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MOFSA is pleased to announce that Trinh Mai has received a 2024 Spiritual Art Grant.

Trinh Mai is a California-based interdisciplinary artist whose work is driven by innovative narratives of storytelling. Her work spans many media, including paint, found object sculpture, works on paper and combinations of all these. With grace and delicacy she binds natural materials (stones, sticks, eggshells, seeds), and family mementos (photographs, threads, buttons) to create installations dedicated to loss and hope. She has painted murals in public spaces, including on the campus of UCLA and the Los Angeles airport. 

Her art incorporates the stories of her extended family and the families who fled Vietnam into art pieces that speak not only to their personal struggles, tragedies, successes and hopes, but to the greater immigration stories worldwide. She is examining why people migrate, their search for hope and reconciling the anguish of not knowing the fate of those lost. Her work is infused with deep belief and a seeking after truth. In her words, her work embodies  Art, Prayer, Life, Faith and is.

“ … an invaluable tool that has granted me the opportunity to live the refugee, immigrant experiences vicariously through the ones who arrived before me, allowing me to interpret these stories through my own ears, eyes and hands. With deep respect, I bind these inherited stories into our witnessing of history’s alliteration, of persecution and injustice, of mass exodus and the tribulations that we continue to face upon arrival, and of the anticipated opportunities that indeed await us on new horizons as we set our gaze upon home and promise.

“My current work serves as an aperture into which I examine the stories of an enduring People who have been targeted worldwide, amidst an immigration and refugee crisis that has been a consistent humanitarian struggle throughout all of human history. Drawn from intimate experiences of heartache and triumph, of struggle and perseverance, and of loss and provision, my art practice strives to find comfort by searching for, and then sharing the discovered faith, fulfillment, and freedom that have fostered me/Us during these anguishing times.”

Trinh Mai is a second-generation Vietnamese-American, the daughter of Vietnamese people who fled Vietnam by any means possible after the war there. She has a BFA from San Jose State University, and has also studied at UCLA. Some of her roles include being Project Director for the Vietnamese-American Arts & Letters Association,  Course Director for the Pacific Symphony, and Curator for the San Jose Center for the Performing Arts. As an artist she has collaborated with many community and art groups, including (but not limited to) the Golden State Warriors Community Foundation, the International Rescue Committee, the San Diego Art Institute, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

We are honored to acknowledge the fine work of this artist.

MOFSA is pleased to announce that Steve Prince has received a 2024 Spiritual Art Grant.

Steve Prince carves linoleum and wood to craft block prints that fulfill what he sees as his artistic duty: to be a  “truth-sayer”. His work combines influences from his early life in New Orleans where he was profoundly affected by the unique funerary tradition which spreads messages of hope and renewal through the sounds and movement of Jazz. The structure of the funeral music has become the philosophical foundation to his artistic practice. His images show ordinary people navigating difficult issues, and like the musical dirge, assist us in feeling our emotions. His images also help us to navigate pain as a community. 

Ideas around social change figure prominently in Steve’s work. He believes the artist’s role is to “help society to see who we can be through prophetic imagination.”  His images invite viewers to “collectively grapple with the stains, the pain, and the sins of the past while proactively moving forward into the unstained future.” 

In his current role as Director of Engagement and Artist in Residence at the Muscarelle Museum at William & Mary University, Steve has facilitated roughly 30 workshops for the “Links” project which accompanied the 1619 exhibition that commemorated the arrival of the first African Americans on Point Comfort. He invited 500 people from all around the world to sit down and make art with him to contribute their voices about how we are linked, not bound- and how we move forward together.

Steve Prince received his MFA in printmaking and sculpture from Michigan State University. He has been an educator his entire career teaching middle school, high school, community college, and 4-year public and private universities.

Learn more about this talented artist at his website: https://Steveprincestudio.com

MOFSA is pleased to announce that Nicole Leth has received a 2024 Spiritual Art Grant.

Nicole Leth was 17 when her father died in 2010, following a long battle with mental illness. Her resulting dark night of the soul gave her the term ‘creative resilience’ and the deep desire to reach out to and comfort people who might be suffering, manifested as ‘My Affirmation Project’, founded in 2019.

