While I am a heterosexual WASP who grew up in what is often referred to as a privileged social context, there were complicating relationships in my life that sensitized me and opened me up to the realities of others.  Two of those relationships were very close to home.  My younger sister was born with dwarfism.  I spent my childhood fighting boys who made fun of her.  My younger brother is gay and I have defended him as well—to our father.  Over the years, these two relationships and numerous others helped foster in me a religious and intellectual hunger that led me to Vanderbilt Divinity School and subsequently ordination.  The church where I was ordained, Glendale Baptist was thrown out of the Southern Baptist convention due to our two women pastors, one of whom identifies as lesbian.  The products of my artistic output share some of the same traits as my theology—love of the divine, love of humanity in all its variety, and seeking new (to me) paths to understanding.  For me, art is more a path than a destination.  More a question than a statement, more a hint than a full story.

Other Artistic Endeavors

I have been a full time photo-artist, film maker, composer and poet for more than ten years meaning that I integrate all four of these disciplines in my work (one of my books of poetry and photography is Woman as Beauty. Over the past ten years I have created and produced two, award-winning feature films and three short films,) The first of these is called Who Loves Judas (also performed as a play).  It addresses the hypocrisy of betrayal in contemporary America.  The second is "Alex Dreaming" in which Minton Sparks co-starred.

Exhibit Dedication

I was running Baptist Hospital full time while going to Divinity School full time.  So when I showed up in a coat and tie no one sat near me.  After a class on the first day a black woman who had been in the same class said to me,  "So, are you one of those anal retentive white guys with your coat & tie?"  Michelle Jackson and I became great friends and continued to be after she married her partner, Lillian.  A few weeks after graduation Michelle died suddenly.  She was 38.  I set up a Scholarship Fund in her honor at the Divinity School (it still exists) and I am dedicating this exhibit to Michelle, a gay black woman who looked like my opposite but was, instead, my sister.  

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Religion in the Arts and Contemporary Culture and the Kelly Miller Smith Institute on Black Church Studies present: Alicia Henry: Patterns  

Opening Reception:  January 31 – March 14, 2019

Thursday, January 31, 2019, 4:00 – 7:00 pm, Vanderbilt Divinity School, Room 120

Gallery Talk with Alicia Henry, Artist: Monday, February 11, 2019, 12:00 noon

Vanderbilt Divinity School, Room 120

Spiritual Meditation with Phillis Sheppard, Ph.D.

Wednesday, February 27, 2019, 12:00 noon, Vanderbilt Divinity School, Room 120

Commemorating Black History Month, an exhibit of mixed-media works by artist and Fisk University professor Alicia Henry.  "Patterns" will be on display in room G-20, ground floor of the Divinity School beginning with a reception on Thursday, January 31st from 4-7 PM.  The exhibit will remain at the Divinity School through March 14, 2019. 

The artist's statement

A common recurring image in my work is the human figure-the figure in isolation and the figure interacting with others. My work often explores these ideas through the theme of the paper doll and paper cutouts. I am exploring the social relationship these images have had in shaping the stereotypical and idealized figures in the media by depicting generalized figures representing what I hope is a broader vision of society (racial, gender, economic, and social levels), my goal is to make visible that which still often goes unseen.

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G raph of Desire: A retrospective exhibition of paintings by Mira Gerard

 

September 27-November 12, 2018

Gallery Hours: Monday, Thursday, Friday from 12:15 to 2:15PM

Opening Reception: September 27, 4-7PM

Artist's Statement

I make paintings of the figure as a way to understand desire, which functions in my work in part as a fantasy about being both subject and maker. For several years when I was growing up, my family lived in a small intentional community in rural New Hampshire with no TVs and with limited access to experiences of mainstream American culture in the 70's. I became fascinated with fairies and fairy tales, along with the meadows, stone walls and woods around me. During that time, I was a frequent subject of my father's paintings- usually depicted playing in fields of flowers in sun-drenched afternoon landscapes.  

Ten years ago I quite literally stumbled into Lacanian psychoanalysis. It's a practice of speaking freely and in a very nonlinear way, which parallels studio processes of sorting through fragments, pieces of images and ideas, to make something new that remembers (re-members).  I create staged photographs and videos and supplement those with screenshots, art historical references, and collage. I am specifically interested in figures or elements in landscapes and spaces, and in the implication of a kind of storyboard, a before-to-after. Because the process of painting itself feels necessarily perfomative and vulnerable, I try to communicate this through both content and approach. I have embraced traditional, old master forms of construction, with a method in place for the breakdown of those processes to occur, so that the paintings themselves are like landscapes and bodies- a physical manifestation of interruptions, scars, layers, and time. 

Mira Gerard’s creative practice spans painting, performance, and video. She received her BFA from Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana and her MFA from the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia.  Her work has been exhibited at a wide range of venues.  Her work was selected for  New American Paintings #118  (Southeast Edition, 2015) and has been published in journals including Poets & Artists, The Cortland Review, and Manifest Painting International.  She has presented papers and performance & video works on the intersection of art and psychoanalysis at conferences including the International Zizek Studies Conference, LACK, Psychology and the Other, and the Southeastern College Art Conference.  She has been awarded fellowships for residencies at Ox-Bow School of Art, Cill Rialaig Project, The Hambidge Center, The Vermont Studio Center, and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. Mira Gerard is Chair and Professor in the Department of Art & Design at East Tennessee State University in Johnson City, Tennessee where she has lived since 2001. 

Desire: An Evening of Musical Reflection

Eikon: A Triple Encounter

Gallery Hours: Monday, Wednesday, Friday 12 - 2 PM (Room G-20)

Lecture: The Canopy and the Byzantine Church