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SURROUND YOURSELF WITH SAINTS

Surround Yourself with Saints will be on view at the 6BC garden (630 E. 6th St., NY NY 10009) from July 25 through July 27, with an opening reception at 6pm and artist talk with Dana May at 7pm on July 25. The exhibition seeks to honor Dana May’s friends as the chosen family who have given her life, to encourage others to consider the good friends in their lives, and what it means to surround yourself with saints. Moved by the Siena Exhibition at the Met in late 2024, Dana May almost walked by the darkly-lit room thinking, “urgh, what could be interesting about old-ass religious art?” What she saw were artists at the top of their craft, at the dawn of the Renaissance, earnestly portraying these religious subjects, and with that beauty came also…man baby Jesuses.

As a self-taught artist, one can recognize the striving to depict form and impact viewers. As Arthur de Bles describes it in How to Distinguish the Saints in Art By Their Costumes, Symbols and Attributes, “[t]he artists . . . were themselves deeply imbued with the spirit they were commissioned to represent, and so even the crudest of these early efforts are impressive in their evident sincerity.” One can feel the reverence these artists had for their subjects, spanning over 700 years. This exhibition shows a similar spirit of love from one artist about what her friends mean to her, in all its imperfections, through the “spontaneous matter and impeccable manner” as summarized by de Bles.