Remember Me

Rosary with relic from St. Anne Shrine, Quebec, Canada.

The holiday season often amplifies the echoes of our losses. Images and objects that once belonged to loved ones who are no longer with us become more poignant as we endeavor to infuse light, warmth, and joy into these dark nights. This year, the contemplation of life, loss, and mortality resonates especially keenly. Following our personal difficulties with physical pain and suffering, and an all too real experience with the darkening shadow of death, we’ve found ourselves meditating on the fragile nature of our existence. With that, thoughts of what we leave behind, how each of us are remembered, and how we can reconnect to the spirit of those we have cherished is foremost in our minds.

As is our tradition, we’ve turned to our collection of Roman Catholic devotions to inform our annual Curious Matter holiday installation. This year we delve into the profound symbolism of relics — the sacred artifacts that bridge the earthly and the divine. In the spirit of universal love and shared humanity, we acknowledge that the traditions we hold dear may be viewed through different lenses. The failures of the institutional church are not our focus, but rather the most generous intentions within the stories we learned as children, the imagery, and icons. It’s from those we discovered our social and moral center which endures despite our more critical and ever-evolving relationship to the organized church and our own evolving spirituality. While our roots are in Roman Catholicism, our message transcends the confines of any specific faith. We extend the warmth of our reflections to all, with love, embracing those of various beliefs and perspectives. 

Gold filigree reliquary containing a piece from the body of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton

A piece of the habit worn by Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini secured in a silver medallion; a particle from the body of Saint Elizabeth Ann Bayley, the widow Seton within a pendant of gold filigree; a piece of cloth touched to a holy relic of St. Therese within a miniature portfolio are among the items we’ve brought together. In the Roman Catholic tradition, relics stand as the corporeal reality of the divine on earth. By being in the presence of tangible evidence considered by believers to be individuals whose sanctity and blessed existence is venerated, we hope to be inspired by the spirit and be blessed ourselves. The Catholic Church recognizes three classes of relics.  

First-class relics are tangible remains of the bodies of saints, the holy blessed, or items from the life of Christ that bear witness to His presence on earth or His suffering. These occupy the highest echelon. From these, it is believed that the presence of their sanctity and God’s blessings continue to be an influence on the faithful. These relics bestow their grace and the power of their devotion to the spirit to those that ask for their intercession. 

Second-class relics are artifacts touched by or used by the saints and bear an earthlier connection. To believers, the power of faith and the emanation of holiness can be transferred to clothing worn and objects used by the sanctified and blessed. These corporeal objects serve as a reminder that there is value and reward for devotion and faith. 

Third-class relics are things that have been touched to a first-class or second-class relic. While first- and second-class relics are usually venerated in churches or holy shrines, third class relics are often distributed to the masses for personal meditation and devotions on the divine nature of the saint and God’s grace. 

Medallion with a cloth relic touched to the bones of Saint Anthony

All of us hold dear relics of various kinds to honor those we’ve loved — not saintly bones, but rather the mundane treasures of our departed dear. A photograph, a favorite book, a piece of clothing, or a recipe serve as tangible connections to the presence of those who once filled our lives. To look upon and hold these items can be as sacred an experience as being in the presence of the greatest of holy relics and shrines of any major faith. Just as the faithful commune in cathedrals to venerate relics, we, too, find solace in holding onto the relics of our beloved both lost and absent. During the winter’s solstice and beyond, as we gather to celebrate the coming of light and warmth, it becomes especially dear to bring notice to those who are not or cannot celebrate with us. These personal objects bring a real presence and reminder to those missing. They fill the void, however unsatisfactorily of those who are mourned.

Paper portfolio reliquary with a piece of cloth touched to the body of Saint Therese of Liseau.

In this quiet communion between the earthly and the ethereal, the relics of saints and the relics of loved ones intersect, providing a universal language of comfort and connection. As winter unfolds its chill and glittering beauty, we navigate the season with the solace of cherished memories and the enduring spirit of those we hold eternally in our hearts. We find strength and serenity during life’s profound losses and reflections. May these sacred artifacts and personal treasures guide us through our meditations on life, providing strength and serenity through the winter solstice and into the warmth and renewal of spring. 

Wishing you and yours all the happiness and fondest recollections this holiday season, we remain yours,

Raymond E. Mingst  |  Arthur Bruso, co-founders Curious Matter

© 2023 Curious Matter, used with permission of Curious Matter

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Returning

Portals – No. 22 – Skylight 24” w x 18”h oil pastel, conte crayon, ink, pastel. on paper.

