Artist Safina Stewart Speaks About Australia Day

Please Note: All posts on this blog are intended for informational purposes only, not as an evaluation or endorsement of any artist, art form, organization or website.  If you have concerns about the accuracy of any information presented please contact the author at hmsarthistorian@gmail.com.

Today, January 26, is Australia Day down under.  Wikipedia writes that Australia Day

is the official national day of Australia... it marks the anniversary of the 1788 arrival of the First Fleet of British Ships at Port Jackson, New South Wales, and raising of the Flag of Great Britain at that site by Governor Arthur Phillip... With community festivals, concerts and citizenship ceremonies, the day is celebrated in large and small communities and cities around the nation. Australia Day has become the biggest annual civic event in Australia.

So, it's something like America's July 4th celebration.  In this video from 2014, artist Safina Stewart shares her perspective on the holiday as an Aboriginal Australian and Christian.  I think what she says here is very powerful and something that most white Christians (around the world) don't often hear.  Her sentiments are probably very applicable to Native Americans in the U.S. as well.  There certainly is a need all over the world for Christians of different cultural backgrounds to love and support one another.  Few of us do that well, myself included.  But we can be thinking and praying about it, and try to take small practical steps towards others in a spirit of kindness and friendship (like she mentions in the video).  To see and read about Safina and her art, visit her website Art by Safina.

Artist Fuses Mongolian and Native American Influences

Please Note: All posts on this blog are intended for informational purposes only, not as an evaluation or endorsement of any artist, art form, organization or website.  If you have concerns about the accuracy of any information presented please contact the author at hmsarthistorian@gmail.com.

Artist J.Bayarjargal (2nd from right) with her final student art project.

Mongolian Christian artist J.Bayarjargal is a recent art school graduate from the Mongolian University of Arts and Culture in Ulaanbaatar.  For her final project she created a series of seven leather disks based on the days of creation (and the first Sabbath) found in Genesis.

Bayarjargal has been a follower of Christ since 2006.  For her final art project, she wanted to create something that was a testimony to her professors about her faith in God's Son.  She says, "There is only one inspiration for my artwork [and] that is God and His mighty work that He has done for us."  She chose leather as her medium because her brother, who is also an artist, had previously worked with leather.

The round shape of Bayarjargal's leather pieces represents God's omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence.  She reinforces the idea of God's unchanging nature through the use of three colors throughout the seven disks: red, yellow and blue.  These are also the colors of the Mongolian flag.  Bayarjargal writes that red represents strength, decisiveness and power; blue signifies the eternal blue sky, with the different shades of blue in the leather disks symbolizing "the limitlessness of God in all areas."  Yellow equals clarity and light.  Using the same palette throughout the seven discs indicates that "everything [is] connected [and] related to one another [because of] the way He created them."