Judith Shea, Chiara,
2000-2002
You want to know why I teach people to resist reading label information before looking at and getting to know a work of art?
My first thought is that she is a bog woman. Her aged, bronze skin and red-blonde hair are the color and texture of those mummies found preserved for a thousand years or more in the peat bogs of Europe. Her eyes seem alive though they are empty. Her hair, cut simply, hangs to just above her shoulders. Her shoulders and chest are of old, beautiful wood. It is cracked but solid. Grained simply and naturally. She could straighten her head and say something ancient to me, at any time, so perfectly composed and preserved is she.
She accepted her fate quietly, and in doing so, was prepared to continue speaking quietly centuries later. She is thoughtful, content, and beautiful.
The color, texture and preservation are of a bog woman. But her contentment and the quiet face suggest something else.
The peat bog mummies I have seen don’t express contentment to me. They are slashed and wounded and strangled and blinded. They make it no secret that they have all died terrible deaths. Violence is in all their stories.
Chiara’s calm expression makes me wonder, and even envy what she is thinking. I can imagine her seeing. She seems to be able to see within herself as well as out at me. She accepts her hair, her old bronze skin, her wooden body. What she sees makes her calm.
The deep cracks in her chest speak of the wearing of time. It is her dress. She is wearing time. She wears time gracefully.
Grace. That is what she says to me.
Her hollow eyes express grace, her thousand year-old skin is graceful, her roughly chopped hair is graceful.
And that is exactly why I wish people could wait; hold off reading label information before looking at and getting to know a work of art.
I’m not Catholic and I don’t speak Italian and so the name and the story of Saint Clare of Assisi as told by the label copy mean little to me. The question is do I need that information to “get it”?
Judith Shea spoke to me of Grace but by a circuitous route laid out by my own observations and associations. Her Catholic upbringing and interest in Renaissance sculpture brought her to a vision of Grace. My reading of age and texture and color, rather, my response to an artist’s masterful use of these tools, brought me to her vision without any of the insider information.
Just looking. I saw a once-and-always beautiful woman, a thousand years old, whose inner peace and grace prepared her for death and preserved her calmly, quietly so she can speak to me today.
Reading the text card later was like talking with a stranger and realizing we shared a common friend or a common cause. I smiled and shook its hand. A discovery was made, and I made it.
And that is the problem with trying to leap to interpretation by reading label information before looking at and getting to know a work of art. It robs people of the chance to make these fantastic discoveries, and dulls the experience of a connection that is made through the eyes, but reaches far deeper.
Peace, love,
d
