William Cochran walked by intuition one day into the Walters Art
Gallery in Baltimore and came face to face with the marble neoclassical
sculpture depicted here. He knew he had finally found the appropriate
sculpture for The Light Within.
Our Native Son
The Woman of Samaria, depicted in The Light Within,
was sculpted circa 1857 by William Henry Rinehart, who was born
not far from Community Bridge. During his meteoric career, Rinehart
made it a practice to assist struggling young artists, and he
left his fortune to "the promotion of interest in and cultivation
of taste for art," a goal shared by The
Delaplaine Visual
Arts Center, located across from The Light Within.
It has been written that "beauty first entered American sculpture
with Rinehart," and he is still considered one of America's
finest neoclassic sculptors.
Spiritual Traditions
Rinehart's only biblical work, this sculpture depicts the woman
of Samaria who met Jesus at a well. An enemy to him by race and
religion, inferior by sex and of disreputable background (by the
social mores of the day), she offered him a drink and he offered
her "living water." This sculpture is symbolic of how
basic resources, such as well water - and the "living water"
of our various spiritualities - become meeting places, where superficial
differences are irrelevant. The inner value of our common humanity
transcends all such distinctions.
Living Water
During the Bridge Builders Outreach one individual,
Robert Snoots, suggested a well as his symbol because communities
grew around water sources and wells "became a meeting place
for women coming to fill their jugs or pitchers. A good bit of
chatting probably took place here." Community Bridge spans the
creek that was the birthplace for the city in which it is found.
An Inner Spark
This section of the mural stands in part as a salute to The Delaplaine
Visual Arts Center, where residents today have opportunities young
Rinehart did not. It emphasizes our shared values as expressed
in our great spiritual and creative traditions, both of which
nurture our common "light within."
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