A Struggle In Secret: The Wedding Riddle

Part one of three in my series on growing up in a cult.

My upbringing in The Family International, formerly known as The Children of God, was a mixed bag. I had such a loving and supporting family, and many incredible experiences traveling and performing. Most of the latent effects of the isolation of homeschooling and living in a country with an especially difficult language barrier surfaced during my later integration into “normal” American life.

David Berg, my great-grandfather and the founder of The Children of God, died several years before I was born. Nonetheless, he remained an all important religious figure in our lives, behind only Jesus himself. My education and spiritual development was buttressed by decades of propaganda material, yet my cult experience wasn’t as intense as previous generations. My parents did the best they could to shield us kids from the abuses they went through. The 2000’s marked the waning years of a cult that once boasted ten thousand members. The bustling commune homes that dotted the globe became fewer and less populated. Because of the cult’s lessened omnipresence, I wasn’t provided sufficient opportunities to develop my social and romantic skills properly, which, compounded with introverted tendencies, left me with few substantial relationships, a problem that persisted long after we had left the cult.

It took several years to stop blaming myself for my stunted development, and even longer to move forward on a path of self improvement. I had crippling social anxiety that I still feel clinging to me occasionally. Pulling up to a party or other social function, I’d feel jolts of electricity shoot through my body, and the adrenaline would drain my brain of coherent thoughts, leaving only an urgent sense of dread. My journey of self discovery and search for community and connection was made so much more difficult by the lack of shared experiences I had with those around me. Every time I mentioned my past, and how, no I can’t relate to your funny high school anecdote, I mostly got blank stares and a rush to change the topic. A surface level explanation didn’t come close to adequately bridging the gaps separating myself from those around me.

2022 Was when I determined that, in order to properly move forward, I needed to confront the remnants of isolation and alienation in as direct a way as possible. As an artist, that meant telling my story through symbolic imagery. Like a divine revelation, the story of Samson fighting the lion (Judges 14:5) entered my mind. A struggle in secret that no one at his wedding had knowledge of, and when presented with the riddle, had no chance of coming up with an answer (Judges 14:12-14).

The painting was at first only meant to be a quick solution as background imagery but grew into so much more. I layered to the collage portions of the canvas to tell the journey that stretched back thousands of years, starting with papyrus fragments, followed by King James bible pages, old MO letters, Life With Grandpa pages, and topped off with the A-beka christian fundamentalist homeschooling material. Expanding outwards and constricting inwards, leaving me trapped and isolated. The border has its cracks, fracturing under the cumulative dissonance of the inevitable internal struggle. The painted portion leads towards the center, down into a pit so deep, climbing out feels almost impossible.

I wanted to push the physicality of the balloon sculpture in a way I’d never done before. I drew inspiration from ukiyo-e images of samurai clashing with tigers, intertwining the two subjects in violence, hands grasping and claws slashing so deep that the two become one. I portrayed in Samson’s face, the rage and frustration I felt pent up over so many years, being released with the urgency and determination of a warrior assured that the fight is already his.

This first part in the series was finished and photographed a while ago in private, now being used as marketing material to promote my upcoming exhibition where I’ll be displaying the second painting and sculpture in the series. The next part, “Out Of The Strong, Something Sweet”, is an attempt to harmonize the darkest parts of my family legacy with the wonder and excitement, the joy and support I experienced throughout my upbringing in The Family International.

Please join me for the opening reception August 19th, 3pm to 6pm; and don’t miss my talk on the closing day, August 24th at 2pm to hear more about my art and journey.