Drawings & photographs by Arthur Bruso.

October 15 to December 10, 2023 at Curious Matter.

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

“Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Decay is captivating. It evokes nostalgia, a longing for the past, and a yearning for transformation. Arthur Bruso’s art practice includes photography, drawing, collage, Cornell-like box constructions, as well as curation, and a roving body of arts writing. I’ve had the pleasure to curate several exhibitions of his work. “Penumbra”, “Additional Narrative Possibilities”, and “Falling City” featured his photography. “A Lesser Doxology” and “Aether” included both photography and box constructions. His work is infused with a lively, vigorous sense of curiosity. Recurring themes include grappling with our existence, our place in the cosmos, the search for meaning through science and mysticism; as well as our more personal histories, and how those histories are reconsidered and retold throughout our lives.

The collection presented here features a selection from a series of mixed media drawings entitled “Portals”. Primarily oil and dry pastel over acrylic with graphite, these geometric abstractions use photographs of abandoned buildings as their compositional source material. While the imagery is rooted in photography, these drawings depart from photorealism. Bruso abstracted the architectural subject matter of the photos to further distill the compositions and rendered them with a lush application of the media. While a distillation of architectural detail might suggest a cold formalism, the apparent hand of the artist at work, and the impasto finish imbues Bruso’s work with an invigorating energy.

Bruso’s interest in the drawings of Richard Serra is apparent in how he attends to his seductively tactile surfaces. Speaking with Bruso, he shared, “I wanted the drawings to be about the textural qualities of the media. I was also looking for a more abstract language. My early work, even all through graduate school, had been photorealistic…. That was a difficult break for me. I had to learn a new visual language.”

Along with the drawings, the exhibition showcases four photographs. One of these, “My Death Series – Open Room”, was the departure point for the drawing “Portals – No. 22 – Skylight” shown in this collection. The other photographs are compositionally related and represent the artist’s framing eye, his continuous exploration of historical architectural layers, and the playful patterns in the world around us. There is a delightful musicality to these images. The graphic lines of a fire escape suggest a piano keyboard in one, while light and shadow bounce about in another. A crumbling brick wall isn’t ponderous, but rather invigorated by the interplay of streaming light.

Gate With Car 10” x 8” Photograph

Bruso’s formative years unfolded in Albany, New York, during a period marked by the wholesale destruction of 19th-century neighborhoods in the name of urban renewal. As a child, just blocks from his own home, he bore witness to the relentless demolition, all in service of the grand vision that became the Empire State Plaza. Later, while in college, he set out to record many of the boarded up and decaying buildings that had been designated expendable by the city. Always an explorer, I imagine those empty thoroughfares offered him potent inspiration, through the architecture, the weathered surfaces, the unexpected geometries of plywood covered windows and doors, shattered glass, and remnants of displaced lives.

Similarly, around the same period, Gordon Matta-Clark was exploring the barren streets of 1970s Manhattan — the meatpacking district, the piers, the financial district. Douglas Crimp writes in his memoir Before Pictures, “the subject and site of Matta-Clark’s art was the city itself, the city experienced as simultaneously neglected and usable, dilapidated and beautiful, loss and possibility.” Others of the ‘pictures generation’, from Peter Hujar’s deserted images of downtown Manhattan, or Cindy Sherman’s “Untitled Film Stills”, found those abandoned streets catalysts for their work as well.

Parallels to Bruso’s early photographs can also be seen in the documentary images by Danny Lyon in his “Destruction of Lower Manhattan” (1969). Just as the nearby neighborhoods in Bruso’s Albany of childhood were decimated, Lyon was recording the vast swaths of downtown Manhattan destroyed to make way for the World Trade Center. Interior walls of homes shockingly exposed by the wrecking ball, revealing, for example, the diagonal patterns of stairwells or bits of ephemera left behind by displaced families. Lyon's images are more populated than Bruso’s as the dislocation of residents was still in process, but the careful framing of shapes, visual rhythms and patterns are shared.

When I interviewed Bruso for the exhibition “Aether”, he spoke of Lillian Hellman. I’ve referenced this quote in other essays, but I continue to return to it, and it resonates for the current exhibition. Bruso said, “Lillian Hellman talks about pentimento in relation to a person’s past. Pentimento is an art conservation term that describes the effect of oil paint becoming more transparent over time, allowing the changes the artist made to show through. Hellman uses the term to explain her way of looking back over a life and reconsidering it with the knowledge and wisdom of the present (‘to see what was there for me once, what is there for me now.’) For me, my art exists in a continuum.”

