Artist draws connections between people, creation

By Michelle Martin
Staff writer

The images in Sister Mary Southard’s art show people coming together, around a table, around a globe, around one another. Most often the colors and figures blend into one another, making them inseparable.

Why do so many of her works emphasize the unity of creation?

“I can’t help it,” said Southard, a Sister of St. Joseph. “Creation is together.”

Southard is mounting a show of paintings and sculptures called “For the Beauty of Earth” through Sept. 29 in the second floor gallery at the LaGrange Public Library, 555 N. LaGrange Road, LaGrange Park.

Many of her works are available through the Ministry of the Arts, a ministry of the Sisters of St. Joseph of LaGrange.

Southard said that most of her works don’t start with a specific message in mind. They come more from an impulse to capture a particular feeling or insight, she said.

But many of them follow the theme of unity—the charism of her community is from Jesus’ statement “That all may be one,” and she takes that to mean all of creation, not just all of humanity.

She believes more and more people understand that, as scientists have pushed their knowledge about the universe wider and wider.

“It’s just an illusion that we’re not connected,” she said. “We’re intimately connected from the beginning. … I’m very aware of what time it is in the world, and if we’re going to make it as a planet, it’s going to require human transformation, a conversion. And I want to participate as fully as I can in this moment in God’s creation.”

That’s a commitment Southard made last year, when she celebrated her 50th anniversary of entering religious life and took time to reflect on what she would do if she were committing herself again. She decided she must continue to “be faithful to” her her creative gift, and to offer her insights through retreats.

“My sense of mission is, how can I invite other people into the process?” she said. “What I’ve learned is that we all learn something every time. Every group I’ve worked with has been a little more aware.”

They have been aware of the connections between things that others once saw as unrelated: between faith and science, ecology and personal morality, the effect their decisions have on the world around them.

“Once you begin to make the connections,” she said, everything changes.