May 2004             Four County Catholic   The official newspaper of the Diocese of Norwich, Connecticut                                                                          

Faith Shapes Waterford Native’s Art

Prayer Inspires Each Stroke

By Mary Walsh
 Editor

GUAYNABO, PUERTO RICO--As a young boy Arthur Vonn Hartung recalls
gazing at the saint statues in St. Joseph’s and St. Mary’s Churches in New London.
“The interiors were very arabesque,” said Vonn. “It was exotic, strange and thrilling to me. It kindled my young imagination. I always remember how I, as a child, had my eyes opened by the sacred beauty in the Catholic Church.”

The art in these two local parishes inspired Vonn, a Waterford native to dedicate his own artistic talent to Christ.

Today, Vonn lives in Puerto Rico where he has fashioned about 46 works, including murals, paintings, serigraphs and sculptures. One of his paintings, a portrait of Blessed Carlos Manuel Rodriguez, commissioned by the archbishop of San Juan, now hangs in the Hall of Saints in the Vatican.

Before he moved to Puerto Rico permanently in 1984, however, Vonn ran a woodcarving studio in the old velvet mill at the Mystic Seaport. During that time, he carved a crucifix for St. John’s in Montville and two cruciforms and a hymn board for Our Lady of Lourdes in Gales Ferry.

Monsignor Bronislaw Gadaarowski, who was pastor of St. John’s in Montville from 1972 to 1989, recalls a corpus of Christ on the cross that Vonn created when the church was renovated. Monsignor Gadarowski said he used to put the corpus on a violet background during Lent for parishioners to view. He said they used to comment on the look of excruciating pain on Christ’s face.

“It was heart-moving just to look at the face,” Monsignor Gadarowski said. “He’s an excellent artist.”

The Very Reverend Michael T Donohue, who was curate at the parish from 1980 to 1986, described Vonn’s work as “dramatic” and “realistic.”

“I’m sure it inspired people,” he said. “When looking at the crucifixion piece, it afforded one the opportunity to find meditation.”

Indeed, Vonn said prayer inspires each brush stroke or cut of the sculptor’s knife. He said he prays constantly while he works asking, “mostly that I will do the will of my Creator and not get myself in the way of His expression. I would not be able to do my work without a deep faith.
Simply put it is my way of being with Christ.”

Vonn, who earned a bachelor of fine arts degree from the University of Hartford, first traveled to Puerto Rico in 1961.
“I wanted to paint in the churches, but found no work there at that time so I went to the University of Puerto Rico at Rio Piedras,” he said. “Although I only spoke a couple of words of Spanish, the director of the art department said I spoke “art” fluently and he took me in.”

Vonn, who also studied art in Mexico before moving to Puerto Rico, said he chose to go there because “I …wanted to see it and to experience living somewhere else other than where I grew up.”  

Most recently, Vonn completed an 18-by-50-foot mural behind the altar in the Church of San Juan Bosco in Orocovis.

Entitled “The Dream of the Two Columns,” the colorful painting details a dream St. John Bosco (1815-1888) had about the Church. The Italian priest, visionary and founder of the religious order of the Salesians of San Juan Bosco, said the dream foretold the trials the Church would face, yet survive, through faith and the power of the Holy Eucharist and Mary’s intercession.
In the mural, as in the dream, the Pope pilots an enormous ship that is under attack from enemy galleons shooting - anti-Catholic books pamphlets and other untruths. As the ship flounders in a fierce storm, the pope anchors it to two columns. Atop one column is the Holy Eucharist and atop the other a statue of Mary Help of Christians.

Currently, Vonn is painting “The Way of Light,” the 14 Stations after the Resurrection of Jesus, on the windows surrounding the nave of the Church of San Juan Bosco.

Vonn said he hopes that his work “may in some small way contribute to the growth and stability of our church in our own time, and that it might inspire others to see the beauty in our Christian truths.
“I am convinced that there is great art left for us to do ---for our time, our place and for our church,” he said.

Those with Internet access may view more of Vonn’s work at www.artsofine.com 

The Day  April 27, 2001   New London, Connecticut

On Sunday, Lay Teacher Will Be
The First Puerto Rican Beatified
By The Roman Catholic Church

By IZASKUN E. LARRAÑETA
Day Staff Writer

 
He is relatively unknown. But on Sunday Carlos Manuel “Charlie” Rodríguez will make history, becoming the first Puerto Rican and second layperson in the Americas to be beatified by the Roman Catholic Church.

Beatification is a process through which the church recognizes a deceased person as worthy of public veneration. It is a step toward being declared a saint.

