Gerburg Garmann, professor of German and French language and literature, will hold an art exhibition, “Where Beauty Meets Resilience,” at the Athenaeum in Indianapolis, June 7 – July 1, 2019.
Where Beauty Meets Resilience
This show of my artwork has grown out of previous shows. In one way or another, I have always been fascinated by beauty in its many forms and by the resilience I have witnessed in so many women around me.
The psychological definition of the term resilience is this:
“… the creation of meaning in life, even life that is sometimes painful or absurd, and having the courage to live fully despite its inherent pain and futility.”
Resilience is not simple optimism. It often occurs when optimism meets adversity or even tragedy. Someone has bent without breaking — has perhaps gone through hell and back — yet still has the capacity to smile and press forward when it would be exponentially easier to give up.
There is beauty in resilience . . . and resilience in beauty . . .
As Sonja M. Schwartzbach, an ICU nurse, stated so eloquently in 2016 in her blog in the Huffington Post:
“And then resilience enters the room, the most elegant of emotional beings; glowing; refined; a reminder that even a flicker of light glows amid the darkness. And we can save our tiny ship of troubles from life’s stormy seas once again.”
This is what I hope my art will do for you.