HONOREES
Bishop Charles E. Blake
Presiding Bishop, Church of God in Christ
Bishop Charles E. Blake serves as Presiding Bishop of the six million member Church of God in Christ, one of our nation's largest denominations. He also serves as the Jurisdictional Prelate of the First Jurisdiction of Southern California comprised of more than 250 churches.
He is the pastor of West Angeles Church of God in Christ with a membership of over 24,000. West Angeles is deeply involved in providing not only for the spiritual life of its people, but it also provides more than 80 programs for the psychological, social, and economic enhancement of the community.
As founder and CEO of Save Africa's Children, Bishop Blake oversees the support of more than 100,000 children, in 340 orphan care programs, throughout 23 nations on the continent of Africa.
Bishop Blake was the founding Chairman of the Board of Directors for C.H. Mason Theological Seminary. He also served as an Executive Committee member on the Board of Directors of the Interdenominational Theological Seminary. He served as Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors of Oral Roberts University, and as a member of the Board of Directors of the International Charismatic Bible Ministries. In 2006 he also served on the Los Angeles Board of the Azusa Centennial Celebration.
Bishop Blake formerly served as an Advisory Committee Member of the Pentecostal World Conference. He is the Chairman and Founder of the Los Angeles Ecumenical Congress (LAEC), an interdenominational coalition of religious leaders and pastors. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Religious Advisory Committee.
Bishop Blake is the recipient of numerous awards, commendations, and accolades. A few include the 2007 Distinguished Leadership Award presented by the African Presidential Archives and Research Center at Boston University, the 2006 Trumpet Award, the Salvation Army's William Booth Award, the Greenlining Institute's Big Heart Award, and the designated recipient of the L.A. Urban League's 2000 Whitney M. Young Award. In 2003, Bishop Blake was awarded the Harvard Foundation Humanitarian Medal for his work with Save Africa's Children and its mission to support orphanages throughout that continent. February 5, 2004 was designated as "Bishop Charles E. Blake Day" by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.
Bishop Blake is married to Mae Lawrence Blake. They have three children and eight grandchildren.
Artis Lane
Artist
Artis Shreve Lane attended art college in Toronto, Canada, trained at the Cranbrooke Art Academy, and attended UCLA. Lane creates art that symbolizes and communicates spiritual truths. She believes, "There is just one Truth, one Mind, one God...and man is a reflection and expression of that Highest Idea." This creativity led Lane to her working conception of the "generic" man/woman. These beautiful and graceful female and male nudes eliminate all references to real time, place, race, history, and age. Her bronze figures have titles like "First Man" or "Woman" to denote the moment when, as Michelangelo stated many times, "The divine archetype took momentary shape in the mortal coil."
Lane's early works were widely received and exhibited throughout the US and Europe beginning in the late 1980's and continue to be shown and actively collected today.
The real epiphany for the artist came with her piece aptly called "Breakthrough." While at the foundry waiting to oversee the completion of her work, Lane saw a piece in mid-process. After the bronze is poured and set, the outer ceramic shell, which holds the wax mold in place, must be removed to reveal the finished bronze within. What Lane saw was a female head with parts of the glistening bronze peering out from behind hunks of chalky, ceramic shell. To Lane, this was the exact visual metaphor for the process by which we move out of the tangible and the physical toward the perfect, spiritual Idea itself.
Lane was the first artist to understand and utilize the expressive and symbolic potential of leaving the stages of the bronzing process on the finished piece. She says, "That is what makes the process part of divine creation; it is almost as if this fragmenting process is designing itself. Of course I make artistic decisions at every turn, deciding what to leave."
From her early prominence in the 1960's as a portrait artist depicting dignitaries like Jaqueline Kennedy, Nelson Mandela, Gordon Getty, and President Reagan, Lane moved in the 1970's to social issue works, including "Tear on the Face of America," her civil rights statement, or "The Beginning," the now famous painting depicting a young Rosa Parks seated in the fateful bus.
While her "Emerging Into Spirit" works traveled worldwide over the last fifteen years, Lane received other important social issue commissions. In the early 1990's Lane was honored by the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC during the installation of her bronze portrait of civil rights leader and long time friend, Rosa Parks. In 1999 she was selected to execute the design of the Congressional Medal of Honor awarded to Ms. Parks, and Lane won the national commission to design and execute a biographical art tribute that will grace the official Rosa Parks Museum and Library in Alabama. "My Civil Rights images led me naturally to ideas about what and who we are outside of race. I went from there to the most important body of work, the metaphysical images of generic man and generic woman emerging out of the ignorance of material concepts and evolving into spiritual awareness."
