Luther E. Vann's Blog

                                          "When the violin can forgive the past it starts singing."
                               (Quote from When the Violin by poet Hafiz with graphic supplied by CTI)

I’ve been taking some time in the New Year to introduce myself to the writings of the Sufi poet Hafiz. His book called THE GIFT was given to me as a gift and it’s the kind that keeps on giving good useful things. For the past few days I’ve been particularly drawn to his poem known as “When the Violin” and I especially like this quote from it: “When the violin can forgive the past it starts singing.” Something tells me a lot of people might be able to relate. Allow me to share more if I may.

 

When the Violin

Blame keeps the sad game going. 
It keeps stealing all your wealth.
Giving it to an imbecile with no financial skills.
Dear one, Wise Up.
When the violin can forgive the past it starts singing.
When the violin can stop worrying about the future
You will become such a drunk laughing nuisance
That God will then lean down and start combing you into His hair.
When the violin can forgive every wound caused by others
The heart starts singing.

--By Hafiz (from THE GIFT)

Happy New Year,

L.E.V.

"The Endless Road" D/P art by Luther E. Vann

This past weekend I had the pleasure of sitting down with a reporter from the Savannah News Press and discussing current projects. After talking about the forthcoming show at the Jepson Center and the planned publication of ELEMENTAL, we started talking
about my Art For Life Shop . I

then realized I had neglected to let the CTI community and audience know about

the new prints in the shop.

There are now available at the Art for Life Shop a total of five prints that can be obtained in a variety of formats for prices
starting at $17.39 for unframed poster-size prized prints. How long these will remain available at their

current price is hard to say at this time but I hope I can keep them in the

present range at least throughout the duration of the Jepson Show.

The new additions to the shop include two dps titled "The Eternal Road," which you see here, and "The Last Dance." The third new edition is "Angel of Mercy, Angel of Love," which I mentioned in a previous
blog. Even if you're not in the market to buy art at this time, I hope you will

stop by the shop just to enjoy a look at what it has to offer.

LEV

Luther's Art for Life Shop

Having been a working artist all my adult life, I learned early to respect and appreciate media type events like television news spots and newspaper interviews such as the one just published in the Savannah News
Press' at the following link: http://savannahnow.com/node/428917 where there awaits a wonderful article by Joel Weickgenant about one city's gift to the arts.

However, although I recognize the necessity and applaud the marvels of modern media, I'm not always at ease painting while sitting in the hot seat. In fact, sometimes I have to laugh at myself about how squeamish I
can become over that divide between the necessities of the limelight and my

personal creative comfort zone.



The limelight is like a cell phone connected to the CEOs of the marketplace, so…

professionally speaking I'm not at liberty to ignore it when it rings, chimes,

vibrates or raps naughty rhymes to get my attention. But it's not an organic or

even psychic part of the creative comfort zone where I reach for understandings

of what it means to journey through this world with what we call a soul and to

live that journey in such a way that it produces meaningful work. Which for me

means art that says to a viewer whatever it is supposed to. For some artists it

does function in that manner.

Stepping outside that creative comfort zone into the lights of publicity can be, to borrow a friend's word, "disconcerting." The good thing is that I'm learning, after all these grown up years of mine, to look at it
more as connecting and communicating more with other souls on whatever their

journey may be and sharing stories about the wonder of it all. That makes it a

real good thing.

LEV
Luther's Art for Life Shop

(Photograph of Frida Kahlo by Nickolas Muray)

There's a word, I'm pretty sure, for what I'm about to describe but I'm not certain what it is. Maybe I'm thinking about serendipity,
or maybe grace, but definitely something besides coincidence. This is what

happened:

I recently had the pleasure of watching a movie that featured a portrayal of the Mexican artist Diego Rivera who was married several
times to another amazing artist: Frida Kahlo. In this movie, Rivera was a

member of a community of artists that included Picasso, Jean Cocteau and

others. Watching the humored manner with

which they embraced their struggles and triumphs took some of the edge off my

own current stress factors and inspired me to get back to my works in progress

with more enthusiasm than before.

A few days later, I picked up a copy of PREVIEW, the Telfair Museum of Art's news magazine. There on page 5 was a story about my own
ELEMENTAL painting exhibit at the Jepson Center for the Arts, and next to it were

stories about a photography exhibit featuring "Frida Kahlo: Through the Lens of

Nickolas Muray." It turned out that the Jepson

Center for the Arts will host an

exhibit of Muray's photographs of Kahlo from April 16-June 15, 2008, while my own works will be

exhibited at the center from April 16-August

17, 2008.

With photographs of Frida Kahlo keeping company with my own work and a movie featuring her husband Diego Rivera filling my soul with
inspiration, I felt like their spirits had come to encourage and bless my

efforts. Like I said, I'm not sure what the word for such a thing is but I feel

very good that it happened.

