{"id":8276,"date":"2003-12-28T14:53:23","date_gmt":"2003-12-28T14:53:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2003\/12\/faith_in_art.html"},"modified":"2003-12-28T14:53:23","modified_gmt":"2003-12-28T14:53:23","slug":"faith_in_art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2003\/12\/faith_in_art.html","title":{"rendered":"Faith in Art"},"content":{"rendered":"

Both High and Low…a good piece on expressions of faith in folk art <\/a><\/p>\n

Unprepossessing though it may be to some eyes, this Nativity is the work of a lifetime, and it is only one of many examples of popular art, religious or devotional in origin if not in present function, that abound in the city. At El Museo del Barrio, three huge exotic painted and turbaned figures sit in the lobby, ready for Jan. 6, when the Three Kings Day parade will wend its way from the museum through the streets of East Harlem. With its colossal Magi, hosts of grade-school angels and fabulous music, the parade, originally a procession, is definitely a New York experience.<\/p>\n

As it happens, I have a related though less spectacular one at this time of year in my own mostly Latino neighborhood, where a big, multifigured Nativity is installed in the local supermarket. The figures are plastic, their colors hard and bright. But in the weeks before Christmas the manger floor around Jesus’ crib is gradually covered with coins and bills pitched in to bring luck or just from an ingrained sense of reverence for this familiar scene. Is this an example of low art? High art? No art? Well, it’s life. The choice is yours.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Both High and Low…a good piece on expressions of faith in folk art Unprepossessing though it may be to some eyes, this Nativity is the work of a lifetime, and it is only one of many examples of popular art, religious or devotional in origin if not in present function, that abound in the city.…<\/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-8276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nFaith in Art - 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\/2003\/12\/faith_in_art.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Faith in Art - 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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. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8276\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}