Monday, January 7 - Friday, February 1
Friday, January 11 at 5pm: Lecture and Reception

This showing of Human Rights Painting Project, in conjunction with Amnesty International is the 21st exhibit of the work in less than six years.

Wednesday, January 9

9:30pm in Lynn Gym Basement
Tom will be joining the students at the People for Peace meeting.

Thursday, January 10

3-4pm in CFA 206
Tom will be leading a workshop titled "Bathroom Project."
This will last about an hour and is an art/activist workshop. This workshop has been organized in conjunction with the Student organization People for Peace and is open to the campus.
The group will draw and create image in response to to sayings by past wisdom masters.
Participants will be encouraged to take the creations into the community.
This project aims to highlight the inner core of spirituality, that which is beyond religion and unites all peoples.

6-9pm in CFA 210
Tom will be working with the Art Majors and Drawing 2 students in a longer version of the workshop titled "Parallel Visions." This workshop is closed to Art Majors and students in Drawing 2.

9pm - ?
We will be finishing the day at the Shoebox.

Friday, January 11

9-10am in CFA 107 - Great Works: Mysticism class
The "Painting as Prayer" lecture and discussion

10-11am in the Art Gallery - Modern Society: Literature and Society in Americas class
Discussion about Human Rights and his artwork in the Gallery

11am-noon in the Art Gallery - Great Works: Beauty class
Gallery talk

3-4pm Drawing I
"Parallel Visions" drawing workshop
This workshop targets students in Drawing I, but a few spaces are available. Contact Leticia Bajuyo if you are interested in participating.

5-6pm Lecture in CFA 107 followed by a reception in the Art Gallery
An illustrated lecture tracing the development of Tom Block's art and activist ideas.
Attendance to the lecture counts towards Cultural Events credit.

I utilize the visual arts, writing projects and scholarship to explore the interaction between the spiritual life of humanity and our sometimes-sad shared reality. My work is hardly religious, but it explores humans' attempts to make sense of this world and our shared struggle to develop and live by a moral code. At the very best, I hope that my art will have an activist influence, causing viewers to question their own personal roles in making the world a better place to live.

I work in series: I begin with a philosophical and activist impulse, proceed through reading on the subject, writing, drawing and then, finally, to creating a body of work in response to the particular issue at hand. I have undertaken a series of projects as part of this ongoing inquiry. I painted three bodies of work based in the highest impulses of the Abrahamic faiths - the Sufi masters of Islam, the Baal Shem Tov of Judaism and Meister Eckhart of Christianity. I followed this with my Human Rights Painting Project, in conjunction with Amnesty International. This series of portraits highlighted human rights advocates from around the world and the vital work of Amnesty International. I have also undertaken a project entitled Shalom/Salaam, based in a virtually unknown tale of mystical intermingling between Jewish and Muslim mystics over nearly a thousand years of human history. I created a series of paintings entitled Response to Machiavelli, which looks at the small-minded, self-serving state of our current political system and uses the philosophy of great social thinkers from the past few millennia to propose another, more caring way. Lastly, I have explored the lie of classical mysticism through my series In the Garden of the Mystical Redoubt.

In addition to writing and painting, I partner with well-known individuals and non-profit groups working on the same issues; present my ideas at conferences; sponsor interfaith events in conjunction with my exhibits and reach out through the mass media with my ideas, all in the hopes of effecting positive change in the society at large.