In This LA Art Gallery, Conversations About Religion and Spirituality Are Welcome

THE OAKLAND PRESS
By Alejandra Molina Religion News Service

The exhibition of "10 Columns" by artist Phillip K. Smith III, which features glowing mirrored panels that shift colors, at Bridge Projects in Los Angeles. RNS photo by Alejandra Molina

LOS ANGELES -- For Linnéa Spransy, who grew up in a Christian commune in Oregon with a rock musician father, religion and art have always been intertwined. "Religious lifestyle, and expression and art were all the same thing," Spransy told Religion News Service. Spransy is one of the directors of Bridge Projects, a new Southern California gallery that seeks to link art with spiritual and religious traditions. Bridge Projects directors Spransy and Cara Megan Lewis, who are both artists, said they wanted to create a space where people can talk about spiritual and religious perspectives. Lewis, whose background is in commercial galleries, said she's seen how artists have felt the need to "suppress their faith traditions or religious convictions in the context of the contemporary art world." "Just a fear of rejection and misunderstanding," she said. [More]