Frequently, we are keen to learn about the latest projects of a contemporary artist. While Bruso works constantly, this expectation is somewhat challenged. He continues to draw inspiration from and reevaluate his past work and experiences. Older images might reappear in a new context. For this exhibition he has returned to his vast and growing catalog of photographs. He called upon a group of Albany images from an undergraduate photography project. He reexamined and rendered them in a new medium. Regarding the drawings, Bruso said, “They did not birth easily. I had to learn how to do them as if I were starting my art education all over again…. [T]hey were a new language that I had to learn. And there were many failures and bad directions…. I came away with a humbler expectation of my own abilities and understanding that the first iteration of an idea is not necessarily the best.”

Arthur Bruso stands as a testament to the enduring power of introspection and reinvention. His work, whether through naturalistic rendering, or geometric abstraction, is a meditation on time and transformation. With humility, rigor, and discipline, he navigates the complexities of creation, embracing the continuous quest for new perspectives. In returning to his past work, he doesn’t merely revisit old images; he reimagines them, breathing new life into the familiar. It’s a reminder that art, like life itself, is a continuum—an ongoing exploration of self, history, and the boundless possibilities of the human spirit. We can admire “Portals” for their visual richness but also wholeheartedly embrace the profound lesson they impart, one that resonates deep within our souls: that our existence is an awe-inspiring collage, woven intricately from threads of the past, present, and the eternally enigmatic future.

Raymond E. Mingst, curator © 2023 used by permission of the author

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Loss and Disorder

Review of A Passionate Apprentice:

The Early Journals 1897-1909 Virginia Woolf,

edited by Mitchell Leaska

Nearly her entire life, Virginia Woolf kept a record of her days in the form of diaries or journals. These intimate glimpses into the functioning of her daily life, and the workings of her mind, add an insight into the flowering of the work of a renowned artist. A Passionate Apprentice collects her three earliest diaries in one volume. Her first diary was begun in January of 1897 when she was fourteen. This document continues through that one year of 1897. The second journal records the years 1899 – 1903 and is an intermediate stage from her more juvenile first diary. The last section actually encompasses a series of volumes written during the period beginning Christmas of 1904 and continuing through 1909. This last series of journals show a maturation in Virginia’s writing style and lead the reader to the beginning of her writing her first novel.

The future Virginia Woolf at about 16 years old.

She was a voracious reader. Woolf (at the time of these diaries, she was still Virginia Stephen) learned early that words were a potent medium. The editor, Mitchell Leaska insists that these three journals were Woolf’s apprenticeship into becoming a writer. But as a document of the history of a family dealing with mental illness, they were more than that. Virginia’s mother had died in 1895, two years prior to the beginning of the first diary. Virginia took her mother’s death badly and descended into her first mental breakdown episode. (Leaska insists on calling it “madness.”) Her illness presented itself as symptoms of irritability that often turned into rage, and random or nonsense talk. Virginia seemed to be aware of her extraordinary behavior and she herself considered it unacceptable. Her family thought her condition may have been passed down from her father. Virginia’s father, Leslie Stephen, was a writer who had episodes of mania over his work and personal comfort. His mania presented itself as outbursts of rage brought about by periods of writer’s block. He often exhibited bouts of depression which left him feeling needy and dependent on his wife’s care.

Laura Stephen

Virginia had a stepsister, Laura Stephen, a daughter from her father’s first marriage. Laura was born with a learning disability, which caused her to act out with her own rages and violence toward others. As she matured into adolescence, her difficult behavior became too much for her family to bear. She was eventually institutionalized and became a forgotten member of the family. Some biographers of Virginia Woolf and the Stephen family see Virginia’s delicate mental state as an inheritance from her father, pointing to Laura as evidence.

Virginia held her mother Julia, as her favorite parent. Her mother’s death left the thirteen-year-old girl adrift at a time when she needed a mother’s guidance into her imminent womanhood. It was no wonder Virginia acted out in anger and confusion during this time of mourning. Her mother, who had spent so much of her life caring for others, would not be there to care for her. Virginia felt this loss throughout her life and wrote about it frequently.

Julia Stephen, Virginia's mother.

The fourteen-year-old Virginia took to her diary to bring order and continuity out of the chaos of her internal life. As an eager, intelligent, yet naive fifteen-year-old, she also wanted to record the days to make them permanent; a document of her family history. She believed her family to be special and thought their daily lives should be preserved for posterity.

