2025 CBE Community Art Show: 4x6 Postcard Challenge

We are so excited about this year's CBE Community Art Show!  Community is always the key to the show, but in our current political climate, it feels even more essential. Recently, we both saw  Draw Them In Paint Them Out at the Jewish Museum and often still find ourselves thinking about it. It was a powerful and dynamic show -- a figurative ‘conversation’ between two artists— the contemporary Trent Hancock Doyle and Philip Guston (1913-1980). 

Historical and contemporary anti-semitism, racism, internalized hatred, systemic violence, and the legacy of terror in American culture reverberated throughout the work of both artists. Each of them struggled with the on-going legacy of hatred and violence in our society and their place in it. One placard at the show discussed the rising hostility to Black Americans in the wake of the 1960s civil rights movement and its impact on Philip Guston. In response, Guston turned away from Abstract Expressionism and back to more socially minded work and they quoted him saying, “I was feeling split," he explained. "The [Vietnam War], what was happening in America, the brutality of the world. What kind of man am I sitting at home, reading magazines, going into a frustrated fury about everything-and then going into my studio to adjust a red to a blue? I thought there must be some way I could do something about it.” As we saw in the exhibit, Guston’s paintings from then on “became overrun by cartoonish, bumbling Klansmen, an exercise in both social satire and self-condemnation.” 

Similarly, Trent Doyle Hancock identified with Guston’s inner conflict. The museum quoted him explaining, seeing Guston’s depiction of himself as a Klansman "made me adamant about my visibility and . . . a more politically aware being." The exhibit included Hancock’s 2014 autobiographical magnum opus, “Epidemic! Presents: Step and Screw!” The museum placard explained that “In thirty black-and-white panels, his alter ego Torpedoboy faces off with Guston's own avatar, the Klansman. Hancock contrasts the dark comedy of these scenes with a sobering, if at times fantastical, timeline that blends Guston's life story with his own and delves into both artists' generational traumas.” 

In these polarizing times, the question of “how do artists respond?” remains central to our lives. One answer is through community together the connection and creativity spark ideas, build strength and inspire joy.  These are the essential tools required to face the challenges in our current civic environment. Creativity is always radical, it is the making of something (or some meaning) from nothing.  

This year we’ve added the 4x6 Postcard Challenge to the CBE Community Art Show and ask that you respond to Guston’s quotation above about “adjusting a red to a blue.”  We invite you to start by going into your creative space and contemplate adjusting a ‘red to a blue’ and see where that brings you in your own medium and style.  Then create a 4x6 work (postcard paper will be available for pick up at the temple, details to follow) that recognizes an artist's take on our current environment— it could be text, a self-portrait, an abstraction, a photograph, a protest, even a prayer.  Please use only the 4x6 postcard and include your name on the back.  We will display all of the 4x6 pieces and include them as part of the 2025 Community Art Show.

The 4x6 postcards for the challenge can be picked up at CBE during business hours (ask for Rose E. at the security desk) as well as during Friday night services. If you choose to participate in the 4x6 postcard challenge, let us know in the Art Show Submission Form  that you are participating, and drop it with your other work on May 15th or May 16th at the drop-off times provided on the schedule.

Thanks for considering it. 

Bev & Jill