ORANGE COUNTY, Calif. — Orange County native Sandow Birk was first introduced to Islam while on a surfing trip in Morocco.

“I had been studying art in Paris, and I went to Morocco and was very impressed with the whole experience, the people, the food, the architecture, the history of the places, the whole culture,” the 46-year-old artist says. “So I started reading about places I was visiting out of curiosity.”

Since then, Birk has made 10 trips to Islamic regions of the world in the last decade, and has grown more interested in learning about Islam.

“I think I first picked up a copy of the Qur’an about 10 years ago, just out of a desire to learn more about Islam for myself,” he said.

Utilizing revolutionary imagination, Birk created “American Qur’an,” an exhibit featuring a panel of paintings depicting a novel relationship between the American lifestyle and Qur’anic verses.

In “American Qur’an,” Birk said he wanted to portray the meaning of the Qur’an: “A message from God to all human beings.” 

“I thought, if this is a message to me, how does it relate to the life I know, to the places I live in and visit? And since I’m an American, I thought of places and moments and scenes from the life that I know,” he said.

To prepare, Birk studied for three months at L’Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris and the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin.

While studying the Qur’an, Birk said he was surprised by the large amount of similarities between the messages and stories of the Qur’an and those of the Bible.

Americans should not view the Qur’an as a foreign text, he said, but instead as a message coming from the same region as the Bible.

“It’s strange that Americans usually think of the Bible as being central to American culture, whereas Islam is believed to be something completely foreign. But the Bible is an ancient text from the Middle East, and the Qur’an is an ancient text from the Middle East,” Birk said. “Mecca and Jerusalem are about as far apart as San Diego and Portland. So I kept wondering how one book from the Middle East is considered central to who we are as Americans, but another book from almost the same place is treated as completely foreign?”

As he read deeper into the Qur’an and found it to be more and more familiar, that question became increasingly mystifying to him.

In “American Qur’an,” each painting depicts a scene from American culture with English text from a relating Surah, or chapter, from the Qur’an that illustrates the scene either literally or symbolically.

Birk, who had a Christian upbringing, copied the features of centuries-old Qur’ans, like the colors, large borders surrounding the holy text and the small rosettes that separate verses and groups of verses on the page.

Some of the paintings are of Hurricane Katrina, Mexican migrants working in fields, a crowded airport lounge, California wildfires, a family gathering around a picnic table and a crowd of iPod-using Americans.

One of his most provoking panels, on display in San Francisco, shows the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, alongside the Surah entitled Al-Dokhan (The Smoke). It opens with a Qur’anic passage about a sign from heaven, a calamitous day when smoke pours down.

Birk said he believed it was imperative to display a painting discussing 9/11 because it was a crucial defining moment in the relationship between the two regions.

Birk said he hopes the exhibit will help the religious text speak to modern Christians. However, he added that since his work does not contain the original Arabic text, it is not considered a true Qur’an.

After five years of sporadic work, Birk is halfway done copying and illustrating the Qur’an’s 114 Surahs.

The completed 16-by-24 inch panels were split evenly between the Koplin del Rio Gallery in Los Angeles and the Catharine Clark Gallery in San Francisco from Sept. 8, 2009, to Oct. 30, 2009.

A third installation was shown in New York City later in the year, and Birk plans to publish the entire collection as a coffee table art book.

Birk says the response to his current exhibitions has been almost overwhelming.

There has been a lot of interest in the project, and the galleries said they have received more visitors than usual.

The Koplin Del Rio Gallery has exhibited Birk’s artwork since 1990, and his art is usually well covered by the press.

However, this exhibition reached a broader national and international audience than previous shows, gallery director Eleana Del Rio said.

“One noticeable difference was the increase of a new audience in the gallery,” she said. “There were people who had never been in the gallery before, from a variety of ethnic back grounds and age groups, Middle Eastern, Asian, Latino and other European countries. There were many attendees who expressed they were of Muslim, Jewish, Christian and Hindu faiths.” 

The feedback, she said, was remarkably positive, particularly from the Muslim community. Many people “made a point to stop at the front desk to extend their gratitude to us for hosting the exhibition.”

Many visitors said they had been following the recent press coverage in The New York Times and Associated Press articles, and though they were skeptical to view the work, they were compelled to do so nevertheless. 

Upon seeing the paintings in person, they felt the artist should be commended on how thoughtful and dedicated he was to following the traditions of ancient Qur’ans, which was clearly evident to them. 

Many folks said they found nothing offensive viewing the exhibit as a Muslim, and many of them came back multiple times with friends and colleagues. It was evident to many viewers that Birk came to this project as a lay person solely searching on a personal level to learn more about the Qur’an and what it means to him as an American in this day and time.

The overwhelming feedback across the board was gratitude for an artist to take on such a comprehensive subject and to share it with a broad audience in such a positive light.

“Our non-Muslim patrons commented on how fascinating it was to be introduced to the Qur’an by this project and to see amongst the Surahs a similar cast of familiar names as reflected in other holy texts such as the Torah and the Bible,” Del Rio said.

“Birk’s American Qur’an project created a dialogue among people between the ancient holy words and contemporary American culture. This was its success,” she said.

Birk is a graduate of Otis Art Institute of Parsons School of Design (now Otis College of Art and Design) in Los Angeles.

All of his work emphasizes contemporary American life and social issues.

Birk has received immense recognition for his art.

Previously, Birk received an NEA International Travel Grant to Mexico City in 1995, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1996 and a Fulbright Fellowship to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1997.

He was also awareded a Getty Fellowship for painting in 1999, followed by a City of Los Angeles (COLA) Fellowship in 2001.

 

On the Web: www.sandowbirk.com