenta, 1980. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Purchased with funds contributed by Henry Strater and Marion Boulton Stroud, 1982

And he and his wife Jane Rohrer also began, in his words, “to search for the ‘perfect Amish quilt,’” buying some with the assistance of Philadelphia antiques dealer Amy Finkle.⁶ And they found quilts, that seem to my eyes, indeed close to perfect, including this one they later gifted to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Center Square Quilt, Artist/maker unknown, American, Amish, Made in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, c. 1900. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Warren Rohrer, 1982

Penn State’s Palmer Museum of Art is slated to exhibit Rohrer’s paintings along with his wife Jane Turner Rohrer’s poetry in a 2020 show titled From Mennonite Fields: Tradition and Modernism in the Painting and Poetry of Warren and Jane Rohrer, exploring the work of these two artists of Mennonite upbringing. Curated by poet and Penn State professor of English, Julia Spicher Kasdorf; director of the graduate program in Visual Studies at Penn State, Christopher Reed; and Palmer curator Joyce Robinson, the exhibit will also feature Amish quilts from the Rohrer’s collection along with Pennsylvania Dutch painted furniture. The exhibit is funded by a Penn State University Strategic Plan Seed Grant.

Sandra Brant and Elissa Cullman, Andy Warhol’s “Folk and Funk” : September 20, 1977-November 19, 1977 (New York: Museum of American Folk Art, 1977). ↩
Quoted in Jean Lipman, Provocative Parallels : Naïve Early Americans, International Sophisticates, 1st ed. (New York: Dutton, 1975), 144. ↩
Victoria Donohue, “Amish Quilts and Abstract Art Blended at ICA,” Philadelphia Inquirer, August 8, 1976. ↩
Warren Rohrer, “My Experience with Quilts (A Bias),” in Pennsylvania Quilts: One Hundred Years, 1830-1930 (Philadelphia: Moore College of Art, 1978). ↩
David Carrier, Warren Rohrer [Published in Conjunction with the Exhibition “Warren Rohrer: The Language of Mark Making” Held at Allentown Art Museum of the Lehigh Valley, October 23, 2016 – January 22, 2017], (Philadelphia, Pa: Locks Art Publ., 2016), 72–77. ↩
Rohrer, “My Experience”; Amy Finkel, interview by Janneken Smucker, Philadelphia, PA, May 15, 2008, Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History, University of Kentucky Libraries, https://kentuckyoralhistory.org/catalog/xt71zc7rqw4b. ↩

Beyond the Martyrs Mirror: The Prints of Jan Luyken

Posted on January 25, 2018 by Guest Contributor

Originally exhibited at the Regier Art Gallery, Bethel College, North Newton, Kansas, October 30 to December 4, 2015. Excerpted from an article of the same name in Pennsylvania Mennonite Heritage 41 no.1 (January 2018): 10-29

by Rachel Epp Buller

Jan Luyken (also spelled Luiken) was born in Amsterdam into a middle-class family led by a school-teaching father who was devout in faith and committed to intellectual study. After his formal schooling, Luyken apprenticed in the workshop of a local painter, Martin Saeghmolen, and then learned etching and engraving from printmaker Coenraet Decker. He also met regularly with a group of friends, who called themselves De Wijngaardranken (The Vine Tendrils), to write poetry. In 1672, at the age of twenty-three, Luyken married Maria den Oudens. Of their five children, only their son Caspar survived childbirth. At the time of their marriage, Luyken joined the Anabaptist movement at his wife’s instigation, but he did not fully commit until having visions and experiencing a powerful religious conversion in 1673. Luyken remained committed to the Anabaptist church and to piety for the rest of his life.

Following Luyken’s death in 1712, fellow artist Pieter Sluiter etched Luyken’s portrait, shown at left, and published it together with a six-line poem by Adriaan Spinniker that encapsulates how his contemporaries viewed him:¹

The desire for God and good deeds, which burns in LUIKEN’s heart
Shown in his behavior, and etchings, and poetry,
Spread thus its glow in the modest countenance,
Which gaze made each aspire to share his way of living.
Thou, who dost always view and read his work with pleasure,
Look frequently at this face, as incentive for thy spirit.