For over two decades, these "Emerging Into Spirit" combinations have been internationally collected and exhibited at respected show spaces such as LewAllen Contemporary in Santa Fe, Sherry Frumkin, M. Hanks and Steve Turner in Los Angeles, Boumani Gallery in San Francisco, Stella Jones Gallery in New Orleans, Southern University in Baton Rouge, the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Canada, Hammond's House Galleries in Atlanta, Georgia and the Joseph Bender Gallery in El Paso, Texas.
Most recently, Lane moved into her most powerful work to date: larger than life scale figures able to be shown separately but conceived as a multi-piece museum installation into which the viewer walks. The viewer enters a darkened space to see a series of larger than life scale figures that appear each to be moving upward, toward an ever-brighter light - the God Presence - illuminating the installation from above. The lowest embryonic figure lies in the fetal or death position in darkness, the next kneeling, increasingly well lit, balanceing on one graceful leg, looking ever more centered, sure. Situated at the highest point and fully bathed in light, the final figure has been conceived by Lane in transparent material, to denote the absence of physicality and the transcendent Truth that there is only perfected thought, one God Mind. Lane says, "This installation denotes the evolution of consciousness and being as each moves out of darkness and into light."
Forest Whitaker
Actor, Director, Producer
Forest Whitaker is one of Hollywood's most accomplished actors, directors, and producers who showcases his talents in a multitude of demanding and diverse projects and roles.
The year 2007 was a year to remember for Whitaker. After winning almost every Critics Award, he received the Academy Award for Best Actor, a Golden Globe for Best Actor, and the Best Actor SAG and BAFTA Awards for his performance as Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in Fox Searchlight's "The Last King of Scotland." The film is a historic drama which documents the regime's brutality during the 1970's as seen through the eyes of Amin's personal physician.
In addition to this acclaim, Whitaker's independent film, "American Gun," a movie in which he starred and produced, was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award.
Whitaker garnered critical attention for his performance on last season's "The Shield" opposite Michael Chiklis, as well as for his appearance on "ER" this season, for which he earned an Emmy nomination in the category of Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series. In addition, he completed the suspense thriller "Vantage Point" for Sony Pictures opposite Dennis Quaid and Matthew Fox, which will be released in February. He recently wrapped "Where the Wild Things Are" for Warner Bros. and "Playtone" for director Spike Jonze. The film will be a mix of live-action, animation, and puppetry, and is an adaptation of the Maurice Sendak classic children's book. Whitaker is also in the post-production stage of the film "Winged Creatures" which tells the story of a diverse group of strangers who form a unique relationship with each other after surviving a shooting at a Los Angeles diner. Alongside Whitaker stars Dakota Fanning, Jackie Earl Haley, Jennifer Hudson, and Kate Beckinsale. Forest also recently completed filming of "Powder Blue" with Jessica Biel and Ray Liotta.
Currently, Forest is filming "Repossession Mambo," based on the novel by Eric Garcia, also starring Jude Law. Whitaker was last seen in "The Great Debaters" opposite Denzel Washington, for which he acquired an NAACP Image Award Nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture.
At the 2005 Toronto International Film Festival, Whitaker wowed audiences with three outstanding films. He starred in a compelling, dark thriller entitled "A Little Trip to Heaven" opposite Julia Stiles. Whitaker delivered a shuddering performance and proves that he is one of the best actors of his generation in the fundamentally subversive and religiously complex film "Mary" opposite Matthew Modine. Finally, he executive produced and starred opposite Donald Sutherland in the film "American Gun" for IFC Films.
Whitaker made his feature-film directing debut with the critically acclaimed, box-office hit "Waiting to Exhale" for Twentieth Century Fox. He first gained recognition as a director for his debut film, the 1993 HBO original "Strapped," for which he received the "Best New Director" honor at the Toronto Film Festival. He also directed Twentieth Century Fox's film "Hope Floats," starring Sandra Bullock. In addition, he acted as executive producer on each of these films' multi-platinum soundtracks that sold over 12 million copies collectively and earned a combined total of 14 Grammy nominations. His short film, "John Henry," was released in February 2002 for Black History Month in connection with Disney's release of Peter Pan's "Never Neverland."
Whitaker also executive produced Anne Rice's "Feast of All Saints" for Showtime. One of his most recent directorial endeavors was entitled "The First Daughter," for New Regency, and is a romantic comedy starring Katie Holmes.
Whitaker lives in Los Angeles with his wife and children.