All Saints Pasadena Proposal #2: Elana Mann
WHAT CAN LISTENING DO? (Part 3)
Elana Mann is an artist, wife, and mother living in South Pasadena. She is part of Nefesh, a local progressive Jewish faith community led by friend of All Saints: Rabbi Susan Goldberg.
Since graduate studies, Elana has been making visual artworks and sculptural objects that relate to language, sound and the act of listening. Only recently she discovered that her own sense of hearing has been diminished since birth, and has slowly been in decline over many years. Instinctually taking visual cues to compensate in every day life, it makes sense that Elana has been drawn to the processes and mechanics that connect visual and auditory learning. Furthermore, there is a conceptual thread in her work that connects one's environment to one's ideological beliefs. Following in the lineage of the late Catholic nun and art hero, Sister Corrita Kent, Elana Mann composes works of art that bridge mark making, text, sound, protest, graphic, performance, and event. Her physical works of art function as relics of action taken, or yet to be taken.
Drawing inspiration from her Jewish faith tradition and roots, Elana Mann is peaceful yet fierce - alarmed and yet steady and calculating. Her work would never come to be without contemporary circumstance, and it depends on the call and response dynamics of social justice. All Saints is honored to host this body of work during one of the most critical transitions of our country and faith. At a time when progressives are calling for the renewal of listening as key to bridging divides - and when we as a church have been invited into "listening sessions" during our own time of transition - we learn from artists like Elana Mann who have been listening this whole time, and now hold candles in the darkness: beckoning us to move closer and amplify our energy as one body.
