What's Happening

August 5, 2022, Adrian, Michigan – Unraveling Racism: Seeing White, an art exhibit exploring the hidden strands of systemic racism in the United States, opens September 2, 2022, at INAI: A Space Apart. Laura Earle is an artist and curator of the exhibit, which is being presented as a partnership of INAI and Siena Heights University.

The exhibit runs through Sunday, November 13, 2022. An artists’ reception is from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. Sunday, October 23, 2022, with a special invitation for Siena Heights University students to attend from 3:00 to 4:00 p.m. All guests will be screened for COVID-19 and are required to wear masks.

Laura will give a talk on the exhibit at 7:00 p.m. Monday, October 24, 2022, in Rueckert Auditorium, Dominican Hall, Siena Heights University. She previously presented an excerpt of Unraveling Racism: Seeing White in 2019 at Northwest Gallery of Art in Detroit.

The exhibit is the result of the work of 12 Michigan artists who gathered to share personal experiences and to create an artistic dialogue around the issues raised in John Biewen’s podcast, Seeing White. The artists gathered to listen to the podcast and to uncover the impact and history of whiteness in the United States. The result is a lively body of inclusive, interdisciplinary, and collaborative artwork.

Participating artists are Michael Dixon, Laura Earle, Michelle Graznak, Donna Jackson, Rita Lee, Azya Moore, Nora Myers, Mia Risberg, Trisha Schultz, Will See, Laurie Wechter, and Margi Weir. 

Sister Suzanne Schreiber, OP, Coordinator of INAI Gallery, is pleased to offer the exhibit. “It is in sync with our Adrian Dominican philosophy as we reckon with racism in our own community, our history, and ourselves,” she said.

INAI (pronounced in-EYE, meaning “within” in Japanese) is a contemplative space and art gallery that resonates with the Adrian Dominican Sisters’ Vision: to seek truth, make peace, and reverence life. It houses an art gallery, a quiet space for personal reflection and meditation, and an art room. INAI: A Space Apart is open from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. daily, or by appointment. Call 517-266-4090 or 517-266-4000.

Weber Center is on the campus of the Adrian Dominican Sisters’ Motherhouse, 1257 E. Siena Heights Drive, Adrian. Enter the Eastern-most driveway of the complex and follow the signs to Weber Center. For information, call the Weber Center at 517-266-4000.

July 28, 2022, Miami, Florida – Sister Mary Frances Fleischaker, OP, focused on the power of music and its intimate relationship with spirituality during an online presentation, Music and Spirituality: Sound of the Soul. Her June 9, 2022, presentation was sponsored by the Spirituality Committee of the Adrian Dominican Sisters.  

Following musical tradition, Sister Mary Fran – a musician and a theologian who teaches at Barry University in Miami, Florida – offered her presentation in three movements. Her first movement focused on the experience of music. “I invite us all to remember and retrieve a musical experience that has some connection for us with spirituality or reveals something about the power of music,” she said. 

Sister Mary Fran shared the musical experiences that she had elicited from anonymous Sisters before the presentation. “For me, music and spirituality go hand-in-hand,” one Sister said. “Music invites a response, such as gratitude or thanksgiving, calmness, or peacefulness. As I age, I find my spirituality deepening through music.”

In the second movement, Sister Mary Fran offered a number of perspectives that “may help us understand why and how music can be called the sound of the soul.” Just as music only occurs in the present for both the performer and listener, so God can be found only in the present, she said. 

“Music has the capacity to symbolize the personal nature of God’s self-communication, and music has the capacity to resonate, not only in one person but in many people at the same time – and to elicit from us a response of relationship, a response of dialogue, a response of interaction, a response of emotion, of thoughts and ideas,” she said.

Sister Mary Fran concluded her presentation with the third movement: the opportunity for her audience to listen contemplatively to three pieces of music: Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child, an African-American spiritual; Pie Jesu by Andrew Lloyd Weber; and Adagio for Strings by Samuel Barber.

A recording of Sister Mary Fran’s presentation can be found below.