Nicole has since spent the bulk of her time and money researching the human healing process and working to create soft spaces for real human beings to heal and face trauma with compassion. My Affirmation Project integrates statements of compassion and acts of artistic kindness into the world in unexpected and accessible ways. The work is always anonymous, free, and legal. Her name, website, or other information are never posted anywhere on the work once it is out in the world out of intention to keep the work about supporting community mental health rather than artistic ego. This has manifested as her tender yet honest poem-like affirmations being posted artistically and anonymously on road-side billboards, airplane banners, semi-trucks, barges, urban wheat-pasted posters, LED screens, stickers, yard signs, hand-made quilts, fliers, and murals all over the world. In addition to large-scale public art, Nicole also works to create iterations of this work that humans can engage directly with in an intimate way – she builds and sets up “free flower shops” in public spaces around the world and has created a mailing service in which 100,000 people have received hand-addressed postcards with her written affirmations on them every month for five years.  A quick internet search revealed Instagram posts from all over the world from people who have been affected by her public art and her tender postcards. Her 900 pieces of public art have received 100 million views. Below is one of our favorites. How poignant are her words of affirmation rising above the discount liquor, CBD, and check cashing shops below?

We at MOFSA are proud to include Nicole as one of our 2024 Spiritual Grant recipients.  More, so much more, on her website:  https://www.myaffirmationproject.com/

MOFSA is pleased to announce that Clark Valentine has received a 2024 Spiritual Art Grant.

Clark Valentine draws as a spiritual practice, engaging with the gesture of mark-making as a means of cultivating presence, contemplative awareness, and embodied consciousness. His process of drawing and repetition of marks serve to bring the movements of the body in sync with the movements of the mind, and to invite a state of mental stillness sought by nearly every mystical tradition. He describes his completed works as “gentle chimes,” likened to meditation bells, that bring viewers into the fullness of the present moment. They are records of time spent in silent contemplation, as well as a response to the physical, mental and spiritual experience of the moment in which they were created. “The geometries of my drawings seek a tension between movement and stillness, becoming objects of contemplation and presentness. In the gallery, my images cultivate a chapel space where visitors can commune both with others and their own souls. Each mark that I draw documents a moment in time, my exploration of my own being, and is a proposal of who we can become through care and sensitivity.”

As a professor, Clark seeks to equip his students with tools for mindfulness, and to provide classes that can offer students the opportunity to grow in areas of sensitivity to the sacred, passion for community, and compassion for the self. His mission in education is to be a champion for the liberal arts to continue to serve as a guidepost in the humanization of students in a system which is often focused exclusively on ‘job’ preparation. Through experimental methods of teaching, he hopes to develop a system which empowers students to consider how the spiritual and intellectual elements of a work of art coincide.

Clark received his MFA from Colorado State University with a concentration in Drawing. His work has been exhibited in museums, universities, and galleries on five continents, and widely throughout the US. He lives and maintains a studio in Little Rock, Arkansas, where he is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

MOFSA is excited to support this young artist, educator, and contemplative, and to follow the future evolution of his career. You can learn more about Clark and his practice here: https://clarkvalentinefineart.com/

MOFSA is pleased to announce that the recipient of our major 2024 Spiritual Art Grant in the amount of $10,000 is Abi Ogle.

Abi Ogle uses unexpected materials to explore loss and hope. Her art practice is built on the belief that art makes us more human, that materials matter, and that if we take the time to listen to the stories of others, they change us. She began making artwork to diffuse the weight of living as a hopeful, tangible response to grief. She believes that artwork gives us a glimpse of something beyond ourselves, something that reminds us that this broken world is not all we hope for. Abi is deeply curious and dedicated to bringing attention to the mundane or easily ignored. She desires to humbly engage with the life that is present around her, to thoughtfully listen to the cries of those who are mourning, and to make artwork that enables conversations of healing. 

Abi’s explorations are a result of numerous hours of research, embedded in an art historical conversation, and brought to life through meticulous mark-making. The meditative nature of these pieces invites the viewer and the maker alike to become visually and physically immersed in an experience. She so beautifully says “Artwork is the glitch of sorts that so wonderfully and abruptly interrupts the rhythm of life, inviting the unforeseen into our world and grants us the space to acquiesce- to shout, “yes!” to even the faintest glimmer of light in the darkness.”

