Joseph Albers was a master in the Abstract Art Movement. His Tectonic Series of zinc plate lithographs were geometric abstractions, illusions for the eye, both innovative and inspiring.

Joseph Albers was also one of the most influential teachers of the visual arts in the 20^th century. He taught in Germany with Kandinsky at the Bauhaus until it was shut down in 1933 as the Nazis began their rise. He immigrated to the United States, teaching at Black Mountain College in Ashville, North Carolina, and ending his career as head of the Department of Design at Yale.

Albers was outspoken in word and art deed. He once said, “I prefer to see with closed eyes.” His abstractions and color field paintings have always been quizzical at first sight and are now prized in museum collections around the world.

So you might be asking how Shrine connects to us?  Illusions, sometimes optical, seem to have been a mainstay of our Covid days for nearly a year. Every question seems to have easily led to a place of straight-lined confusion like the lithograph image here. Time has also been a straight, angled, course-denying, shape-shifting variable that could cause us to lose our place in any day or week. Maybe Shrine represents our ever-changing and sometimes misremembered plans for Easter or July or next Tuesday afternoon at 2:15.

The cognitive dissonance of this work and the closed eyes quote of Albers seem to also call us to stop in a space within these lines and turn everything over to the truths beyond this work. The truths of God’s wisdom and guidance, God’s abundance and inspiration, and God’s redemption and renewal could be what our closed eyes see here. With these and before we even realize, the puzzles we face might be solved in God’s mysterious way.

Maybe this is an unintended Lenten image of reflection and preparation. What do you see?

In faith and hope,

Sandy Prouty

Minister of Children and Families

Montview Church