{"id":5377,"date":"2005-07-14T23:50:15","date_gmt":"2005-07-14T23:50:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/painting-conyers.html"},"modified":"2005-07-14T23:50:15","modified_gmt":"2005-07-14T23:50:15","slug":"painting-conyers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/painting-conyers.html","title":{"rendered":"Painting Conyers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thanks to the Anchoress<\/a> for bringing the "paint-out" of the Trappist Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers, GA<\/a> to our attention. It’s a fundraiser described here<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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Plein Air Painters of Georgia, Inc <\/a>, some of the Georgia ‘s most talented and well-known outdoor painters, with their invited guest artists , brought their paint boxes and easels to the monastery here in Conyers , Georgia . They enjoyed a wonderful weeklong \u201cMonastery Paint Out\u201d during the week of Saturday. June 18 through Sunday June 26. <\/p>\n

The remarkable \u201cMonastery Paint Out\u201d is the brainchild of Kelly Jordan, chair of the Arabia Mountain Heritage Area Alliance, and renowned painter Suzanne Royal of Plein Air Painters of Georgia, Inc. Twenty-five renowned artists participated. The artists converged on the monastery to paint outdoors throughout the monastery grounds. Plein air artists seek the quality of natural light and atmosphere outdoors. Their artwork is in direct response to the beauty they find in nature. They use a variety of media, from oils and watercolors to pastels. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And now, their work is on sale and viewable here.<\/a> A marvelous idea. <\/p>\n

I’ve visited this monastery several times. Never did a formal retreat there, but did spend a couple of days in informal reatreat – attempting to pray monastic prayer, etc. It’s a wonderful monastery, with an interesting history – it is a satellite of the Trappist monastery in Gethsemane, built, of course, by the monks themselves. There is a detailed history that begins here.<\/a> <\/p>\n

Many people associate this monastery with Flannery O’Connor’s peacocks that she kept at Andalusia<\/a>, and some of them were, indeed, placed here after her death. But none of them  survive, and their fate is noted here.<\/a> The first time I went to the monastery, there was a large cage down near the pond that had a small sign affixed that read something like, "Flannery O’Connor’s peacocks used to live here," but I don’t think it’s there any more. <\/p>\n

The monastery experienced a surge ofoverflow popularity during the 80’s when a woman named Nancy Fowler, a resident of Conyers, claimed to experience apparitions of Mary at her farm. Been there, too. Oh my   that was a time. Some of the worst hate mail I ever got as a columnist came in response to Florida Catholic<\/em> columns I wrote laying out the case against the authenticity of those apparitions. Well, not hate I guess. Michael said, "You should be glad that so many people are praying for you." <\/p>\n

Hard to argue with that.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thanks to the Anchoress for bringing the "paint-out" of the Trappist Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers, GA to our attention. It’s a fundraiser described here: Plein Air Painters of Georgia, Inc , some of the Georgia ‘s most talented and well-known outdoor painters, with their invited guest artists , brought their paint boxes…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nPainting Conyers - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/painting-conyers.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Painting Conyers - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Thanks to the Anchoress for bringing the "paint-out" of the Trappist Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers, GA to our attention. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. 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