It is unfair to criticize the quality of the writing of an ardent young woman just beginning to observe her life and those around her. The writing is ambitious and full of the ordinariness of the day-to-day business of living. But when she writes this entry, it seems clear that the daily tediousness of writing was creeping up on Virginia:

Monday 9 August

Forgot what happened.

This poor diary is in a very bad way, but strange though it may seem, the time is aways so filled up here, that I get very little time for diarizing – even if I wished to, which I don’t having taken a great dislike to the whole process. But the “great work” goes on steadily & has received Nessa’s approval. I may read Vanity Fair & Jane Eyre.

The procrastination was easier than making the time for each day’s entry when the experiencing of each daily event was more exciting. Virginia’s disenchantment with her diary began when her stepsister Stella died on July 9.

Stella Duckworth, Virginia's step-sister.

Stella Duckworth was the oldest daughter from her mother’s first marriage. Virginia had had a rivalry with Stella for her father’s affections. Stella had taken on the running of the Stephen household, while her mother pursued her nursing obligations. Just as his wife Julia had done before her death, Stella stepped in to fulfill his neediness and consoled his depressions. There may be evidence that Stella functioned more completely and intimately as a surrogate wife. What is clear is that Virginia’s father, Leslie Stephen, developed a closeness toward Stella that Virginia resented. Virginia, probably only saw her father bestowing a greater attention on Stella without quite understanding why. For Virginia, Stella seemed to be an unjust competition for the affections she worked so hard to procure.

Because of their rivalry, Stella’s death brought on a guilt in Virginia. Her dislike for the woman seemed petty in the face of so unjust a death. Her death tainted Virginia’s documentation of each of the family’s life events. Now, they began to seem silly and unnecessary. Writing the diary became a burden. Stella had just married and was seen by the family as finally coming into her own as a person, as she pursued her own happiness. Why record such random and meaningless occurrences? After Stella dies, the entries in this first diary begin to dwindle. Towards the end of the year there are many blank dates.

However, by August of 1899, Virginia was at it again. She began a new journal. Older, with a little more life experience, this journal took on a different form. In it she began exploring the essay form. Where she got the idea is anyone’s guess. It could have come from her reading and studies, or simply from the notion that she felt the need to expand on her life experiences. Clearly, the short notes of a typical diary entry like those of her first journal, did not offer the depth and expansiveness of feeling and observation of a longer sketch. In this journal Virginia was practicing observing the world as a writer.

From her September 3, 1899 entry:

No one – save a poet – can express in words or paint the human significance & pathos of the suns unclouded rain of light – that makes the Heavens a delight & difficult to look upon. This land, as I have had occasion to remark before, is a land whose chief attraction is its sky. It is as if you were slung on a flat green board in mid air; with only sky sky sky around & above & beneath you. In this way alone I think that the Fen country deserves to be called one of the most beautiful countries in England. We have this moment come in from a sunset expedition - an account of which I must at once write down, or I shall never attempt it. Nothing methinks is so impossible as to describe a real sunset in pen & ink 3 days after that sunset has faded from the sky.

In this passage, Virginia was grasping for words to describe her experience. She was searching for her voice as a writer. Somehow, we can read that the words and the voice are just out of reach. But we admire her willingness to try. It was her search here that is compelling. She was a writer trying to emerge and experimenting with language that will hold her observations onto the page.

In September of 1903, Virginia completed this journal. At the end, she described her writing as, “The only use of this book is that it shall serve for a sketch book; as an artist fills his pages with scraps & fragments, studies of drapery – legs, arms & noses … so I take up my pen & trace here whatever shapes I happen to have in my head.” This stage of Virginia’s writing has served its purpose, but before she was able to grow into the next stage, an epic, life altering crisis intervened.

Leslie Stephen, Virginia's father.

Violet Dickinson.

In February of 1904, Virginia’s father dies. He had been ill with cancer for many months. This expected but still shocking event was the precursor to another mental breakdown. Eleven weeks after the death of her father, Virginia began to hear voices, birds singing in Greek or Edward VII’s foul language from behind bushes. From May until October of 1904, she was in a deep depression and in full experience of this mania. She was sent into the care of Violet Dickinson, a Stephen family friend and close confidant of Virginia. Dickinson had had an interest in mentally ill women, many of whom she had studied in the London Hospital. She was seen as someone who could understand and help Virginia. In August, while under the charge of Dickinson, Virginia made her first suicide attempt. After this downturn in Virginia’s progress, her siblings decided that she needed to be brought back into the family. She was sent to convalesce with her aunt in Cambridge. It was there that she was able to be fully restored to herself. At that time, she was introduced to Frederic Maitland who was working on an authorized volume of the life and letters of her father. Maitland, probably with encouragement from family and friends, asked Virginia if she would read through her parents’ letters and extract passages that he might quote. He also asked her to write a short account of her father’s last years with his family.