Rodríguez was born in Caguas, Puerto Rico, on Nov. 22, 1918. He was one of five children born to a poor, devout Catholic family.

Not many Puerto Ricans living in southeastern Connecticut have heard of Charlie yet, but he was a pioneer and patron of the liturgical movement in Puerto Rico. About 2,000 people from Puerto Rico are traveling to Rome for the beatification ceremonies.

Rafael Ortiz of Norwich will be making the pilgrimage to Rome. He knew that he could not miss this once-in-a.lifetime experience.
“I first heard about Charlie when I was visiting family in Puerto Rico for the Christmas holidays,” said Ortiz. “I was very proud that the church was recognizing a Puerto Rican for the first time. I am really uplifted, grateful and thankful to God that there is such a good example for our community.”

Artist A. Vonn Hartung, was commissioned to paint the portrait of Carlos Manuel “Charlie” Rodríguez, an experience Hartung says that “absolutely changed my life.”

A. Vonn Hartung, an artist from Waterford who has lived in Puerto Rico for the past 16 years, was commissioned by a Cuban priest, the Rev. Julio Garcia, to paint a portrait of Rodríguez.

“It has absolutely changed my life,” said Hartung. “Before I started to paint, I thought about it for weeks. I thought of what I considered a saint was. I prayed about it. It was a very intimate and spiritual process. I realized how great and humble this man was, and how he lived his life simply.”

Hartung interviewed Rodríguez’s friends and relatives so he could get a sense of who he really was.
When he showed the finished portrait to Rodríguez’s two sisters, who are now in their 80s, they were silent, he said.
“They got up and went to the portrait and said, ‘Now speak,’ “said Hartung. “It was a very emotional experience. They said it looked exactly like him.”

The portrait is painted with various symbolic elements, which Hartung said express a visual prayer. Charlie, he said, tells us to listen for the call of the Lord, which is symbolized by an open door.
“The light from the path falls upon his left shoulder and leads us to the lamb, symbol of his Savior, and (to) his beloved land, Puerto Rico,” said Hartung.

The archbishop of San Juan, Mons.Roberto González Nieves, commissioned Hartung to paint a second portrait of Rodríguez, which will be presented at his beatification in Rome. It is similar to the first portrait except it is bigger and has St. Peter’s Basilica and the Cathedral of San Juan in the background.

“I came to understand Carlos Manuel through these paintings,” said Hartung, “He is very important because he is a layman. Anyone can follow the footsteps of Christ.... Sainthood is open to us all.”

At the Centro Universitario Católico in Rio Piedras, Rodríguez taught priests, religious sisters and brothers and laypersons about the doctrines of the church. He directed three discussion groups in three towns, conducted religious classes and published a weekly liturgical bulletin. Priests who listened to him explain philosophical and theological concepts said they never heard a person so brilliant in those fields.
Rodríguez died of intestinal cancer on July 13, 1963 in his home town of Caguas. Those that were by his deathbed said that he did not complain, and among his final words were, “Let us pray.”

 

In 1997 Pope John Paul II declared Rodríguez “Venerable,” which means that he lived an extremely holy life. Two years later the Vatican officially recognized that a woman who had terminal cancer had been miraculously healed in 1981 after prayers to Rodríguez for healing.

Rodriguez would have to perform another miracle after his beatification before he can be officially deemed a saint.
The bishops of Puerto Rico declared the year starting on April 29, 2001 and ending this Sunday as the year of the Blessed Carlos Manuel Rodríguez.

 Churches in our area are also spreading the word of Charlie’s beatification.
Sister Mary Jude Lazarus, director of Hispanic Ministries for the Catholic Diocese of Norwich, said that many Puerto Ricans outside of Puerto Rico have not heard of Rodríguez.
She said the parish of Sagrado Corazón de ,Jesus Iglesia in Willimantic would have a Mass on Saturday and a celebration afterwards, in honor of Rodríguez’s beatification.
“We will show a video about him so we could get to know him better,” said Sister Mary Jude. “We will be emphasizing Puerto Rican culture.”

At St. Mary Star of the Sea Church in New London, following the 11:30 am. Spanish Mass Sunday, there will be a special fiesta which will also feature the videotape of Rodríguez’s life. Cards with a special prayer for Rodríguez will he distributed.

“The Day” Tuesday, September 2, 1997 (New London, Connecticut)

ARTS LIVING

 

Symbolist OF THE Sacred

Now a resident of Puerto Rico,
Waterford’s Vonn Hartung gives shape to powerful religious imagery

            By LISA MCGINLEY, Day Arts Writer

In a secular century, when “icon” means a bright little computer cartoon to click with a mouse, Vonn Hartung’s art talks with the vocabulary of allegory.

