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LIST OF ARTISTS
Christien Aalberts
Margaret Amada
Jim apRoberts 1,
2
Jimpsie Ayres
Joyce Beaulieu
Lisa Bell 1,
2
Kathy Bozzuti-Jones 1,
2
Kathrin Burleson
Lynn Chidwick
Shin-hee Chin 1,
2
Sr. Claire Joy, CHS
Ferris Cook
Lil Copan
Anne Cameron Cutri 1,
2
Jerry Di Falco
Paula Dittrick
Kathy Eppick
Jane Eschweiler 1,
2
Marge B. Fulton 1,
2,
3
Tessa Garver-Daniels 1,
2
Kathy Gibson
Tobias Stanislas Haller, BSG
Mary Lou Hartman
Linda Witte Henke 1,
2
Linda Hunter
C. Robin Janning
Joy Jennings
Anneke Kaai 1,
2,
3
Anne Marilyn Karoly
Brian R. Lindsay
Ernesto Lozada-Uzuriaga 1,
2
James A. Mangum
Sharon Mason
Nancy Matthias
Janet McKenzie 1,
2,
3
Cathie Meighan, SSJ 1,
2
Elizabeth MacKiernan Miel 1,
2
Mary Jane Miller
Barbara Mitchell
Fata Mullinax
Vanya Mullinax
Edward Mullins
Joseph Neiman 1,
2
Claire Campbell Park
Margaret Adams Parker
Sarah Peschell
Melaney Poli 1,
2
Sarah Rehfeldt
Zachary
Roesemann 1,
2
Penny Ross
Jeanne Rudisill
RaRa
Schlitt 1,
2
Bryan
Spoon
Diane Walker
Paula
Wallace 1,
2
Fran
Wallis
Jeanne
Harris
Weaver
Carol Ann Webb
Anne Wetzel |
Curator's Statement
Jesus
invited his disciples to “pray always and not lose heart.”
Throughout the centuries faithful women and men have responded to
this call. Indeed
we imagine that great cloud of witnesses—those living and those who
have crossed over to the further shore—raising hearts and hands and
voices in prayer. We can imagine as well, the myriad ways in which
those prayers have been offered: echoing to the chorus of organ
pipes and a thousand voices; chanted to the beat of a single drum in
a desert village; shouted on tiptoe with arms outstretched;
whispered in the silence of our hearts.
We recognize also those ways in which we pray
without words. Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker
movement and herself an indefatigable prayer, asked: “Since when are
words the only acceptable form of prayer?” She maintained that
people “pray through the witness of their lives, through the work
they do, the friendships they have, the love they offer people and
receive…” (Robert Coles, Dorothy Day, A Radical Devotion,
p.28). We would add to this list the prayers that are offered
through the arts, through dance and drama and story and instrument
and song. And—this is the special purview of Episcopal Church and
Visual Arts (ECVA)—those prayers that are made visible through
the skill of the artist’s hand: embodied prayers that are painted or
drawn or printed, modeled or woven or stitched.
ECVA is
pleased to offer a selection of these visual prayers in Women At
Prayer. Through these images, we honor women’s voices and
women’s prayers, those essential reflections of women’s lives that
have too often been kept hidden, gone unremarked. As jurors we are
grateful for the rich and varied range of images we received. Seldom
has an ECVA Call for Entries met with such an astonishing
outpouring.
We invite
you to celebrate with us this visual bounty—these vital and stirring
prayers that move us in so many different ways. Jimpsie Ayres’
Prayer, with its radiant color and joyous
gesture, and RaRa Schlitt’s
Taking One's Heart to God, which
dances with childlike exuberance and energy, gladden our hearts.
The Widow’s Prayer, Joy Jennings’ wrenching lament, and Jeanne
Harris Weaver's
Self-Portrait: Lament To Todd, speak
courageously about keeping faith in the face of isolating grief.
