Janet Mullen
Personal Statement Of Janet Mullen SND
SOURCES - Since I was very
young two things have passionately engaged me; my awe at the awesome evidence of
an enspirited world and my desire to create a world that is compassionate and
just.
As a young
woman I
left my liberal art education at Emmanuel College to enter a religious
congregation to teach art. Ten years later I went to Kenya fulfilling my dream
to work among the poorest of the third world. I organized and ran community
development workshops among prostitutes and beer brewers of Nairobi’s squatter
camps where people lived in igloos of plastic bags and cardboard. Later I
started an art school for the poor youth in the lakeside slum of Lake
Victoria. I lived in those slums and ate with the people, learned from Kenyans
languages and culture but more importantly I witnessed tremendous compassion and
community among the most disadvantaged. I know that in our life together a
number of people were enabled to step a few rungs higher on the economic ladder
and I grew to appreciate how deep and wide are the possibilities in creativity
of the human spirit.
For the twenty years, between 1979
and 1999, that I was on this journey I used my creative mind and skills,
teaching women in cottage craft industries and youth in my art school to trust
their inner dreams and intuition and to hone skills that would be marketable and
also improve the local community. As part of the students contribution to
their art school and as a way for them to taste employment in a country where
95% are unemployed, I and my students created and painted concrete statues and
communally painted murals in more than twenty five sites in community centers
,hospitals, schools, churches and nonprofit agencies. The art was culturally
sensitive and involved the participation and input of the local communities
although we worked among at least ten different cultures and in ten different
languages over the six years of the projects existence. The school is still
very successful though more formal in style and much better financially
supported.
In the next six years I trained
young women in spirituality and service to the poor. In all of this experience
I was integrating my spiritual inclinations, my decision to enable the
disenfranchised poor to claim their rights and my creative talents in thinking
and making art a medium for enabling people to overcome their deficits and
maximize their potential.
When I came home to the
U.S. five years ago I’d hoped to become a working artist and to continue my
involvement with the poor by working with the homeless. I see a lot of talent
among the homeless artists with whom I have worked. But there is no art center
or adequate facilities to help them to take the material of their suffering and
transform it into art. To create an art center for the homeless would be one of
my dreams.
Another would be to be able to
present in the world of art experiences that would affect and possibly motivate
people to respond to issues of justice, poverty and discrimination. I also
want to create images that will allow others to enter different worlds
vicariously, to find a new insight into equality and an appreciation of diverse
cultures. If I could learn to speak in a richer visual voice, my art would
be a whisper on behalf of the masses of desperate disenfranchised souls who
cannot be heard in this image glutted technological world.
PAINTINGS – Color and light
are my greatest fascination and I apply these aspects liberally in my
interaction with flowers, landscapes and figures. I love to do portraits and
especially portraits of the disenfranchised of the world which carry the
greatness of the human spirit in their eyes. I work in all media ; oils,
acrylics, pastels, watercolor, lino and wood cut, and clay. Presently I am
developing a looser more expressionistic style and am concentrating on texture
and pattern in my compositions.
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