ALPHA OMEGA ARTS
By Ernest
Disney-Britton
Engaging, profound and authentic, the book: "
99 Names: 1 to 25" is a richly documented artistic journey of a Christian's exploration of the names of God from the Holy Qur'an. The 99 names of God in Islam are the names by which Muslims regard God (Allah). Today,
Andrew Kosorok is seeking support to finish the second book: "
99 Names: 26 to 50.
In June 2012, the artist who is also an ordained Christian minister from Washington state was named the
INSPIRE ME! Artist of Month. "My parents were an engineer and an educator in Washington State, Christians who believed the power of reason and the gifts of inspiration complement each other," Kosorok told AOA News. "After being a volunteer minister, I came to Brigham Young University and studied both engineering and art, and continued in art."
However it was the horrific events of September 11, 2001 that shaped what is perhaps his life's defining mission. In seeking to make sense of the horror of 9-11, Kosorok began building relationships with Islamic neighbors and started creating "symbolic abstractions" in glass as a personal journey to understanding a faith misrepresented by the violent act of religious extremists.
Kosorok has produced a new expression of the inner beliefs and spiritual sensibilities at the heart of Islam that has few parallels in contemporary art. What emerges from his stained glass works is Islamic art shaped from the hands of a Christian. "Islam is the faith revealed to the Prophet Mohamed," wrote Kosorok. "whose motivation was to heal the spiritual rift between Judaism and Christianity, on the Arabian Peninsula in the early 7th century."
This first book features 25 photographs of "cold-worked flat glass" produced between 2008 to 2013. It has only 76 pages and represents one third of his journey. Trained as an engineer, his sculptures combine architectural form, medieval bookbinding techniques and spatial geometry.
"I will meditate on what this Name means to me, personally, and how I see the Name reflected in lives and events around me, and do more sketches," he wrote. "Praying that my hand is guided correctly, I will start to expand the sketches into drawings of a workable sculpture that, for lack of a better description, 'feels' right."
The glass sculptures in the book reflect the beauty of the
99 Names of God, names like "Shaper of Beauty," "Guardian," "Merciful," "Holy," and "Compassionate." and as a Christian, artist, and author, each page of works reveals new insights into the essence of Islam. It is a wonderful guidebook to one
INSPIRE ME! Artist's journey toward understanding another religion with the clarity of glass.