Professional Work

Although he is known predominantly in today’s Anabaptist communities for his iconic etchings in the Martyrs Mirror by Thieleman J. van Braght (1685), Jan Luyken produced over three thousand other works that included paintings (of which only a few survive), drawings, prints, and poems. Luyken published twelve books focused on piety and Scripture, for which he both created prints and wrote poetry. He also produced illustrations for nearly five hundred books by other authors in disciplines as varied as biology, chemistry, geography, shipbuilding, early Christian history, and Dutch history, among others. The books and prints in this exhibition offer a closer look into the breadth of Luyken’s work.

Many of Luyken’s prints fall into the category of emblem literature. Throughout sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe, but particularly in the Low Countries, artists and writers favored the use of emblems, which combined images and verses for didactic ends. Emblems generally included a title or motto, an illustration, and an explanation in prose or poetic form. Taken together, these three pieces sought to impart a moral lesson to the viewer or reader. Luyken’s emblems offered meditations on living a godly life and on attaining the path to salvation, using a wide variety of symbolism that would have been easily understandable to his contemporaries.

De Onwaardige Wereld vertoond in Zinnebeelden (The Unworthy World, as told in Emblems), 1710

The Dangerous Stand, from The Unworthy World (Menno Simons Historical Library photo)

Dutch artists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries commonly depicted immoral or dangerous behavior, partly as an instructional device to their viewers. In this book of religious emblems, Luyken pictured “the unworthy world” as a warning to urge his readers onto the right path of Christian life. In the scene displayed here, a mortal hangs by a thread above the fires of hell while the specter of death waits to snip his life thread with scissors. If only the man will change his ways, he might be saved. The accompanying verse, Matthew 10:28, reminds us that a better fate awaits us beyond this life if we so choose it: “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”

Dangerous Stand), from De Onwaardige Wereld (The Unworthy World), 1710. Reproduced in Het Werk Van Jan en Casper Luyken door P. Van Eeghen, vol. 2, 1905

Preparatory drawing for The Dangerous Stand (Menno Simons Historical Library photo)

A catalogue raisonné lists all of the works created by a particular artist. This compendium of the works of Jan and Caspar Luyken includes not only the finished prints but also the sketches and preparatory drawings made in advance of the completed works. Looking at this drawing in comparison to the eventual print (see page 15) shows how Luyken worked out the basic composition in the drawing but added a much higher level of detail and linework to the finished product. Notice also how the compositions are reversed since Luyken would have drawn this image onto the copper plate, only to have it printed as a mirror image.

Tafereelen der Eerst Christenen (Scenes of the First Christians). With prints by Jan Luyken and verses by Pieter Langendijk and Claas Bruin, 1722; reprinted 1740, “Bedieninge des Doops in een rivier” (Ministry of Baptism in the River)

Ministry of Baptism in the River, from Scenes of the First Christians (Menno Simons Historical Library photo)

Even posthumously, Jan Luyken’s work continued to garner much attention. Ten years after Luyken’s death, ninety-two of his engravings were published in this volume of early church history. Poems by Pieter Langendijk and six-line verses by Claas Bruin accompany each of Luyken’s images. Not surprisingly, given Luyken’s Anabaptist connections, one of the scenes he chose to include in his series of early Christians is a scene of adult baptism. Notice how Luyken’s compositional lines lead our eyes to the baptism in the center of the image, with small background figures building up to larger foreground figures and with circular ripples of water surrounding the key players.

De Schriftuurlyke Geschiedenissen en Gelykenissen, Van het oude en nieuwe verbond [Scriptural Histories and Parables of the Old and New Testaments], 1712

Genesis III: 1-7, from De Schriftuurlyke Geschiedenissen en Gelykenissen, Van het oude en nieuwe verbond (Scriptural Histories and Parables of the Old and New Testaments), 1712

Genesis 3:1-7, from Scriptural Histories and Parables of the Old and New Testaments (Menno Simons Historical Library photo)

In picturing the fall of humanity from the Garden of Eden, Luyken placed the blame squarely on the figure of Eve through both image and text. In the print, Eve occupies the center of the composition and points to the tree of knowledge while she hands the apple to Adam. The rhyming verse that accompanies the image, which Luyken titled “Man Seduced,” laments the bitter outcome of Eve’s temptation.

