Addressing History & Spirituality through the Arts

THURSDAY, APRIL 17TH | Artist talk with Jeffrey Schrier 
6:30 - 7:30 PM | Admission: $5.00 members, $7.50 non-members

Through a one hour presentation, Jeffrey Schrier traces the evolution of his massive assemblage installation at HVCCA, Unfinished Flight / WINGS of WITNESS, previously spread across meadows, museum gardens and galleries, and a mountain slope.  Schrier describes how early years of creating for the film, fashion and music industry primed him for culturally and environmentally based contemporary work. Presenting slides interwoven with stories, Schrier elucidates an artist’s perspective triggered by extraordinary serendipity, often heritage related.

Jeffrey Schrier is an American artist, producing painting, drawing, collage, and assemblage installations, some involving mass community participation. His chosen themes are frequently enlivened through his use of unconventional materials. Schrier is a recipient of numerous grants and awards, including Steven Spielberg's Righteous Persons Foundation. His work is exhibited internationally.
Unfinished Flight belongs to the body of work, WINGS of WITNESS, Schrier’s most ambitious undertaking to date. These monumental installations have been assembled at nine previous sites across the US. Over six tons of can tabs, the source material for the works, were initially collected from every US State and eight countries as markers for the unfathomable number of lives destroyed by the Nazi Holocaust. During Schrier’s artist residencies, museum workshops and educational programs, thousands of participants fabricate “feather” structures from the tabs. With teams of assistants, the “feathers” are configured into massive wing-like expanses, a reference to The Butterfly, written by the young Czechoslovak poet Pavel Friedmann, who perished at Auschwitz. 

Learn more about Jeffrey Schrier and his work at http://jeffreyschrier.org/

THURSDAY, APRIL 24TH | Addressing History & Spirituality through the Arts
6:30 - 7:30 PM | Admission: $5.00 members, $7.50 non-members

Readings and Open Discussion with Jeffrey Schrier, Wings of Witness; Peter Waldor,Who Touches Everything; Livia Straus, director of HVCCA and Professor of Theology Emeritus 

Livia Straus will give a presentation on Looking to Prayer as Poetry.

Peter Waldor was recently awarded the National Jewish Book Council 2013 Poetry Award.  He is author of Door to a Noisy Room (Alice James Books, 2008), winner of a Kinereth Gensler Award and has had his poems published in literary journals and magazines including The American Poetry Review, Iowa Review, Margie, Mothering Magazine, and Potomac Review, among many others.