Virginia Woolf's professional debut as a writer.

This task could be viewed as Virginia’s first professional writing job. For Virginia, it was a restorative. She felt needed and believed that her contribution to the project was important, and vital to engendering her father’s legacy into posterity.

Her success with Maitland led her to be recommended through her friend Violet for a position as a reviewer of books for the woman’s supplement of the Guardian. By December 1904, Virginia had two reviews and an essay published. Now she was a truly professional writer earning money by her pen. A new confidence had crept in along with her newly acquired independence. Her journals from this time reflect this assurance in her abilities and a maturity in her style. Now, she was far from the naive eagerness that permeated her 15-year-old diary.

April 25, 1909

Florence

Descriptive writing is dangerous & tempting. It is easy, with a little expense of brain power, to make something. One seizes some broad aspect, as of water or colour, & makes note of it. This single quality gives the tone of the piece. As a matter of fact, the subject is probably infinitely subtle, no more amenable to impressionist treatment than the human character. What one records is really the state of one’s own mind.

Looking at Florence the other evening I was much impressed by the subtly of the colour. Of course the roofs are speckled brown – there are white walls, with ledges sticking out from them, & green shutters. The houses vary in size, & have projecting roofs. But the water – the sunset – the pale luminous stream – all rough where it falls over the decline - & the houses on the bank, with red in their windows – to tell of this world would need immense concentration. To make a good passage requires an heroic grinding of the mind - & here am I, half asleep.

Virginia was developing her style and her voice. She began expressing ideas about her craft. These entries show a writer striding into her own. Her word choices are now intelligent and logically expressive. At this point she found the initiative to begin her first novel, The Voyage Out.

She was well on her way to founding her own legacy as a writer.

Diaries and journals are a voyeuristic way of finding out how someone thinks. If they cover a lifetime, often they reveal an arc of growth. They are not usually written for public consumption; therefore, the writer can write with candor. They can be as cryptic, or brief, or as florid as they wish. Still, each style reveals some of the personality and thinking of the writer. The diaries and journals collected in A Passionate Apprentice, reveal not only the growth and artistic development of Virginia Woolf the writer, but also the internal workings and the physical and mental maturation of Virginia Stephen the woman.

The first diary is an elementary attempt of an adolescent girl hoping to chronical her family and place them in history. The entries are brief summations of the day’s events. Virginia does not elaborate on details, and she does not go into deep explorations of her emotional states. She does not even attempt to fully describe any observations about the daily happenings. The entries are simply notes to revitalize her memory if she should read through them again.

The second journal contains essays about her experiences. They are longer pieces that are mostly about the greater observations of her family vacations and entertainments. She wanted to capture the detail of the characters and settings of what she was experiencing. She was trying to find her writing form, and as such they read as a learning tool, not fully formed and complete pieces of writing. Because of this, they do hold a certain fascination in how they reveal a writer struggle and learn.

The third section of journals is perhaps the most mature. The entries are longer, more considered. They show a greater depth of observation and a stronger sense of Virginia’s personal style. Since she also began her first novel during the writing of these passages, Virginia is more confident in her stylistic concepts. She had also definitively decided on being a writer and this took her entries into a more definite direction.

The journals presented in this volume are an archive of a person’s maturation from adolescence into young womanhood. They chart her decision to become a writer from the vague notion of a teenage bookworm into the confidence of one who has begun to make a living with their craft and now sees her future as a novelist. By and large, the entries of much of this collection are the unembellished, mundane happenings of an upper middle-class female just coming out from under the social and moral strictures of the Victorian age. It is only in the final section of journals, when Virginia has reached her mid-twenties that we get a taste of the greatness that is to come. Here Virginia began to open up about herself, the choices she was presented with, and what she thought about them. She was more wisely observant at this older age and writes about the mundane occurrences with greater insight and depth. The two earliest journals are historical curiosities. We read them to see the beginnings of the writer who became Virginia Woolf. The entire collective volume has a feeling of completeness about it. It fulfills the public’s eagerness to see every word their hallowed Woolf had ever written. This may have resulted in an unnecessary overkill. Although reading a somewhat empty entry like, “Forgot what happened.” may bring a certain delightful youth and humanity to the exalted author. Even so, A Passionate Apprentice fills a niche for the beginnings of where a writer like Virginia Woolf came from.

Arthur Bruso © 2023

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