Congregational Fantasies: Ruth Maendel

Posted on November 21, 2009 by doradueck

Ruth Maendel

We attended the opening of an exhibition of art by Ruth Maendel at the Mennonite Heritage Centre Gallery in Winnipeg last evening. Ruth is a young, local artist; she’s currently working for the government and doing her art on the side.

Ruth does all manner of interesting work. Wonderful photographs of tiny and unexpected things, for example — things like tiny mushrooms on a wood chip, bubbly scum in a bucket, ladles hanging in a camp kitchen, a slice of grapefruit with its luscious veins (title: “Behold! The Majestic Morning Assembly”), close-ups of gas flames in an oven (title: “Northern Lights in an Oven”), or flames curling around a kettle on the stove. When she notices and focusses on them, then brings them to our attention, we realize just how unique and wonderful they are.

She also does free standing, installation-type work, much of it clearly labour intensive. One of the central pieces here was “Wave” (a portion of it shown below). She wanted to recreate the look of water she said, and was also thinking of God’s Spirit, how it’s described as water, and of people like cups, sometimes receiving, sometimes pouring into other lives, but being together. — I asked, and she said it was fine for me to include some pictures here, but I’m a point-and-click kind of photographer, so these should be considered poor representations of the actual work — the piece has an undulating effect and more vivid colour than my photo is capturing. But it does communicate something of the exhibition’s title — “Congregational Fantasies.” For the artist’s photo of the piece, see here.

detail, "Wave," R. Maendel

“I’m drawn to things in groups,” she said.

"Tunnel Book," R. Maendel

She’s also clearly fond of layers and doors and tunnels. One of my favourites pieces was “Tunnel book,” constructed of an old German Bible. Hard to see on the photo below, but it’s got tiny doors at the very back. As if to suggest that beyond the front door and the steps (made of pages of words) up and in, deeper and deeper, there’s even more, mystery and depth and surprise.

Ruth Maendel’s art is fun to view but also profound in its effect. You realize, as you mull over it later, that you’ve seen the ordinary made as great and amazing as it really is. And you realize, again, that you’ve got to start really looking at what’s right in front of you.

At the same time you’ve seen great and amazing truths (Spirit, community) made “ordinary” — accessible, that is — in stories of ceramic bowls and layers of paper.

Bolivian Mennonite rape victims

Posted on November 19, 2009 by doradueck

One of the articles I’d hoped to pull together before leaving the MB Herald was that of the horrifying and bizarre situation in some of the Mennonite colonies of Bolivia. The news flashed around the world this summer (one example here, from The Guardian), about the eight men jailed arrested after being charged with drugging (via spray) entire households at night, then breaking in to rape the women while they slept.

We carried a short MCC release about it in the MB Herald, here. And that was all we did with it.

I’d been pushed into opening a file on it, at least, by some rounds of email correspondence with a man who worked with Low German/conservative Mennonite concerns in various ways for many years, who was greatly burdened following the news (which has continued to build, with some 12 or 13 men now in jail, reports of bribes and death threats, and many rumors as well), and who is finding the silence of the Mennonite press “deafening.”

“I expected an outpouring of concern from Mennonites everywhere,” he wrote, “but it didn’t happen.” He has been trying to rally interest, and hoping Mennonite Central Committee (which already has connections with Bolivian Mennonites) might be pressed to do more as our point agency there.

I won’t have time to do the piece and am turning the file of materials over to assistant editor K., who is willing to sort through what we’ve gathered and also make calls to some people who visited Bolivia recently. Today I finished going through 9 pages of excerpts from the Kurze Nachrichten, a German paper published in Mexico, which my “prod” above says is one of the better sources of information, and translating the salient points for K.

I feel I need more information, understanding, perspective. How far away these women seem, how foreign somehow, even though we share the name Mennonite. I agree that we need to be speaking up. But what do we say? And to whom do we say it?

[March 27, 2010: see update on this story, here.]

Another issue put to bed

Posted on November 17, 2009 by doradueck

It’s interesting how the vocabulary of living with children is borrowed for writing and publishing. A book or essay is said to be birthed. A magazine issue is said to be put to bed.

Which is what we did today — we tucked in our 36 pages for December — meaning it’s all set (electronically) and off to the printers, and except for the press proofs which we’ll give a final look-through tomorrow, it’s what it’s going to be.

One of the things I’ve liked best about this job is the rhythm of it, the ebb and flow of brainstorming ideas, finding and assigning authors, gathering stuff, making decisions about what’s in or out, the editing itself, layout, and proofreading that brings us round to this moment every month, another one done. I like the days of the cycle when the designer begins to set down the material we’ve worked on. But the last days of it are full and sometimes intense. There’s still decisions to make as we see the copy landing on the page,and we’ve got a deadline. I proofread with a ruler under every line and my lips move — I simply can’t trust my eye to read the word accurately unless I see it isolated on the line and say it.

We’ve made no pretense of being up-to-the moment in the small Mennonite world we inhabit — it’s impossible as a monthly — but at least until press time we try our best. We carried two news pieces in this issue referring to talks our MB seminary in Fresno, Cal. has been having with Fuller Theological Seminary, about being a distance education site. It provoked discussion at the conference’s recent annual general meeting. The executive board gave it “considerable deliberation” at their meetings following, according to their release. Then yesterday, in a news release from the seminary about the installation of their president, assistant editor K. spotted, in what was little more than a throwaway line, that the talks are off. Rats! I mean about the currency of the news pieces. We inserted a short note after one of them saying that Fuller had withdrawn, and that will have to do until we can get the longer (I was going to say “fuller”) story.

Typical putting to bed. I remember the evening-long procedures of baths and pyjamas, the string of last minute trips to the bathroom, the thirst requiring another drink, the begging for just one more chapter of the book, the sudden fears or recollections of what was supposed to be brought to school the next day. Busy, and often intense. Then, asleep — my goodness, in terms of children they were about as good as it gets.

Just like the issue we put to bed. It’s always my favourite. Not that it’s ever quite what we’d imagined, but it’s good enough. As I did at the bedsides of our sweet sleepers, I speak a prayer of release and blessing when I sign off on it. Tomorrow K. and I will meet to talk about the next — which I’m always sure will be the best one yet.

[some of my earlier favourites when put to bed]