About 18 months ago, I established, with the support of our priest Beth Franklin, an arts ministry for our parish, St. Michael's Episcopal Church, Arlington, Virginia. Currently, we focus on visual art exhibitions and, in addition to group and solo shows, we have meet-the-artist(s) receptions, demonstrations, and artist talks. We list activities under "Arts & Faith" below the heading "Community" on our Website, noted below. Below is an article about our Lent 2020 exhibit "Contemporary Artists Interpret Stations of the Cross". The exhibit is on view until April 3. (Click on each image to enlarge.) We are "Praying the Stations" on two Wednesday evenings (March 4 and 25) and two Friday mornings (March 13 and 20). All locals and visitors from out of town are welcome to view the exhibit and join us in prayer.
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Praying the Stations: Art to Illuminate the Word
What’s important is the story, the message, the feeling, the connection.
~ Illustrator Christoph
Niemman, “In Abstract: The Art of Design”
Art as creational
gift and as means to opening a space for conversation, understanding, and
meaningful connection has established a foothold at St. Michael’s Episcopal
Church, Arlington, Virginia. This spring, during our Lenten exhibition
“Contemporary Artists Interpret Stations of the Cross,” we are praying the 14
stations of the Via Crucis (“The Way
of Sorrows”) — walking the route Jesus took to his crucifixion and burial. The
art that guides us also invites us to engage — emotionally, imaginatively,
metaphorically — with the story of the Passion, one written in contemporary
visual language that challenges our sense of suffering and of injustices both ancient
and current.
Using prayers
from our Book of Occasional Services,
we begin our journey toward Jerusalem with painter Evy Wilkins (Station 1, above), who, in Condemned to Death, renders Jesus’s tragic death sentence with “stormy day”* effects, black
crosses, ravens and skulls foreshadowing the yet-to-come. In the midst of that dark scene of symbols, she places a pair
of white-roped wrists, white to remind us of Jesus’s purity.
Soon we halt to
let pass the cross-bearer urged on by a modern warrior in Roman headdress (2).
The scene startles, for photographer Wil Harkins has shot his untitled image at the very
moment a blue dump truck has pulled up, its incongruity diverting our attention
from the journeyers and a fateful, storm-threatening sky. In Jesus Takes Up His Cross, a second
interpretation of the same station, Cindy Warkentin conveys in the Christ figure
“the burden of the cross itself, as well as the suffering Jesus experienced,
both emotionally and physically.” Her delicate watercolor and charcoal painting’s “bareness” foreshadows the
overwhelming loss that awaits the world following Jesus’s death.
Suzanne Stryk embodies in naturalistic imagery Jesus’s apocryphal first fall (3), which
she interprets as physical, not spiritual. In her profoundly conceptual painting, Coming Up for Air (Dragonfly), Stryk “contrast[s] the corporeal with the
spiritual by juxtaposing the bulky image of a turtle — a blurry shape — with a
crisply painted dragonfly hovering above.” Dripping black lines “suggest a
bridge between the two” — perhaps earth and heaven?
Emotion charges
Jesus’s meeting with Mary (4). As realized by painter Elise Ritter in Jesus Meets His Blessed Mother Mary, the anguished Mary, caught up in circumstances beyond her power to change, can do no more than hold her tortured son close. "Emotions were raw, and the pain was deep for both of them." Similarly, as depicted by mixed
media artist Lisa Harkins, the Mary portrayed in The Mother Load of All Sorrows “looks serene and calm” but "must have felt agony"; she is doing “what mothers
do: they hide their own pain for the sake of their children.”
The remarkable detail in Harkins's work of found-objects, many of which could be interpreted as religiously significant, invite viewers to linger and meditate on their meaning(s).
Angela White’s
“Support”, an encaustic work, abstracts meaning as Simon of Cyrene takes up the cross on Jesus’s
behalf (5). Ideas of community and family, "of all of us banding together to help shoulder each other's burdens when called upon", are represented as circles within
circles, the street’s paving stones as squares, and Jesus and Simon as the two
outer squares of gold leaf joined to the cross in the painting’s center.
Using “a bit of
digital alchemy,” Ann Tracy, in Searching for Compassion, relates dramatically St. Veronica’s compassionate act of wiping
Jesus’s face (6). Now imprinted on Veronica’s veil, it is a face of compassion
for “the least of my brethren,”
who are represented in the stripped-in photographs of present-day detainees — “our brothers and sisters” at our
border.
In his charcoal
and conte drawing, Jesus Falls a Second Time, James B. Janknegt conceives Jesus’s second fall (7) “as a reminder of his
humanity (which is the counterpoint to his divinity)”. It is in his falling that
“we identify with Jesus. . . as we are all brought down by suffering, loss, and
sin but, like Jesus, find the strength through God’s grace and forgiveness to
get up again and go on.”
Continuing on
the “Way of Sorrows,” we, as did Jesus, encounter the weeping women of
Jerusalem (8), depicted in a Terry Peckarsky art quilt, Still Weeping on the Via Dolorosa, that is emblazoned
with the word “Sorry.” That word is one so many use off-handedly, meaninglessly, in response to
what befalls another, just as these women fail to understand Christ’s sacrifice
for what it is. To Page Turner, who created with Zephren Turner an assemblage
sculpture titled Sister Circles,
Jesus’s words “speak of the importance of sisterhood and holding each other.”