Jan Luyken, De Schriftuurlyke Geschiedenissen en Gelykenissen, Van het nieuwe verbond (The Scriptural Stories and Parables of the New Testament), 1712

Image for Luke 2:6-7, from The Scriptural Stories and Parables of the New Testament (Menno Simons Historical Library photo)

In this visual retelling of the New Testament, Luyken highlighted both somewhat obscure and well-known stories. The scene depicted here illustrates the two most familiar verses of the nativity story in Luke’s gospel:

⁶So it was, that while they were there, the days were completed for her to be delivered. ⁷And she brought forth her firstborn Son, and wrapped Him in swaddling cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.

Notice how Luyken positioned the Christ Child at the center of the composition, surrounded by the parents, the shepherds, and the animals of the stable. Luyken’s rhyming poem on the theme of Christ’s birth accompanies the print.

Wreede moordt der Spanjaarden tot Naarden, den eersten December des jaars 1572 [Cruel Murder by the Spanish at Naarden, 1 December 1572], 1677-79, from Hugo de Groot, Nederlandtsche Jaerboeken en Historien (Netherlandish Yearbook and History), 1681

Cruel Murder by the Spanish at Naarde, from Netherlandish Yearbook and History (Rijksmuseum photo)

In historical prints such as this, Luyken displayed a rare patriotic sentiment. The scene depicted here marks an episode in what came to be known as the Spanish Fury, a series of bloody confrontations in the sixteenth century when Spanish troops sacked and pillaged Dutch towns in an effort to maintain Catholic rule and allegiance to the Spanish Crown. Luyken pictured the chaos of the battle, and the closed-in setting suggests that the citizens of Naarden had no way to escape the villainous Spanish soldiers.

Dr. Rachel Epp Buller is a feminist art historian, print maker, book artist, and mother of three whose art and scholarship often speak to these intersections. She speaks and publishes widely on the maternal body in contemporary art, including her book Reconciling Art and Mothering (Ashgate/Routledge). She privileges collaboration in her work, which has resulted in various outcomes, including the edited collection Mothering Mennonite, with Kerry Fast (Demeter Press); an exhibition and book, Alice Lex-Nerlinger, Fotomonteurin und Malerin / Photomontage Artist and Painter, with Das Verborgene Museum in Berlin; and the exhibition “Beyond the Martyrs Mirror: The Prints of Jan Luyken,” with Bethel College student Alexandra Shoup, exhibit designer David Kreider and archivist John Thiesen at the Mennonite Library and Archives. She is a Fulbright scholar, a board member of the National Women’s Caucus for Art, a regional coordinator for the international Feminist Art Project, and current associate professor of visual arts and design at Bethel College, North Newton, Kansas.

Josephine V. Brown, “Biography of Jan Luiken,” Digital Collections, Pitts Theology Library, http://www.pitts.emory.edu/collections/digitalcollections/luiken.cfm ↩

Intimacies and Admonishments: Some Thoughts on the Crossing the Line Exhibition

Posted on July 27, 2017 by Guest Contributor

Jennifer Shenk

Many of the artists in this beautifully intimate exhibition curated by Dr. Rachel Epp Buller cross the boundaries of time. They are time travelers of a sort, seeking to open windows into the past to understand the lives of their fore-bearers, and their own, anew.

Jayne Holsinger, Selections from Nine Tetrameters, 1996. Oil on Canvas

Jane Holsinger, for example, frames her paintings in the four-patch quilt block pattern, a grid structure that is at once reminiscent of both domestic labor and modernist painting. Painting is a form of relationship between the artist and the subject; in this case it is a relationship characterized by a search for affinity with the hands of the women in the artist’s past.

Teresa Braun’s eerily beautiful video piece, accessible via screen and headphones in the exhibition space, also floats between multiple worlds. She combines performance, the body, film, and the digital to craft a family mythology that questions the autonomous boundaries of the individual. In The Plaint, the body is organism, architecture, and sustenance all at once, and the artist’s present identity is navigated through the characters of the past.

Gesine Janzen, “September 11, 1817,” 2015 (top). Etching. “The Color of Memory,” 2016 (bottom). Photopolymer intaglio print.

