Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto

Art-in-the-Lobby News

Bonnie Packer’s Watercolors

Thank you to UUCPA, for providing me the opportunity to show my work. I started watercolor classes at Palo Alto Art Center with Richard Becker in the fall of 2010 I had not done any art since I was 16 years old, so I was surprised that I could do this. I try to capture the beauty of how lights plays with form. I have always loved photography and many of my works are based on my photos. The Gamble Garden paintings are from my summertime plein air sessions. I hope you enjoy the paintings.

UUCPA Painting "Dark Refuge"

Our current Order of Service cover features the painting “Dark Refuge,” by Marie Johnson-Calloway.  This work of art has been with UUCPA for over 50 years.  A church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963 inspired the artist who visited the area and saw mothers holding their scared children in their arms. 

Calloway is currently celebrated in an exhibit at the African American Art and Culture Complex in San Francisco.  The exhibit, “The Elders Project” is a tribute to African Americans ages 90 to 104.  Calloway said, in a New York Times interview in 1970, “My work aims to depict the disparity between humanistic ideas and an increasingly impersonal and repressive society.  I am trying to create images which are intimate reflections of the lives of Black people, images which are deeply rooted in Black dreams, Black suffering, Black pride, Black anger, Black strength and Black love.”

I learned of the exhibit from a friend and colleague, Mary Foston-English, who was delighted to see one of Calloway’s paintings in our Main Hall some years ago.  Dark Refuge is currently hanging in our Administrator’s office.