Ernesto Lozada-Uzuriaga’s
Prayers of Deliverance
2012
stirs us
to
outrage as we bear witness to one mother’s desperation, while Jim apRoberts’
Los Desparecidos - The Missing Ones, reminds us of
the countless victims of political oppression across the globe.
Anneke Kaai depicts, in
Hannah’s
Prayer, the misery experienced by Hannah because of her
barrenness, her torment at the hands of Peninah, and her deep
longing for a child. Melaney Poli’s
quieter image,
Portrait with Guardian Angel, reminds us of
the silent peace that can accompany our awareness of God’s
protection. Vanya Mullinax shows us the same inward stillness in his
moving meditation with
Mother Teresa, and Janet McKenzie, in
The Inspiration of Saint Monica,
imagines Augustine’s mother in a moment of quiet contemplation.
And we enter the prayers of two remarkable medieval mystics through
Zachary Roesemann's traditional icon,
Julian of Norwich, and
Lil Copan's contemporary
icon of
Hildegard of Bingen (whom artists hold in particular honor
for her astonishing visual prayers).
Other
images evoke the power of wordless prayer. Sharon Mason portrays
quiet mysticism in her
More Than Words; Cathie Meighan, SSJ,
offers a more fiery meditation in
Annunciation; Anneke Kai
seems to show the in-breaking of the Holy Spirit in her
Private
Prayer; and Linda Witte Henke, in
Glossolalia, employs
luminous color and wordless words to reflect on those
“sighs too deep for words.”
Sarah
Peschell’s
Sacred Work, a woman seated at her sewing machine,
and Tessa Garver-Daniels’
Little Thing, a mother painting her
daughter’s finger nails with careful attentiveness, embody Dorothy
Day’s assertion that works of prayer can be the work of our hands. Indeed, if there is a unifying theme in the show it is the presence
of hands, repeated in image after image. How apt this is for a
celebration of women’s prayers; for women’s hands embody not only
women’s tenderness and their gifts for the care of others, but also
their great capabilities and strengths. We are reminded of the
“Valorous Woman” portrayed in Proverbs 30:10-31 and all the ways
that the works of her hands—described in such rich detail—reflect
what Ellen Davis describes as her “strength, dignity, and social
power” (Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs,
pp.150-55). Among the many hands to be found in this exhibition, we
see those of the anonymous woman, reaching up to anoint Christ’s
feet with her tears and her hair, in Bryan Spoon’s
Luke 7:36-50;
we see hands that touch Jerusalem’s Western Wall with longing, as in
Christien Aalberts’
Praying, and in supplication, as in
Barbara Mitchell’s
Prayers at the Western Wall; and, in
Aaronic Blessing #2, Woman at Prayer, by Tobias Stanislas
Haller, BSG, hands stretch out to bless a supplicant whose own hands
are clasped in prayer.
Two images
sum up the essence of Women At Prayer. Like so many of the
women depicted in our exhibition,
The Daughters of Jerusalem (eight) from Stations of the Cross,
in Jane Eschweiler’s stunning and
deceptively simple watercolor have no names, no faces. These women
could be from any place or any time. Indeed, they are any woman and
every woman; they remind us that women’s lives and their prayers
have too often passed unrecognized and unacknowledged. Our
lead image,
Chinmoku – Silence by Shin-hee Chin, evokes
with great power those qualities at the heart of prayer: silence,
intensity, longing, supplication, trust. Rendered in a starkly sober
range of blacks, whites, and grays that are woven with a bare hint
of color, the image includes a curtain—the veil that both reveals
and conceals God’s presence—just beginning to stir.
We are
grateful to all the artists who took the time to reflect on the
theme of Women at Prayer. I offer particular thanks to my
colleagues in this visual journey of prayer—Phoebe Griswold and C.
Robin Janning—whose collegiality deepened my pleasure in working on
this exhibition. All of us invite you to pray with us, through these
works of art. In Christ’s own words: “Come and see!” (John:1:39).
Margaret
Adams Parker
Co-Curator |