Gesine Janzen’s prints play with the role of remnants. What happens when we glimpse the gaze of our ancestors, frozen in a photograph, or their handwriting, lining the pages of a journal? The photograph is an object that by definition is a marker of loss (in the fact that when looking at a photograph one is never when/where the photograph is taken, and can never be then or there again.) Loss pervades Janzen’s work, in the woman who is no longer here and the message that can no longer be read.

The works of Jennifer Miller, Kandis Friesen, and Karen Reimer, on the other hand, carry strong admonitions, seeking to bring attention to our forms of complicity and ask us to question the narratives we have inherited.

Jennifer Miller, Crude, Powdered graphite, ink, acrylic on paper 2013.

Kandis Friesen, Onsa Japse Jeit Jantsied, 2015. Leather and thread.

In Miller’s case, she is implicated in her political criticism of the Keystone XL pipeline through the personal history of her family’s involvement with it. Tension becomes palpable in the green paint, actively oozing from the surface of Crude. In Friesen’s piece, a hand-sewn drawing on leather, it is the recognition of the colonial history that has been erased from many Mennonite narratives of trauma and migration, evident in the staunch pierced leather, a material that is a product of conquest.

Karen Reimer, Socialist Worker, March 31, 2000, 2000 (detail)

Rendering a copy of the Socialist Worker, March 31, 2000 through embroidery in her piece of the same title, Karen Reimer not only elicits questions about the notion of originality and authorship (i.e. who gets to take credit for the work of art?) but also calls the status of the very art object into question, flattening the mythology of the individual-artist-genius. Drawing on the rich history of activism and consciousness-raising associated with fiber arts, Reimer’s piece, like many in this exhibition, subtly probe the relationship between the past and the present, asking us to examine the hierarchies in our own systems of value.

Editor’s Note: While Anabaptist Historians generally focuses on historical research, in the interdisciplinary spirit of “Crossing the Line”, we are broadening our scope during this series to include a wide variety of Anabaptist studies.

See other writings on “Crossing the Line: Women of Anabaptist Traditions Encounter Borders and Boundaries” here.

Unique etchings by Jan Luiken

Posted on July 5, 2017 by simonedhorst

Portrait of Jan Luiken File created by Phillip Medhurst – Photo by Harry Kossuth, FAL,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8987881

When the name Jan Luiken is mentioned in Anabaptist circles, most think of his brilliant etchings in the Martyrs’ Mirror. His depiction of the martyr Dirk Willems may be the most famous, appearing on book covers, adapted artwork, and even secular psychology textbooks.

Dirk Willems rescues his captor. Public Domain,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=544931

Luiken etching found in the textbook “Exploring Psychology“ used by my husband when he taught a General Psychology course at James Madison University last fall.

But Luiken’s oeuvre goes far beyond his martyr drawings. Born in April 16, 1649 in Amsterdam, he was a Mennonite who made his living during the Dutch Golden Age as an illustrator, taking on numerous projects that spanned genres and topics.

The Menno Simons Historical Library at Eastern Mennonite University is fortunate to have a considerable collection of books containing Luiken’s artwork. The content of these books ranges from exotic topics like the Laplanders of northern Finland to pirates on the North African coast and to more domestic portraits of tradesman and interiors of Dutch homes. Here I will highlight just a few interesting books and etchings in our collection.

The first illustrations are from a 1684 book entitled “Historie van Barbaryen, en des zelfs Zee-Roovers”—which discusses the history of the Barbary (North African) coast and pirates.

Title page

The new king of Algeria

A battle at sea

The next illustrations are from a 1682 book about the history of the Lapland region of Finland. Luiken’s illustrations show the customs and activities of the Lapland or Sami people.

Baptisms

Skiing and sledding

His illustrations in 1711’s “Het leerzaam huisraad” depict objects in a typical Dutch household.

The bed

The dishes

Likewise, his illustrations in “Het Menselyk Bedryf” depict various occupations of his day.

The painter

The fisher

Lois Bowman, Librarian Emeritus at EMU and former librarian in the Menno Simons Historical Library, has done a great deal of work cataloging our rare book collection and worked closely with the Jan Luiken Collection. She notes that the detail in Luiken’s work distinguishes it from other contemporary etchings; in addition to the main subject there are often background goings-on in his pictures that add a depth and realness to the illustration. The next time you encounter Luiken’s works either in the Martyrs’ Mirror or in other books, take some time to examine the etchings and note his attention to detail and skill. You are likely find something new and unique to appreciate!

