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Keeping Watch - Hospital Notes 1 |
Artist Statement: I feel called to bear witness to the sights that I see around me; this yields images of beauty and tenderness and also images of suffering and sorrow. These etchings are from a series based on my experiences working with a hospital chaplaincy as a Patient Companion to the Critically Ill and Dying. These depictions, made long after I have left the wards, are not portraits of specific patients but rather are a record of their pain and suffering, their courage and dignity, and - sometimes - their surprising beauty. I offer these images as prayers for all those patients who allow me the gift of visiting, talking, and praying with them. Bio: Margaret Adams Parker is a printmaker and award-winning sculptor whose works most often deal with religious and social justice themes. Parker's works are in the collection of the Library of Congress, Washington National Cathedral, Virginia Theological Seminary, and Duke Divinity School, and have been published by the United High Commissioner for Refugees, Amnesty International, Christian Century, Tikkun, The Church of Englamd Reader, ARTS (The Arts in Religious and Theological Studies) and Episcopal Journal. She is the co-author, with Ellen Davis, of Who are You, My Daughter? Reading Ruth through Image and Text (Westminster John Knox Press, 2002) and, with Katherine Sonderegger, of Praying the Stations of the Cross - Finding Hope in a Weary Land (Eerdman Publishing, 2019). As a member of ECVA (The Episcopal Church and the Visual Arts) she has served as both juror and exhibitor. |
