MCPA core members Ali Beyer and Paul B. Rucker have co-authored an illustrated essay entitled "Art Coven in the Public Eye: Creating Sacred Space with Art Exhibitions" now available in the current issue (#120) of Circle Magazine. To purchase a digital copy, go here. For general subscription info, go here.
This issue deals with the theme of "transforming rituals". We took the idea of "ritual as art" and flipped it around to look at "art as ritual." Our essay examines how our debut exhibition in Fall 2014, "Doorways to the Underworld", shared sacred space with the public at a mainstream art gallery in South Minneapolis.
Through curatorial choices, we created a heightened atmosphere which catalyzed transformative reactions from both Pagan and non-Pagan participants; in this essay we explore how such an exhibition functions as an alternate kind of ritual, and thus raise questions about what ritual is, and can be. What can it look like when Pagan artists create environments conducive to the experience of the sacred within the usually secular spaces of art galleries and similar venues?
Exposure to a body of Pagan art in such a setting creates the potential for interfaith dialog, for the transformation of ideas and attitudes, and creates another means by which the public at large can find something of interest and value in this culture.