Dispatches from “Crossing the Line: Crossing the Line Art Exhibition

Posted on June 28, 2017 by Guest Contributor

Dr. Rachel Epp Buller, curator

Artists are in the habit of crossing lines. In 1917, Marcel Duchamp caused an uproar by submitting to an exhibition a mass-produced urinal that he had signed, titled, and declared art. In 1989, Andres Serrano drew fire when several prominent Republicans in the United States Congress objected to his receipt of National Endowment for the Arts funding for his religiously themed photographs that achieved saturated colors through the use of materials such as blood and urine.¹ The collective known as the Guerrilla Girls regularly raises a ruckus with their activist informational posters that draw attention to the disparities of gender and race representation in the art world, calling out museums and gallerists by name for their discriminatory practices. And just this year, the online art daily Hyperallergic has been awash in articles of activist artists protesting gentrification, the occupation of Palestine, the underwhelming global response to the Syrian refugee crisis, as well as many of the policies and executive orders of the Trump administration still in its infancy.

Editor’s Note: While Anabaptist Historians generally focuses on historical research, in the interdisciplinary spirit of “Crossing the Line”, we are broadening our scope during this series to include a wide variety of Anabaptist studies.

Artists affiliated with Anabaptist traditions cross lines in ways quiet and bold, subtle and overt. The conference during which this exhibition takes place, Crossing the Line: Women of Anabaptist Traditions Encounter Borders and Boundaries, invited presenters to consider border- and boundary-crossings in terms of ethnic and religious heritage, gender and sexual identity, geographic borders, private and public spaces, or disciplinary expression. The artists included in this exhibition most often cross lines in order to experiment and question, to make statements, or to think back through time.

A number of the artists represented here cross temporal borders and the boundaries of memory as they engage with the stories of ancestors. In her panels from Nine Tetrameters, Jayne Holsinger collapses varied historical references. Working in a four-patch quilt block format, Holsinger crosses easily between visual echoes of fabric patterns, historical prints, and bread baking, all modes of reaching out to the women of her Anabaptist heritage. Three prints by Gesine Janzen speak to her paternal family’s history of emigration from Poland’s Vistula Delta to central Kansas. By exploring the narratives evoked by historic photographs and letters, Janzen imagines a cross-generational dialogue, moving their stories forward across the decades and offering a meditation on family, intimacy, and absence. Teresa Braun’s video, The Plaint, explores family lore surrounding a specific place. A family cemetery and the fusion of human and plant organisms feature as mythological elements in Braun’s weaving of a fragmented ancestral narrative. Teresa Pankratz’s multi-act The View from a House in Kansas, excerpts of which are included in this exhibition and other parts of which will be performed during the conference, engages with semi-fictional narratives revolving around the artist’s childhood home, which was destroyed by fire some years ago.

Other artists purposefully cross borders of material. Historically, the highly regarded “fine arts” materials of painting and sculpture have far outweighed the importance of craft traditions such as needlework. However, one important legacy of the Feminist Art Movement of the 1970s has been the revaluation of media long denigrated as “women’s work.” Karen Reimer employs methods of embroidery and appliqué not only to bring feminized craft traditions into a high art context but also as a means by which to question the value of certain kinds of labor and notions of originality. Reimer intentionally copies her texts from other contexts as a way to destabilize definitions of creativity and innovation. As she writes, “Generally speaking, in the art world copies are of less value than originals. However, when I copy by embroidering, the value of the copy is increased because of the added elements of labor, handicraft, and singularity–traditional sources of value. The copy is now an ‘original’ as well as a copy.”² At the same time, Reimer’s hand-sewn texts sometimes border on illegibility, producing a bad copy and inviting us to question the relative value of such painstaking labor. Kandis Friesen seeks to examine how textiles and other materials might impart narratives about migration and exile. In Onsa Japse Jeit Jantsied, a drawing sewn onto leather makes reference to both indigenous and colonial histories. Friesen draws on a clothing pattern from a Russian Mennonite museum artifact from the 1800s, one that also incorporated buffalo skin from newly colonized lands. Like Gesine Janzen, Friesen looks to visual culture as a connection between the past and the future, yet in this case she also problematizes the narrative of hard-working Russian Mennonite immigrants as she uses textiles to implicate the diaspora’s participation in colonial processes.