LEV

Luther's Art for Life Shop

I've been honored to have one of my paintings, entitled "With These Hands," included in the Telfair Museum of Art's collection for several years now. But on April 16, the museum will host an exhibition of my work that will run until August 17, 2008. If you're not in Savannah when the show opens, I hope you'll make it to the city and catch it before the summer ends. It's a special event to be shared with as many people as possible.



Just in case you miss the opening, the next month on May 29 the museum will present "An Evening With Luther E. Vann." At that time, I hope to give a presentation and hopefully also have a book signing for the long awaited title: Elemental, The Power of Illuminated Love. What you see here is a sneak preview of the new revised cover, on which my co-author Aberjhani and I have been working pretty hard for the past few weeks. The painting featured on the cover is called "The Homeless: Psalm 85:10." I hope you like it and if you're in Savannah or able to make it to the city on April 16 or May 29 I'll be happy to meet you.



LEV

It's taken almost two whole decades of perseverance, faith, and paradigm-shifting for it to happen, but ELEMENTAL: The Power of Illuminated Love, is now published and available for purchase at the Jepson Center for the Arts Gift Shop and also through Soar Publishing. For information on orders, please contact Soar at (803)699-0633 or the Jepson Center Gift Shop at (912) 790-8831.



Following this blog, I am going to begin a short series of excerpts from ELEMENTAL that tell the story of how the book got its start and almost 20 later finally saw the light of a beautiful day.





Luther E. Vann

This is the first of several excerpts from ELEMENTAL, The Power of Illuminated Love, now available at the Jepson Center for the Arts Gift Shop (telephone 912-790-8831) and throughout Soar Publishing (telephone 803-699-0633.





A PERSONAL JOURNEY OF YEARS

"The role of the artist I now understood as that of revealing through the world-surfaces the implicit forms of the soul, and the great agent to assist the artist was the myth."––Joseph Campbell





What marks the beginning of the existence of a work of art? Is it that moment when an artist lifts a pencil to sketch an outline of an idea that may or may not develop into a full painting? Or when one sits before a piano to feel out the notes that most faithfully replicate the masterpiece playing in his or her head? Maybe it begins long before such moments: in those days and hours when an individual feels compelled to respond to an impulse to create––whether the work is one of visual art, a musical composition, a poem, or a new style of braids––long before discovering that those who give their lives to such demanding impulses are what the world describes as artists.



The art and poetry that make up ELEMENTAL, The Power of Illuminated Love, had their beginnings in two journeys that converged in Savannah, Georgia, in 19991, when I met the author Aberjhani. My journey at first had been a physical one that throughout my youth took me back and forth between Savannah and New York City. As I grew into adulthood, it became a consciously spiritual one that taught me how crucial it was to balance my passions for the material world with an increased awareness of and respect for the spiritual realities of human existence.



To be continued…



Luther E. Vann

from ELEMENTAL, The Power of Illuminated Love

The first public acknowledgment of the [ELEMENTAL] project came June 25, 1993, when the journalist John Ryan published a story titled "Kindred Spirits," along with a photo of Aberjhani and I by Wayne Moore, in the Savannah College of Art and Design's (SCAD) former weekly newspaper, The Georgia Guardian. At that time, the book's working title was "The Way of All Light." It later changed to "The Light and the Way of Luther E. Vann," and later still to "Elemental," then to "Illuminated Love." The name on which we finally settled felt like one most descriptive of the book's personality: ELEMENTAL The Power of Illuminated Love .



In The Georgia Guardian article, Ryan described our work in progress as follows: "Painting in a style that has been likened to the Italian pittuna metaphysica tradition as well as some of the more powerful African traditions of craftsmanship, Vann's paintings seem to embody the same philosophies that Aberjhani has been exploring through his poetry. In many of Vann's works, representational figures recline against backgrounds of rich color, enlightened with halos and peering across the canvas through beams of light. Likewise, Aberjhani's poetry tackles strong religious concepts and rejoices in the power of spirituality. Together, the two fit together like puzzle pieces."



Luther E. Vann

from ELEMENTAL: The Power of Illuminated Love

Please accept an invitation to be as surprised as I was, when I picked up a copy of the June 4, 2008, Connect Savannah and saw a picture of my painting, "All the Things We Are (Forsyth Park)" on the cover, by clicking on the following link. It leads to a great review by my fellow artist and astute critic Bertha Husband:

http://www.connectsavannah.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A8131



For those seeking links to purchase ELEMENTAL: The Power of Illuminated Love, you can do son on Barnes and Noble and also on Black Book Plus at this url: http://www.blackbookplus.com/Elemental_The_Power_of_Illuminated_Love.asp



In addition, if you happen to be passing through Savannah, the book is available at the Jepson Center for the Arts Gift Shop.





LEV