A new show in the Boston College Arts Council’s gallery in Carney Hall seeks to reimagine Jesus Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary within alternative settings. The exhibition, assembled by Barbara Adams Hebard, a conservator at Boston College’s John J. Burns Library, centers around her artistic interpretations of Ignatian imaginative prayer presented through the media of collage and bookbinding. The exhibition, Encounters: Inspiration & Conversion, began on March 4 and will remain in Carney 203 until March 30. Alongside Hebard’s collages, the exhibition also contains the products of her collaborations with multiple History Department courses at BC.
Upon entering the room, the exhibition leads with a statement of deference to Hebard’s original inspiration for pursuing subjects of faith through the medium of collage. These earliest artworks were the product of a 2008 workshop, entitled “Ignatian Way with Art” and led by Fr. Robert Gilroy, S.J. The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius played a central role in the visual art sessions of Fr. Gilroy, who told the participants that, in order to guide the content of his artwork, he would “imagine a Gospel scene and place myself there, using my senses to bring the story to life in detail.” Since then, Barbara Hebard has emulated his example, citing his guidance as “very impactful on my artistic pursuits beyond bookbinding.” The subsequent collages, which continued in Fr. Gilroy’s “Ignatian technique,” span between 2008 and 2020.
Each of these collages introduce Jesus or Mary into unusual settings, injecting a seemingly alien locational context while retaining the reverential character of the artistic source material. One collage superimposes an image of the crucified Christ onto a black-and-white photograph of an Eastern Mediterranean village, standing out amidst a herd of sheep. Hebard transforms a photograph of two early 20th-century women about town to Jesus’ companions at Calvary, gazing upward in awe and wonder. Hebard integrates a Madonna and Child within a composite environment to signify Our Lady of the Way. The background, anchored by a rocky New Mexico hillside, a tree-studded image of the French Pyrenees, and the Italian Dolomites deliver a texturally vivid meditation on the difficulties of motherhood. Hebard’s introductory statement expressed her “hope” that these and other “collages and imaginative prayer visions” would inspire a “shared contemplation” of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius.
A graduate of the North Bennet Street School bookbinding program, Hebard has frequently exhibited books of her own design on an international scale. Her enrollment in the bookbinding program coincided with “a transformative period in my life” during which she joined the Catholic Church in 1989. She later began her tenure at Boston College in 2009 as a conservator at the John J. Burns Library, replacing her bookbinding teacher, Mark Esser.
The other half of the exhibition includes a few of these custom bound books, such as a Holy Bible clothed in a handmade flax paper cover with goatskin and vellum elements in the Renaissance-era Account Book style. Her expertise at photographic assemblages is present in the cladding of the autobiographical collection of Fr. Francis W. Sweeney, S.J., It Will Take A Lifetime. Alongside these books are a collection of photographs of Hebard’s visits to classes of History Department Professor Virginia Reinburg, whose students then learned to fashion the leather coverings of a girdle book.
Present throughout Hebard’s show is recognition of the many areas of programming related to Ignatian Spirituality, as the artist acknowledges BC’s Center for Ignatian Spirituality, Church in the 21st Century Center, and Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies for informing the spiritual basis of her continued production. After reading a 2020 issue Conversations on Jesuit Higher Education, Hebard read that Pope Francis had called upon the Society to show “the way to God through spiritual exercises and discernment” and “felt that, as a staff member of Boston College who works to support our Jesuit, Catholic mission, I could contribute in some way.” Encounters: Inspiration & Conversion, a quaint, yet thought-provoking exhibit, was the result. Its contents serve as a reminder that one needn’t be a Jesuit to call upon Ignatian Spirituality for inspiration.
Staff photos by Ethan Starr
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