Across the sanctuary of Santa Rosa de Lima Church in his adopted hometown of Guaynabo, Puerto Rico, Hartung is just finishing an 80-foot mural. Jesus crucified looks upward to a resurrection decked with thornless roses. On his right the good thief’s cross is empty because he has already gone to heaven; on the other side is the crucifix of the thief who scoffed, with an assault rifle as the crosspiece. Noah’s ark navigates an environmental deluge of pollution, and parrots of endangered species roost in the Tree of Life.

Hartung, who has lived in Puerto Rico since marrying his wife, Patty, in 1984, came home to Waterford last month for a reunion with his high school classmates, who knew him as “Joe.” At age 56 he is about to have his first exhibition, yet he has been an artist all his life.

Hundreds of people see his work in churches and chapels every week. They know what his symbols are saying; he speaks their language.

“The church was my art museum,” says Hartung, recalling his childhood parish of St. Joseph in New London in the ornate days of the 1950s.

Although he is currently painting partially abstract, stream-of-consciousness oils with more obscure symbols, for 20 years Hartung has been interpreting mysteries of faith with graphic literalism. A life-sized woodcarving of Christ on the crucifix, based on a doctor’s detailed description of how a crucified man would die, used to hang in St. John’s Church in Montville. Some parishioners, says Hartung, found it too graphic to contemplate.

Religious art a lifelong theme for area native now living in Puerto Rico

The power of one of his carvings, a tabernacle door, came home to him in the comments of a priest who opens the door every day during Mass at a boys’ home in Puerto Rico. The bas-relief carving, “He is Risen,” depicts the hillside of Jerusalem where Christ was buried. The rising sun shows it to be Easter morning and three women portraying hope, unity and joy walk down the path. The grave is empty. Hartung sculpted it out to serve as the handle of the door, and every time the priest opens the tabernacle, he must put his hand into the tomb. “I’m into the Mass, you know,” the priest told Hartung. “But every morning after I go through it, as soon as I put my hand into the tomb, I get goose bumps all over. I wake up.”  “It’s another level,” says Hartung, “that really works.”

In Guaynabo, Hartung works full time on his sculpting and painting, including non-religious commissioned portraits and serigraphs—original prints—of rural Puerto Rican landscapes and people.

He holds a Bachelor’s degree from the Hartford Art School at the University of Hartford, but he says he didn’t paint in the five years after he graduated because “I kept thinking of other artists,” instead of his own vision.

The soft-spoken, sandaled, bespectacled artist is also an activist, starting with the peace movement in the ‘60’s and followed by anti-nuclear activities. In Puerto Rico, he serves on the Commission of Justice, Peace and Ecology, which added ecology to its mission at his urging. That’s not to say he attends every meeting, in spite of his commitment. “After a while you get meeting-itis. I’d go home and not sleep. So I painted these pictures instead of praying or going to meetings. “I figured, God has given me this talent and…the consciousness that goes along with it. What I need to do is what all these other people at the meetings can’t do—paint.”

Hartung’s artistic heroes are Michelangelo, Harry Rodvogin and his late father, Arthur J. Hartung Sr. He took the first name Vonn after his grandfather, but he was formally named after his father, who painted exactly one painting in his entire life, on the back of a kitchen table cloth. The family framed the image of a ship under sail and it still hangs, badly cracked from the deteriorating oil cloth, over the mantel at the Waterford home of Hartung’s mother, Phyllis.

Mrs. Hartung was responsible, long ago, for her son’s introduction to Rodvogin when the older painter was living and working at the Lighthouse Inn in New London. “My mother was a waitress at the Lighthouse Inn, and I was sent to the office at Waterford High School for drawing three nude ladies. They were highly symbolic, not pornographic in any way,” says Hartung. “I don’t know if I got suspended or not—I got suspended a lot—but my mother was so upset she brought them to Harry. He said the problem was with the person who saw them that way. He took me under his wing, and has always been one of my two great influences.”

As Hartung’s work, including a newly completed head of Christ and another of a sleeping woman, begins to incorporate more abstract symbols, the connection to Rodvogin’s busily crammed canvases is clear. Hartung himself is excited about opening himself to subconscious thoughts and “really getting in touch with the mystery.”

It seems natural that Hartung would feel as he does about Michelangelo, the Renaissance man who painted the Last Judgment and sculpted David, Moses and the dead Jesus in the arms of his mother. “I pray to Michelangelo,” says Hartung. “He’s a saint.”  

mailto:vhartung@msn.com

mailto:vhartung@msn.com

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