On June 6, 2007 A German man attempted to bum rush the Pope-mobile during a procession through St. peters Square. The assailant was quickly apprehended by Vatican authorities while the Pontiff, blissfully unaware of the occurrence, continued to wave his way through the square.

Could the events in Rome involving the pope and unidentified man who attempted to cross a blockade to reach the pontiff on June 6th be evidence of a loss of trust in the Catholic church? And is the Church, on the heels of a various scandals, prepared for further attacks on its reputation?

According to the authorities the man had no intention of hurting the Benedict. Being in a state of psychotic panic, the man was only trying to attract attention to himself using the Holy father as a Proxy.

Initially, there was a lot of speculation about the reasoning behind the man actions. Some thought that the attempt was politically motivated. Some take offence to the Pope's history as a Nazi Youth, others think that he has been to lenient with Catholic priest accused of molestation.

The the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles has decided to pay out $660 USD to molestation victims, in response to the surge in claims against the Church. Some have viewed this move as a full omission of guilt on the part of the papacy. while others consider it the first steps in mending the breach in trust that have rocked the Church


The Catholic Church has played down much of the criticism fired at Benedict since he has taken the position left vacant by Pope John Paul II. But, there has been no shortage of activist and media pundits digging into the new Pope's past.

View form above: James Cordas

I’ve only seen these paintings through the digital blockade; email, info dumps, rich text renders, and the like. I wouldn’t have had it any other way. Between the syringes and through the digital eye I was able to make connection I might have glanced over; but as in everything the little goblins called details scratched on to the surface; scrapped at my awareness and gave me more than the painting may have intended. 

It works like that, the paint, as if the intention doesn’t come from the hand of the artist, but from the agenda of the piece itself, but there’s nothing mystical. Just the place where Idea, composition, and reality meet and decide that peace is impossible. 

One element of the painting is field a pattern of floating purple syringes laid out over jellied squares and rectangles; interlocked by fuzzy connections, like neural axons. In between the coins and jelly grids are painted golden coins ringed in blue and red, and it is all seen from an aerial perspective; god looking down on the city in 1986.

The H.A.L. Transmission

I saw this raw and unapologetic study in dimensions, muted colors, and claustrophobia under the halogen lights of a supermarket where several people had installed a guerilla gallery opening; armed with nails, hammers, a cell phone, and time.

I should have been unimpressed but this piece entitled egg=head ( as well as several others in the as yet unnamed Charcoal series by Holly Labus) created it's own divergent atmosphere as it was approached, locking the eye in a collection of shadowed and bold lines that create the sort of evocative space and subconscious memories anthropologist often say they see in cave paintings. 

But this piece is charcoal graphite, not paint and its feel is not primitive but subconsciously evocative like a good myth done in black and shades of grey. The oval shape carries symbolic shades; the two most prominent: the egg; a thing of alien fertility distant but internalized in the mammalian mind, and the head; the seat of consciousness and confrontation, in other words the human confrontation with the mind.

However, we see that the inside of the (inverted?) oval is vacant or empty, reminisant of a cage or a womb. The other pieces in this series carry the same atmospheric weight as egg=head without being repetitious.