By Richard J. Jones
Under the banner, “SUDAN: DON’T TURN AWAY”, the public is invited on the day before Mothers’ Day to view an unsettling work, “Red-Handed”, on Saturday, May 10, 11 a.m .– 4 p.m., at Historic Christ Church, 118 N. Washington Street, Alexandria, Virginia. Information: 703-823-3186.
The goal of the installation – untimely as it may seem for the eve of Mothers’ Day — is to make new friends for the church in the Sudans.
Not all artists invite the public to walk all over their work. Rosemary Feit Covey, a wood engraver in Alexandria, Virginia, is inviting viewers on May 10 to walk upon, and ponder, a nonspecific image of mass death. She calls it “Red-Handed”.
Americans, including Sudanese Americans, will be present to point up connections between this abstract paint-on-vinyl work and the specific sufferings of over 13,000,000 Sudanese currently rendered homeless by the two-year civil war — the largest refugee and homeless population in the world known to the United Nations today.
A second-floor auditorium overlooking a Colonial churchyard will offer a zone for both conversation and silent meditation. Water and karkade, the Sudanese tea of hospitality, will be served. Photographs of some of the trauma-healing members of the Mothers’ Union of the Episcopal Church in South Sudan and Sudan will be displayed. A banner will shout: “SUDAN: DON’T TURN AWAY.”