The “Compassion” Art Exhibit and “Compassion Moves” was a community-based, collaborative event featuring the work of poets, musicians, singer-songwriters, actors, choreographers, dancers, visual artists and residents, conducted in the towns of Berwick and Bloomsburg, PA during October 2004. The project was directed by Anthony Ferro, assistant professor of ballet at Marymount Manhattan College (pictured left).
In Anthony’s call for artists, he noted “My incentive for the work stems from an interest in exploring the amount of energy and focus one must assume in living as a compassionate person. Through discussion groups and forums, I hope to introduce this concept and allow the discussions to define the path of the project. Many aspects of the project will require significant developmental time. As the project evolves, I will foster the ideas and energies from the new artists with whom I will be collaborating. One approach may be to invite students and adults from the community to reflect upon and discuss significant circumstances in their lives that have triggered compassionate thoughts and/or actions and how they might translate these events into a work of art. I will call these expressions “artifacts.” The assembling of the “artifacts” will then become the language through which the project speaks.
Using the concept of compassion as a metaphor for how and why we conduct our lives may elicit some thoughts as we formulate our creative energies.The primary goal is for the project to somehow echo the comprehensiveness of compassion. Compassion is an enactment with many integrated characteristics: reflection, forgiveness, judgment, understanding, patience, intuition, respect, composure and sensitivity, to name a few. How can one attain and sustain the virtue of being a compassionate human being in a society as competitive and complex as ours?
The works that will be on display at either gallery will remain the property of the artists. Individual artists will be responsible when managing subsequent sales of displayed work/s. An insurance waiver must be submitted to the proprietors at either and/or both locations. All donations, monetary contributions and monies collected at the performative evenings will be given to support the efforts of the Public Libraries of Bloomsburg and Berwick.”
The site archive for this project is under reconstruction.
