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Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer
Religious Tribute: Artist Bruni Sablan poses in front of two of her oil paintings done as a tribute to Mother Teresa. Sablan, who paints in Campbell, has completed 18 portraits of the Catholic nun.
Campbell gallery tribute to Mother Teresa getting worldwide recognition and praise
Mother Teresa lives on in Campbell art exhibit
By Sheila Sanchez
I choose the poverty of our poor people. But I am grateful to receive (the Nobel) in the name of the hungry, the naked, the homeless, of the crippled, of the blind, of the lepers, of all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared-for throughout society, people that have become a burden to the society and are shunned by everyone.
-Mother Teresa
The presence and spirit of the tiny nun with the simple blue and white sari ever touching the poorest of the poor and the sickest of the sick can be seen and felt in downtown Campbell.
Celebrated artist Bruni Sablan has painted 18 oil-on-canvas portraits of Mother Teresa that are being displayed in her Campbell gallery at 394 E. Campbell Ave.
Sablan says she started painting the portraits after the religious leader appeared to her while in the alpha state--between being awake and asleep--Sept. 5, 2000.
"I believe she was with my grandmother who died on the same day (Sept. 5). They came to me together," Sablan says.
After her experience, Sablan contacted her relatives in her hometown of Sao Paulo, Brazil, who confirmed the death of her grandmother. In the vision, her grandmother, "Biba," showed her a book full of pictures of the 1979 Nobel Prize winner, who's revered by many as a saint.
"I have clairvoyant type of things that happen when I'm in the alpha state," she explains.
Mark Gray, director of the gallery, agrees: "Bruni has had psychic, supernatural and spiritual experiences during the past 15 years I've worked with her as her manager.
"Things come to her in dreams or she sees the future. She'll paint something and it will manifest itself in real life," Gray says.
Before her vision of Mother Teresa, Sablan says she was unfamiliar with the life and mission of the nun, who was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in Yugoslavia and became the leader of the Order of The Missionaries of Charity. "I had heard of Mother Teresa, but, in all honesty, I've spent all my time, since 1980, studying the jazz world and working on a tribute to the jazz great. I was so immersed in that ... I was not familiar with her, at all. That's why I was so surprised."
She believes, however, that, because of the nature of her work, there are similarities between her and the nun. "I feed the spiritually hungry with my art and she fed the spiritually hungry with her work."
Gray says, "It would be impossible to call this tribute a coincidence."
Sablan says, in many ways, she lives the simple life of a nun. She resides with her mother in a small house in San Jose. She drives an old car, takes no vacations and says she has limited financial resources. "The reward comes from the art," she says.
She's owned three saris that she has stitched in the same manner Mother Teresa stitched her saris.
Photograph courtesy of Bruni Gallery.
Giving Praise: Dr. Owen Pinto, Mother Teresa's personal physician and friend for more than 30 years, poses outside the Campbell Bruni Gallery. Pinto was impressed with the paintings.
Two decades of trials
For 19 years, she worked in the basement of the Los Gatos Old Town center where, she says, she "had rat-chasing contests and cockroaches. We suffered mistreatment from several, but we hung in there," Sablan says, being forced to leave in March 1999, by city developers.
She has already sold two Mother Teresa portraits, Faith, and Mother and Child. One of the buyers, coincidentally, was a Los Gatos developer. "I think Mother Teresa is saying to forgive," she says.
Sablan says she's researched most books written about Mother Teresa to paint the portraits and has studied many images of her. Sablan chose to paint the ones that impressed her the most. In paintings such as The Visitation and Service, in which the nun is holding a rosary in prayer while staring straight at the viewer, Sablan's unmatched ability to portray essence and humanity is evident.
She says she's hoping to feed "the spiritually starved" with the paintings.
"I want people to love one another, to be more kind and to give money to the poor and help the artists and the musicians because we suffer and we're mistreated," she says.
Sablan says that while she was painting the portraits she felt rage, anxiety and extreme sadness. "I did a lot of crying. I was already overly compassionate and sympathetic to people. I knew she wanted me to do something after working with her and throwing myself into her life. I knew it had to be paintings because that's all I know how to do. The paintings were guided," she says.
"She knew exactly what she wanted. I would walk into my studio and I would be looking to paint somebody else and something would catch my eye like a mother and child. It was very direct to me because I could read the symbolism in the things that I saw. It's a miracle. I don't know why she chose me."
Spirituality in her art work
Sablan has many interesting spiritual experiences to share related to the portraits. One of them is when her mother, Cloe Parello of San Jose, had a friend, Lee, with lung cancer visit. Sablan, who didn't know about the man's condition, says that when she saw his back, she started crying. The next day, she says, she went into her studio ready to paint a portrait of the nun in his honor. When she was finished, she gave Lee the painting as a gift. A personal note written by Lee's wife to Sablan reads: "The fact that you didn't know about Lee's growth in his lung. Good news! as of today, the growth has shrunk considerable and a biopsy for today was canceled! ... So far all tests are negative."
Through her portraits Sablan believes Mother Teresa is "literally healing."
"I've seen people come into the room (where the portraits are displayed) and start crying. This is healing people. People need to see this. They come in here and feel that there's a magic going on."
After such experiences, Sablan says she wanted to paint more portraits of Mother Teresa. The first portraits were painted quickly, with the first one started at midnight and finished at about 6 a.m. Now, she says, Mother Teresa is giving her a break.
Sablan's work has begun to gain international attention. Through her accountant, some of Mother Teresa's closest associates, such as Dr. Owen Pinto, who was the celebrated nun's personal physician, have seen and praised the work.
Pinto was astonished by the accuracy, essence and depth of the portraits and promised to tell Sister Nirmala, who has taken the helm of the Sisters of Charity, the Vatican and Pope. Since then, Sablan has also taken an interest in the Missionaries of Charity in Pacifica.
Beside Mother Teresa, she has painted other spiritual leaders, such as J. Krishnamurti, an Indian philosopher who died in 1986, and two paintings of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Sablan is also known for her Jazz Maters Series, with more than 1,000 portraits of famous jazz musicians, the largest tribute in history by a painter, Gray says.
Her work appears in four museums nationwide--the Smithsonian Museum features her work of Duke Ellington, one of the greatest American music composers of the 20th century. Another museum is the Bix Beider Becke Memorial Museum in Davenport, Iowa. Beider Beck was a contemporary jazz musician. The museum is being built and has already purchased a painting of the late jazz great.
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Campbell, California
