SUFFERJOY is a collection of songs, poems, essays and visual art gathered from 2014-2016. Created by, artist and teacher, Anna Montgomery and artist, poet & palliative caregiver, Andrew Gerber, on a retreat in northern Indiana near where the two had attended college two decades earlier. Hosted by a mutual college mate turned artist & producer, Jon Helmuth, and fed and cared for by Joy Gracia, the pair embarked on a 3 day conversation about social justice, mythology and religion, the place of holiness in secular living, and the bittersweet consequences of dedicating ones life to art. They canoed, sat by the fire, built an altar, sang together and dropped a gift into the Shavehead Lake in exchange for her muse. Their work quickly took on images of the environment around them: rivers, bridges, willows, wildlife and trains. The ongoing body of work contains thematic tones of transitions, hobo values, immigration and refugee trials, abuse of authority, religious oppression, quest for freedom and life’s utter holiness.
Some of their conversation was put into poems, some into lyric and song, some into paintings and sculpture, some into activism.
Special thanks to those who resonated with their mission and contributed ideas and work over the course of the two years. KiNG, Tate Tucker, Sofi Toufa, Tommy Lee, Brad Orsted, Billy Burke.
May you SUFFER with JOY.....
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