Conflict

The following is the text from an article written for the Evansville Times, October, 1992

Rebecca - ‘Becca’ - Conrad thrives on conflict.

It brings out her creative energy, she says. Makes her push herself to find resolutions in terms of her art.

The 25-year-old artist comes from a religious background. Her father is a Mennonite minister, she received her bachelor’s degree in art from Goshen College - a Mennonite college in northern Indiana, and she remains affiliated with the Mennonite Board of Missions which places service volunteers in positions all over the country.

‘Fortunately,’ she says, ‘ I also come from a creative family...carpenters, and architect, a textile designer...Mom paints. I have always been encouraged to be creative.’

Conrad feels compelled to produce art. ‘ I don’t feel like I have a choice. I have to do it,’ she says. ‘I grew up serving others... and there’s a conflict in that art doesn’t clothe or house or feed you, and that’s important to Mennonite work.’

Conrad has sought a resolution to this conflict by seeking ways to make her art serve the community. Exploring role of the artist as a viable member of a neighborhood, using his or her gift to enrich the community and the lives of others within it.

In her last assignment, in Alamosa, Colo., she experienced that balance. Initially she managed a non-profit economic development art gallery, she says. But a community crisis led her to join a small group of artists who pooled their talents too create a focal point around which to galvanize the citizens of their valley into political action.

An underground aquifer - ‘the community’s lifeblood there in that desert environment’ - was being threatened by a corporate effort to gain rights to pump ‘billions of gallons’ out of for shipment to Southern California. It would have dried up the entire San Luis Valley; destroyed the fragile ecosystem, she says.

‘Out there, where water is more valuable than gold, they have water court.’ Conrad explains. ‘We (the artists) produced a 14-by-35-foot acrylic-on-plywood mural that brought together all aspects of life in the valley...the people, the environment...and demonstrated the loss that would be suffered if ‘the green meanies with all the money’ were allowed to destroy it.

‘We set the mural up out on the sidewalk in front of the courthouse on Oct. 15, 1991, the day of that hearing. People really responded to it.’

To date, Conrad says, the water corporation has been held at bay.

‘We all have gifts to give to our community,’ Conrad explains. ‘I’m not a carpenter, or a doctor, or a social worker. I am an artist. I feel that this is my gift, that my art can reflect the continuing creation of God.’

This philosophy is what brought Conrad to Evansville last fall, to Patchwork Central, ‘ to live and work with people who also are exploring the intersection of life, faith and art,’ she explains. in making the move, Conrad joined two other Mennonite volunteers at Patchwork, Biff Weidman and Ann Sorenson.

Conrad’s job is to serve as a teaching assistant to Ruth Doyle, who directs an after school program for children in the Patchwork neighborhood. Conrad helped develop the art program there last year as part of the program that also provides tutoring services. She teaches three afternoons a week during the school year. to a dozen children ages 10 to 12 years.

‘I enjoy working with the children,’ she says,’ channeling all that energy into something productive...helping them learn how to find solutions, to solve problems with their art.’

But her art comes first. and therein lies yet another conflict - between work and art. "Given the opportunity, I’d probably isolate myself here in the studio and just paint,’ she says, ‘and that makes me feel selfish.’

And there is still more conflict:
"My work has begun to focus on the human nude,’ she explains, noting that the prevailing sense of modesty that is ingrained in the Mennonite tradition sets her work at odds with her background.

The mostly androgynous forms she paints appear at once kinetic and confined. Kinetic in that they appear to ‘be on the verge of changing position,’ the artist says, but confined by the long, narrow ‘crawlspaces,’ defined by the shape and size of the canvas and paper strips on which Conrad paints.

To that extent, they are rather like the artist herself.