In her acrylic and oil pastel painting Jesus Falls for the Third Time (9), Kathleen Stark
portrays Jesus as already naked, “completely stripped of everything He had in
human terms, dripping in blood, nothing left but pain, sadness, and
humiliation.” Three crosses in the background foreshadow Jesus’s impending
death, while “[t]he eerie yellow glow. . . symbolizes the whole world given
over to the taint of evil” personified in the looming, spear-carrying Roman
soldier. Stark’s vision of this station “made [her] think deeply about the very
meaning of the Cross” and left her with the realization that “whatever I am
asked to walk through, Jesus is there with me and understands my pain.”
For 10th Station: The Stripping, instead of “the
experience of nudity” resulting from being stripped of clothing (10), Pauline
Kusiak focuses us on “the act of stripping,” represented by a contour drawing
of her own hand. Like her, we imagine “the aggression” of the act” and “all the
ways we sometimes humiliate and are cruel to those already faced with terrible
life situations.” It is “the hand
doing the stripping” that “connects the act back to the individual viewer.”
For her painting Jesus Is Nailed to the Cross (11), Robin
Maria Pedrero has used a carved linoleum block to print on a black canvas
images of three red nails placed where Jesus’s hands and feet would be. (Pedrero found the nail while on a walk one day, and keeps it in her studio.) At the
top of the canvas are fainter pink marks resembling Jesus’s crown of thorns.
Neither the cross nor a Christ figure is in the painting, yet we “see” both and, conceiving of Christ’s pain and suffering, we know death is near.
Textile artist Pamela Viola interprets Jesus’s Death on the Cross (12) in overlapping, rectangular pieces of symbolically red cloth she has visibly sewn together, their physical placement recalling the cross-shape of church architecture. In the center, she has
twisted into a cross shape very thin ribbons of red and white cloth, three silver tokens from her mother's collection adorning the place of hands and feet. Far down from the top of the cross are tiny stitches of what can be interpreted as Jesus's crowned head. The dozens of
small hand stitches in the piece remind us of the steps Jesus took and where they ultimately ended. Everything used in the work is recycled.
We find ourselves in the depths of darkness, lost, when Jesus is taken down
from the cross (13). Yet, in the emptiness of this abstract landscape painting, 13 — In the Cave, by Anne Cherubim, a space
opens into a spray of light. You have to search for it, but the light is there, leaving us
in hope. (This is a gorgeous and subtle painting, images of which do not do it justice.)
Representing the place where Jesus is lain to rest (14),
Carol Lukitsch’s mixed media collage on paper, Sophia Icon, merges cross and tomb into a single entity.
“Simultaneously, we see the darkness, evil, and fear present in the aftermath
of the crucifixion alongside a dawning light and green energy” radiating from
the center, “signaling the coming of new life. We also see images of grieving
women who have been absorbed into the suffering and pain . . . as yet bereft
and unaware of the coming mystery of the resurrection” and, like each of us,
still in passage.
_________________________________
* All quoted
words are from Artist Statements written for the exhibition. The commentary is otherwise my own.
Christoph Niemann, Illustrator, Graphic Designer, Children's Book Author
Descriptions of Art Stations (as numbered and in order, above) Most of the artworks are available for purchase.
1 Evy Wilkins, Condemned to Death, Watercolor, Acrylic,
Soft Pastel, 18” x 24”
2 Cindy
Warkentin, Jesus Takes Up His Cross,
Watercolor and Charcoal, 10” x 11”
2 Wil Harkins,
Untitled [Good Friday, 29 March 2013),
Digital Image, Canon EOS Rebel XT, 8-1/2” x 11” (1790 x 2304 pixels)
3 Suzanne Stryk,
Coming Up for Air (Dragonfly), Mixed
Media on Wood Panel, 24” x 24”
4 Elise Ritter, Jesus Meets His Blessed Mother Mary,
Alcohol Inks and Acrylics, 16” x 20”
4 Lisa Harkins, The Mother Load of All Sorrows, Mixed
Media (Found Objects), 30” x 40”
5 Angela White, Support, Encaustic and Gold Leaf on Wood
Cradle, 12” x 12”
6 Ann Tracy, Searching for Compassion, Digital Mixed
Media Painting on Canvas, Master Print, 1/25 Limited Edition, 30” x 20”
7 James B.
Janknegt, Jesus Falls a Second Time,
Preparatory Drawing, Charcoal and Conte on Paper, 20” x 26”
8 Page Turner
and Zephren Turner, Sister Circles, Assemblage
Sculpture, 6” x 6” x 3”,
Wooden Bowl
Marked with Fire by Zephren), Family Quilt Scrap (Embroidery by Page), Antique
Handspun Wood Yarn, Metal Drawer Pull, Assorted Antique Doll Arms, Paper and
Acorn Tops (Packed with Plaster, Adorned with Gold and Sacred Tatting Pattern
from Altar Cloth, Used Inside Mormon Temples), Braids of Greased Wooded Wool
9 Kathleen
Stark, Jesus Falls for the Third Time,
Acryclic on Canvas, 18” x 24”
10 Pauline
Kusiak, 10th Station: The
Stripping, Contour Drawing with Mixed Media, 14” x 14”
11 Robin Maria
Pedrero, Jesus Is Nailed to the Cross,
Acrylic and Oil Pastel on Canvas, 16” x 12”
12 Pamela Viola,
Jesus Dies on the Cross, Textile Art,
12” x 12”
13 Anne
Cherubim, 13 — In the Cave, Acrylic on
Canvas, 24” x 24”
14 Carol
Lukitsch, Sophia Icon, Mixed Media
Collage on Paper, 30” x 22”
Four of the works on view are by St. Michael's artists: Wil Harkins, Lisa Harkins, Pauline Kusiak, and Cindy Warkentin.
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