Mary Lou Weaver Houser and Jen Dyck cross boundaries of medium through their work with found materials. Dyck’s collages investigate dream imagery, in some cases, and in others, such as Potluck, speak to her personal experiences of Anabaptist cultural traditions. Weaver Houser, on the other hands, positions her mixed media assemblages as metaphors: as she walks an edge between varied art materials, she also imagines edges – between generations, between different world views, between what is and what could be.³ Similarly, Jessie Pohl crosses material boundaries and points to the possibility of crossing emotional bridges as well. As she incorporates the unexpected material of scrap lumber as the substrate for delicate pen-and-ink drawings, she emphasizes a contrast of strength and vulnerability.

Some artists cross lines as a political gesture, seeing their methods as a way to issue public statements, either subtle or explicit. In Blamed Shamed Abandoned, one from a series of 60 paintings, Jerry Holsopple directly addresses the failures of U.S. Mennonite communities to protect, believe, or even listen to the many women abused by well-known Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder. Holsopple grapples in his expressive portraits with the idea of collective responsibility and he explicitly brings the issue of sexual abuse out from behind closed doors, for public discussion and accountability. Audra Miller’s The Gender Project, which is represented here by two photographic diptychs, explores what it can mean to cross between feminine and masculine gender presentations. Through Miller’s photographs, we see not only the possibilities of either/or but also of in-between, of gender identities that are not always so easily classified in a binary system.

Lora Jost regularly engages with political activism, on topics ranging from local school closures to the local and global impacts of climate change. In her piece for this exhibition, Jost emphasizes more broadly the importance of critical thinking in our world. Informed by her experiences of a Mennonite historical focus on peace and social justice, Jost uses a combination of text and linework to ask the viewer to more carefully consider, when confronted with any issue of substance, “Does this make sense?” Jennifer Miller takes on a topic with both personal and political meanings in addressing the Keystone XL pipeline. Crude, a mixed media drawing, makes topographical references to the proposed path of crude oil transfer from the Tar Sands of Alberta to the Gulf Coast. The map follows the same path traveled by Miller’s family in their move from north to south for her father’s job as a pilot for the oil industry, pointing to complicated convergences of politics, business, childhood memories, and a family’s financial security. While the pipeline was halted under President Obama in 2015, a new administration has proven more receptive to the interests of big oil and Miller’s piece becomes relevant for political discussion once again.

Our Anabaptist ancestors wrestled with the idea of how to be in the world but not of it, an intentional choice not to cross borders. The art on display in this exhibition might be seen to run the gamut between insularity and worldliness, yet each artist thoughtful engages with notions of borders and boundaries. Whether speaking to themselves and their Anabaptist communities or to much broader audiences, these artists traverse edges of materials, politics, identity, generation, and memory, and they invite us to join them on the journey.

See other writings on “Crossing the Line: Women of Anabaptist Traditions Encounter Borders and Boundaries” here.

For in-depth discussion of Serrano and the NEA controversy, see Steven C. Dubin, Arresting Images: Impolitic Art and Uncivil Actions (New Jersey: Routledge, 1994). Other texts that examine high-profile crossing of lines in contemporary art include Dubin’s Displays of Power: Controversy in the American Museum from the Enola Gay to Sensation! (New York: New York University Press, 2001) and Michael Kammen, Visual Shock: A History of Art Controversies in American Culture (New York: Vintage Books, 2006). ↩
Karen Reimer, artist statement. Emailed to the author, 12 October 2016. ↩
Mary Lou Weaver Houser, artist statement. Email to the author, 2 April 2017. ↩

Anabaptist Historians

Bringing the Anabaptist Past into a Digital Century

Tag Archives: Mennonite Art

Amish Quilts and Abstract Art

Beyond the Martyrs Mirror: The Prints of Jan Luyken

Intimacies and Admonishments: Some Thoughts on the Crossing the Line Exhibition