Abi recently received her M.F.A. in Craft / Material Studies with a focus in fiber at Virginia Commonwealth University and completed a fellowship at the Virginia Museum of Fine Art. She was invited to several artist residencies including the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, Vermont Studio Center, and Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts. She now lives and works in Houston, Texas.

We are in awe of Abi’s refreshing vision and we encourage you to spend time looking at all of her different series on her website: https://abiogle.com

Barren Landscape:

The grapefruit membranes, originally meant to protect and grow, now stripped of their fruit, and left barren reminds me of the cycles within my own body and the bodies of those around me who have a womb. Those who have chosen to have children and watch their bodies grow and then deflate, those whose bodies can’t do what they were supposed to do, those who have made a choice to deny what their bodies could do, and those who have suffered the searing pain of child-loss.

Ground Eggshells:

Ghostly floorboards shift and warp along the floor as viewers tiptoe around the perimeter and gaze over the dream-like sea before them. These “wood” panels reference a beloved floor from my family home before it was destroyed in a tornado, leaving only a memory.

2024’s Spiritual Grant Opportunity was rich with dedicated imaginative artists whose art and lives reflect MOFSA’s vision.  In the coming months we will be introducing you to a few of them.  Our hope is that you, the receiver, are as transformed by this spiritual art as we have been.

A real work of art destroys the separation between the receiver and the artist.

Leo Tolstoy

In 2023 MOFSA awarded special grants to three artists:

• Giulia Loli
• Lisa Penson
• Susannah Ravenswing

Congratulations!

Read more

Giulia Loli

My art is about being a witness to the witness. And it is reassuring to know that there are witnesses (Bob and friends) to the witness (artist) to the witnesses (Ancient Indigenous Africans). So much of the source of Inspiration feeding the artistic mission has to do with living with the Indigenous Garden Keepers, the Maasai. They are holding the keys of Ancient Wisdom, our still-alive Ancestors, as we all collectively cross this threshold into the so-called ‘Age of Aquarius’. In following the magnetic pull of the Great Spirit, I am grateful to still be here and continue to build this bridge between Egypt and Tanzania via the Nile River (the River which begins in Tanzania’s Lake Victoria…my mother’s name —and ends in Egypt), cross-pollinating back into Europe and America et al. This gift happens to coincide with the gift of discovering my roots deep in Tanzania, with the greater purpose of Ancestral Healing and the most beautiful Hymn of All Creatures Praising the Creator…

Lisa Penson

I would describe my painting practice as process-led intuitive abstract painting. Choices relating to colour, composition and theme are not pre-planned; they emerge as the painting transforms across time. For me, this spontaneous, organic way of working is the most exciting part of the process. Although I try to ‘control’ as little as possible, as I near the end of a painting, I introduce a ‘framing’ technique to demarcate points of interest that have arisen through the placement of multiple, contrasting layers. Ultimately, I seek balance between opposing visual elements such as control and expression, expanses of colour and black brush marks, hard edges and watery washes that correspond to the harmonisation of universal principles such as masculine/feminine, dark/light and yin/yang. In 2017 I had what can only be described as a ‘spontaneous spiritual activation’ which has sent me on a journey towards finding my ‘true self’ and an exploration of this through my arts practice. I am investigating how I can integrate specific spiritual practices (sadhana) such as contemplation, meditation, mindfulness, ‘emptying’, presence, non-attachment and egoless practice into my art practice.

Susannah Ravenswing

I follow the spiritual traditions of my pre-conversion Northern European ancestors, and find great joy in using my artistic talents in creating devotional art for my faith. The generous grant MOFSA made available to me this year has helped in the acquisition of tools and materials for the undertaking of two very different projects. The first, an altar hanging depicting the story of the wolves Hati and Skoll chasing the Sun and Moon across the heavens, was rendered through appliqué  and embroidery in linen and cotton and now hangs behind the main altar at TwoTrees Sanctuary in Stokes County, North Carolina. The second project, still in progress, is the carving of a large cedar votive pole honoring the Norse God Odin. Historically, such votive images marked community worship spaces, and the completed godpole will be raised in the upper worship space at TwoTrees