At the recent family gathering, I had a chance to visit a bit with my niece, Karen Heagle, who lives in Brooklyn, New York, and has established herself as a painter of some note in various New York galleries.
If you re interested in seeing more of her work, go to:
http://www.i-20.com/artist.php?artist_id=76&page=images&work_id=609.
Karen is the eldest daughter of my eldest brother, Bob, and even as a young girl exhibited her artistic bent with, as I recall, a series of holstein cow paintings.
I hadn't seen her work in a long time, but she told me to go to Time Out New York as a starting point in finding her work, but I "googled" Karen and clicked on the i-20.com reference.
Not that I am a proud uncle or anything, but the following is a review from Time Out New York, issue 544, March 2-8, 2006, by Max Henry:
"Karen Heagle's art is the painting equivalent of a muscle car: lean and mean with torque. The Brooklyn-based artist's first solo show at the gallery inaugurates the new home of I-20, which has relocated from a top floor on West 20th Street to a ground level space three blocks north.
She paints with n aggressive post-Pop sensibility and approprites images from a wide swath of sources, both art-related (the Italian Renaissance, Christian Schad, Alice Neel, Jenny Saville) and not (a canvas in the office portrays rock star Dave Navarro).
"Bather (After Margritte)" is based on a famous Surrealist painting from 1948 titled Le Galet, in which a voluptuous nude woman licks her shoulder. In Heagle's version, a rich palette, ranging from cool to warm, enhances the erotic interplay between the provocative image and corporeal sensuality of paint itself.
"Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian" (a favorite subject of Renaissance painters) is dominated by a nked man, his forearms tied to a pole and his elongated torso as yet unpierced by an arrow. Behind him, a pale blue sea flows into a horizon of deep, melancholic violet ddaubed with red to suggest the last remnants of sunset.
Heagle's painting has improved considerably, most noteably in her handling of limbs nd faces. The canvases here are at once more refined and more robust than the rougher contributions the artist has made in her past group exhibitions. More impressive still, with this graceful and brawny show, she manages to pull off something Romantic without romanticizing her influences."
Congratulations to my niece, Karen! Proud to be your uncle.
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Priests Jailed for Protesting Fort Huachuca Torture Training
By Bill Quigley
t r u t h o u t | Report
Wednesday 24 October 2007
Louis Vitale, 75, a Franciscan priest, and Steve Kelly, 58, a Jesuit priest, were sentenced to five months each in federal prison for attempting to deliver a letter opposing the teaching of torture at Fort Huachuca in Arizona. Both priests were taken directly into jail from the courtroom after sentencing.
Fort Huachuca is the headquarters of military intelligence in the US and the place where military and civilian interrogators are taught how to extract information from prisoners. The priests attempted to deliver their letter to Maj. Gen. Barbara Fast, commander of Fort Huachuca. Fast was previously the head of all military intelligence in Iraq during the atrocities of Abu Ghraib.
The priests were arrested while kneeling in prayer halfway up the driveway to Fort Huachuca in November 2006. Both priests were charged with trespassing on a military base and resisting orders of an officer to stop.
In a pre-trial hearing, the priests attempted to introduce evidence of torture, murder and gross violations of human rights in Afghanistan, at Abu Ghraib in Iraq and at Guantanamo. The priests offered investigative reports from the FBI, the US Army, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Physicians for Social Responsibility documenting hundreds of incidents of human rights violations. Despite increasing evidence of the use of torture by US forces sanctioned by President Bush and others, the federal court in Tucson refused to allow any evidence of torture, the legality of the invasion of Iraq, or international law to be a part of the trial.
Outside the courthouse, before the judge ordered them to prison, the priests explained their actions: "The real crime here has always been the teaching of torture at Fort Huachuca and the practice of torture around the world. We tried to deliver a letter asking that the teaching of torture be stopped and were arrested. We tried to put the evidence of torture on full and honest display in the courthouse and were denied. We were prepared to put on evidence about the widespread use of torture and human rights abuses committed during interrogations at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo in Iraq and Afghanistan. This evidence was gathered by the military itself and by governmental and human rights investigations."
Fr. Vitale, a longtime justice and peace activist in San Francisco and Nevada, said, "Because the court will not allow the truth of torture to be a part of our trial, we plead no contest. We are uninterested in a court hearing limited to who was walking where and how many steps it was to the gate. History will judge whether silencing the facts of torture is just or not. Far too many people have died because of our national silence about torture. Far too many of our young people in the military have been permanently damaged after following orders to torture and violate the human rights of other humans."
Fr. Kelly, who walked to the gates of Guantanamo with the Catholic Worker group in December of 2005, concluded, "We will keep trying to stop the teaching and practice of torture whether we are sent to jail or out. We have done our part for now. Now it is up to every woman and man of conscience to do their part to stop the injustice of torture."
The priests were prompted to protest by continuing revelations about the practice of torture by US military and intelligence officers. The priests were also deeply concerned after learning of the suicide in Iraq of a young, devout, female military interrogator, Alyssa Peterson of Arizona, shortly after arriving in Iraq. Peterson was reported to be horrified by the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners.
Investigation also revealed Fort Huachuca was the source of infamous "torture manuals" distributed to hundreds of Latin American graduates of the US Army School of Americas at Fort Benning, GA. Demonstrations against the teaching of torture at Fort Huachuca have been occurring for the past several years each November and are scheduled again for November 16 and 17 this year.
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