Wednesday, April 29, 2020

The Dark Night and the Busy Hand

So with the state of the world and varied personal distractions it's taken me awhile to work up the energy to mention that I recently published an article in the most recent Fall 2019 issue of Listening a Journal of Communication Ethics, Religion, and Culture (mailed to readers just before everything shut down in 2020).  The issue on Catholic Art Post Christendom was guest edited by good friend, talented artist, and way more clever essayist Timothy Collins, and I was honored to be asked to contribute along with a number of artists and friends for whom I have the deepest respect.

The Dark Night and the Busy Hand: Personal Observations on Making as an Expression of Faith is a reflection on faith, trauma and the relationship between art and ritual. It is way more personal than I am comfortable with, yet there it is in black and white.
So it goes.

http://santella.org/anthony/Listening54.3FINAL.pdf



Sunday, February 2, 2020

Long Time

I realize just how long it's been since I've used this blog. Words were never really my thing, though I put a lot of them down here so maybe makes sense that I shifted toward Instagram. I took back up doing the drawing a day thing this year, feeling out of sorts for a variety of reasons I think I was gravitating back toward the sense of ritual and certainty it gave me in the adrift year of 2015. I haven't been posting them here consistently. Some of the better ones I'm putting on instagram https://www.instagram.com/santella.anthony/ others just FB. But today's, shot in situ, at least I'll put here. Burning Promise Keeping Machine, ink, 2020

Thursday, January 11, 2018

My Music Video is Out

That title is among word's I thought I would never say. Mercifully for humanity I have not taken up singing. Over the summer I helped out friend Bill McGarvey doing camera work and some props for a music video. I love weird music videos, and was super excited to work on one myself. The video is out, and though I can definitely spot some unintentionally slightly out of focus shots, it looks pretty great considering I was behind the camera. Check it out.


Friday, December 1, 2017

Upcoming Curatorial Project: A New World

Upcoming is the opening of a curatorial project I've been working on for over a year, an exhibit of contemporary art that explores the complex legacy of the activist Dorothy Day. I'm excited about the work that is going to be on display, including one piece of mine. I hope to see some of you there.

December 16, 2017 - January 12, 2018
Opening Reception December 16, 5-7PM

The Gallery at the Sheen Center
18 Bleecker St, New York, NY 10012
(gallery entrance on Elizabeth St.)




A New World: Contemporary Art Exploring Dorothy Day's Vision of Social Justice

The Sheen Center for Thought and Culture and the Dorothy Day Guild are pleased to announce the opening of the exhibit A New World:  Contemporary Art Exploring Dorothy Day's Vision of Social Justice. This visually striking assembly of work, including photography, painting, printmaking, and sculpture, brings together mainstream and marginalized artists inspired by Day's legacy of faith in action.  Conceived and curated by sculptor and painter, Anthony Santella, the exhibition will open on Saturday, December 16, 2017 at The Gallery at the Sheen Center, corner of Bleecker and Elizabeth Streets, in New York City.  One and all are warmly invited to the opening reception, 5 to 7 pm, December 16.  The exhibition will run through January 12, 2018.  

Dorothy Day (1897-1980), a journalist, activist, and convert to Catholicism who is on her way to being formally recognized as a saint in the Catholic Church, founded the Catholic Worker to serve the homeless and hungry during the Depression.  But her witness was not confined to charity; she challenged the unjust structures making charity necessary.  Today, her synthesis of deep, dogmatically orthodox religious faith and radical social action continues to pose a profound challenge to the liberal/conservative dichotomy of our age.  Santella, who first learned of Day as a college student, reflects that "For me, Day is a figure who unified a lot of the fragmented contradictions in life through a radical act of faith, one that is open to all of us to emulate." 

The exhibit juxtaposes excerpts from Day's prolific writings with artwork addressing the ideals she devoted her life to: social justice, voluntary poverty, resistance to racial prejudice, nonviolence, Christian anarchism, and agrarian utopianism.  The roster of artists includes those whose work appears in The Catholic Worker newspaper as well as the formerly homeless and imprisoned.  Some work is overtly political; much addresses the show’s themes more obliquely. Yet each artist is driven to communicate a message of hope and warning as urgent in its own way as Day’s. 

A centerpiece of the exhibit is a wooden shrine, built from driftwood collected on the beach in Staten Island, NYC, where Day had a cabin, demolished in 2000.  Artists and the public at large are invited to contribute small artifacts to the shrine, ex voto offerings that speak to their understanding of Day’s legacy of faith in pursuit of justice.

"I hope that everyone who sees the show can take away something that challenges their assumptions," Santella explains.  "Either about how the values of the gospel and those of our society coexist or about   how art can interact with faith and the challenge of justice -- hopefully in a way that can motivate change without becoming political in a partisan or tribal sense."


Artists:
Arte Fogata, Robert Aitchison, Jackie Allen, Michal Behar, Patricia Bellucci, Geoffrey Gneuhs, GRIB, Alice Hendrickson, June Hildebrand, Imo Nse Imeh, Brian Kavanagh, Matt Kirby, Julie Lonneman, Lori Merhige, Milt Ohring, Frank Sabatté, Anthony Santella, Dennis Santella

About the Dorothy Day Guild:

Founded in 2005 in the Archdiocese of New York, the Dorothy Day Guild promotes the recognition of her cause for sainthood.  To learn more, see www.dorothydayguild.org  

Tuesday, September 12, 2017

New Piece in Respect!

It's been rather a while, but for anyone out there in the NY area, I'll have a new piece in Respect! at St Paul the Apostle Columbus and 59th, opening this Thursday Sept 14th. Hope to see some of you there.



The Openings collective is pleased to announce its 11th annual fall exhibition

at the historic Manhattan church of St Paul the Apostle. Twenty six artists will display work that addresses issues of inclusion and respect for others.  A diverse collection of work including painting sculpture and photography engages “the other,” encouraging us to see people who differ from ourselves as human beings deserving of unconditional respect even in the face of conflicting cultural identities.
Respect! is curated by Michael Berube and Mark Brennan, with assistance by Ingrid Roe.

Participating Artists:

Yashua Klos, Derrick Adams, Kajahl, Juan Sanchez, Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, Oksana Prokopenko, Anthony Santella, Willemien Mostert, Aileen Bassis, Britney Penouilh, Dave Mishalanie, Jewel Doi, Lori Merhige, James Raczkowski, Joachim Marx, Lauren Gohara, Ori Alon, Rute Ventura, Thom O’Connor, Jenn Cacciola, Eunjin Kim, Michelle Claire Gevint & Lara Nasser, Eric Hibit, Jean Seestadt, Arjan Zazueta

September 8th-October 26th, 2017
Opening Reception Thursday September 14th  7-9pm
Tour with the artists and curators Thursday October 12th 7-9pm

Location: The Church of St. Paul the Apostle / corner of Columbus Ave & W60th, Manhattan
Daily Hours:  M-F 8am -5:00pm /  Sat. 8-6 / Sun. 8-6:30pm

Thursday, February 9, 2017

A New Painting


I genuinely can't remember the last time I finished a figurative painting. I have one that has literally sat on the easel in my studio for 9 years. Being relatively modest in its ambitions and easy to work on in short shifts this has actually gotten done...


Untitled, acrylic, 2017

Wednesday, January 18, 2017

Poster

Posters for upcoming show featuring an image of one of the pieces of mine that are included.