“May I speak to Sister Mari Teresa?” the unfamiliar voice was heard saying on the phone.
“It’s me. I’m speaking”
“Ah, Yeh!”
Then, we began to talk in Korean.
He was a Korean sculptor who recently visited Singapore for a month-long solo
show at the Space Cottonseed Gallery. He had majored in sculpture at Seoul
National University and went abroad to New York to further his art studies.
It was his senior sculptor, with whom I collaborated to publish a book, who
gave me my contact information to him. His call was unexpected, so I was excited
and eager to see him.
In fact, I feel joyful and uplifted whenever I contemplate works of art.
Probably because my father was a carpenter and I played along with small pieces
of the wood he left at home during my childhood, I am very inspired and
refreshed when I look at the works of art that have been created after a long
period of endurance, waiting, pondering, contemplation, sacrifice, and self-control.
So I visited the gallery the next day, and we shared our stories over lunch. He
was a born Christian, but eventually became a freelancer on the subject of
religion. Regardless of religion, he respects those who walk the spiritual path
of searching for truth or the ultimate reality.
His works of art look to be the fruits of deconstruction and much
contemplation. He tries to delve into the deep meaning of the words beyond the
letters or characters. His creativity comes from the forms of the letters but
reveals another world of letters.
Day in and day out, we see so many things, both positive and negative,
beautiful and ugly, lovely and disgusting. So diverse things and moments come
and go constantly. We gaze and perceive much more about things on which we
concentrate.
One of the deepest levels of prayer is called contemplation, which is directly
related to seeing and looking and thus experiencing the presence of God.
The more and deeper we see, the more and deeper we love and dedicate ourselves.
We look at reality with our eyes, but there are much deeper realities we can
perceive only with the eyes of the heart.
What we see with our eyes is not everything. There is the realm that goes
beyond the boundary of sight and words.
That realm is realized and perceived through the spiritual eyes of compassion,
sympathy, encouragement, solidarity, sharing, love, understanding, forgiveness, and reconciliation.
This spiritual realm is what the artists want to capture and appreciate most.
Looking at the spiritual meaning beyond words, letters, or characters, we can
realize joy, peace, happiness, and freedom among us.
So Kim Shin-il says in his artist statement of his solo show: “I endeavor to
look into the perception itself derived from seeing and thinking in new
ways." An intuitive perception always invites us to go beyond the
phenomenal concept and capture the true meaning behind it.
As in this longing for another world of perception and intuition, hope is
revealed and realized little by little. Everywhere, we are looking for hope; so
every new year is filled with hope.
Commitment, dedication, and memory let a dream of hope come true. No matter how
deep the differences and hurts are, hope comes from forgiveness and
reconciliation, love and compassion, understanding and sharing, collaboration
and solidarity.
Michael Downey wanted to die for Vietnam as a missionary when he was a child;
he realized his dream in some way when he wrote: “The Heart of Hope:
Contemplating Life, Awakening Love" in 2004 after 25 years of teaching.
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