BY KAREN SAMPLES
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Ellen Zahorec with Our Lady of Guadalupe shrine.
(AP photo)
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COVINGTON -- You'll not see Ellen Zahorec smearing her body with chocolate and calling it art. Nor will you see her photographing naked people, burning the flag or portraying Jesus with a punk haircut.
She's never been that kind of "artist."
Now, finally, we can see so for ourselves.
On display at the Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption are a series of mixed media works by Ms. Zahorec and three other artists with Catholic backgrounds. They are dramatic, heartfelt pieces that explore relationships between God, the universe and personal spirituality.
Ms. Zahorec, 48, makes her collages out of paper, beads, gold leaf, candles, furniture, old dress patterns and colorful portraits of the Virgin Mary.
Her representation of Our Lady of Guadalupe -- the vision of a dark-skinned Mary that appeared to a Mexican Indian -- is decorated with silk flowers from her father's grave. The display also incorporates an antique ironing board and tiny nativity scenes inside doll-sized furniture.
The board, Ms. Zahorec says, celebrates women like her mother and grandmother. She imagines them "getting lots of prayers done" as they bent over their ironing, she says.
It's not easy sharing this sort of art.
It reveals so much of who she is -- granddaughter of Eastern European immigrants, daughter of a good man who recently died.
Most of all, she is a child of the Byzantine Catholic tradition as practiced by the people of Slovakia, east of the Czech Republic. On Good Fridays in the church of her youth, parishioners crawled on their knees to the altar and kissed the feet of a crucifix draped in black. Today, Ms. Zahorec lights candles, prays to Mary and attends Mass every Sunday.
No one knows better than she the risks involved in sharing her faith through art.
Two years ago, she inadvertently created a stir with a proposal for an exhibit at Northern Kentucky University. She had chosen what she thought was an intriguing play on words -- "Immaculate Misconceptions" -- to describe the show's theme. It was to feature Catholic artists exploring their childhood memories and confusion about religion.
One artist, for instance, used to think nuns didn't have bodies -- only hands and feet. She finally realized the truth when she saw one of them slide into first base.
Another artist planned a piece on Christopher Columbus. As a child, he learned Columbus was sent to save American Indian souls; later, he discovered what really happened.
From her own childhood, Ms. Zahorec remembers the lists of sins she was to avoid.
"When you're 6 years old, how do you understand gluttony, pride, sloth?" she asks, laughing. She assumed she was going to hell for everything and anything.
It was an interesting idea for a show. The title threw people, though. It caused them to misunderstand, to assume she was somehow attacking her own, devout faith.
At the time, one Northern Kentucky legislator said this: "To mock somebody's religious belief is every bit as repugnant as mocking someone's race or gender."
Ms. Zahorec was stunned. "Wait a minute," she wanted to say. "That's not what I'm about."
But it was too late. NKU administrators pressed for a change in the title. Members of the art faculty resisted. Newspapers editorialized. Passions were inflamed.
Ms. Zahorec sensed a name change wouldn't be enough. She didn't want a cloud hanging over her work, so she canceled the show.
She also entered what she calls "a dark night of my soul." She questioned her calling as an artist, even though she'd worked with fiber and paper since 1975 and exhibited work around the world. She prayed and lit many candles -- "the Catholic devotional thing," she says. Her husband sneezed from all the smoke.
In the end, nothing told Ms. Zahorec to stop making pictures. And today, along with the work of Barbara Rauf, Jennifer Baldwin and Gary Gaffney, the Cathedral is quietly putting her collages on display.
"Some people may get their kicks from negativism and controversy, but I don't," Ms. Zahorec says. "I'd just as soon have my art used as cultural outreach to the community and a form of visual education." This is also her way of giving back to God, she says.
Of course, this time around she's chosen a different title. The series at the Cathedral is called In Hoc Signo, Hospodi Pomiluj. That's Latin and Slovak. It means, "In this sign, Lord have mercy."
Karen Samples is The Enquirer's Kentucky columnist. Her column appears on Sundays and Thursdays in The Kentucky Enquirer. She can be reached at 578-5584 or email
her at ksamples@enquirer.com
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