Curator Statement

On the morning of August 30, 2005, a most glorious golden sunrise broke through thin clouds to spread its arms out over America’s Gulf Coast. So began the day following the assault of Hurricane Katrina. The blessed daylight revealed flooding, destruction and human suffering that those of us spared can hardly comprehend, and the beauty of the sky was as painful an irony as the first rainbow must have been to Noah’s family.

How could this be? How can we make sense of such suffering in the midst of such a beautiful world? If there was ever a time for common supplication, it is now, and a time to ask that God “Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night…”

The Daily Office teaches us that every day is a day for common supplication. The need may be revealed more clearly at times of grief, but during all times the need to return time to God is equally great. The Daily Office teaches us that all time, space and creatures belong to God to whom all honor, praise and glory are due. Reciprocally, when we offer a sacrifice of time to our creator we are comforted and blessed. God’s purpose for his earthly creation may be made no more comprehensible to us as a result of daily prayer, but within the gentle rhythm of the hours we are rocked in the arms of a loving parent beneath an attic fan on a hot summer day and receive “peace which the world cannot give.”

I agree with contributing photographer Chuck Kirchner who experiences the hours as the most spiritual of the Episcopal rites and the most powerful in his life.  The power of these prayers may be due to their intense poetic imagery, making them a wellspring for the artist’s imagination. Images produced to enhance Books of Hours during the Middle Ages and on through the 19th Century are among the greatest works of art ever produced. Why did our books of common prayer lose this heritage? If images assisted the less literate worshiper, then what we gained in literacy, we lost in spirit. The human heart still sores when exposed to beauty, and Illustrating the Hours sought images from 21st Century artists answering the question: how do the hours inspire you? The response is yours to see.

Morning hovers on the horizon. A cow lows; a dog barks; the whistle of a train can be heard in the distance. Morning Prayer inspires our artists to explore the interplay of night turning to day and light creeping into the day until it swells to full brilliance. The prayers of morning are energetic, joyful and full of praise for God as our creator. These prayers are nature-intense calling upon the sun, moon, dew, wind, fire, seasons, frost, ice and snow to praise and magnify the Lord. The art selected as representative of Morning Prayer present that energy and joyfulness with vibrant colors and themes of resurrection, entrances into worship, benevolent spiritual beings, and the beauty of dawn.

Trinity Rays Chuck Kirchner

Challenged by our daily labors, we are alternately delighted, confounded and confused. At noon we pause to lift our eyes to the hill from which comes our help. Our artists find eternal truths in the middle of their busy days. One seeks God’s glory while traipsing through ten inches of Maine snow to collect plant material, another stops to capture a spiritual world found on an Alabama back road and, under the same sun, another sees the incense of prayer in light streaming into Trinity Church in New York City. The themes of noonday art include the ministry of reconciliation, the spiritual world of the living and the dead, the delicate detail of God’s world and the nature of prayer.

	The Cross IV Brie Dodson

The workday ends. Light is at a slanted angle, and the sky reveals colors we cannot even imagine until we see them. We are tired and in need of rest. As we lose daylight we turn to the light of candles, the comfort of the Anglican Rosary and our Blessed Mother Mary. A miraculous setting sun is celebrated, and light shimmers over water. With images that seem to glow, the artists reflect with a beautiful sadness on days past and the coming night. Themes include the gift of light, forms of prayer and the communion of saints. Color becomes richer and more golden and mauve.

Guide us waking and Guard us sleeping. . . my eyes have seen the Savior Kristy K. Smith

It is time to sleep. The world is covered with a dark blue blanket with stars as our only reprieve from the darkness. Our artists’ images of Compline are darker, bluer and more serious as they contemplate sleep of the living and the dead, exploring human need of God’s protection through the night. They seek assurance that those we loved and lost remain in light.

It is my hope that this exhibition will inspire the viewer to feel the rhythms of the day and contemplate the themes of the prayers of the Daily Office, experiencing the exquisite beauty of these prayers crafted first to give praise to God and graciously meeting our human need to be inspired in our strength and rocked in our frailties. May those who need comfort find it now, and to a God who knows human pain we ask for our gulf coast friends and those who minister to them:

Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for your love’s sake. Amen.
(Evening Prayer II, Book of Common Prayer, page 124)

Jan Neal
Curator