Artist Statement: Madonna, Angola was created in response to United Nations reports from Angola on Internally Displaced Persons, many of them housed in large metal sheds. But the image of a stalwart mother cradling her infant against a stark black background is emblematic of the plight of all who must flee their homes. And it reminds us that Christ and his mother were likewise displaced – as are hundreds of thousands around the world today and across the centuries. In this way Christ and Mary stand in solidarity with our experiences and our suffering.
Bio: Margaret Adams Parker, sculptor and printmaker, has an extensive record of publications, commissions, and exhibitions. Mary as Prophet, her sculpture commissioned by Virginia Theological Seminary, won an Honor Award from Faith&Form, the Interfaith Forum on Religion, Art, and Architecture. Reconciliation, a sculpture depicting the Parable of the Prodigal Son, was commissioned by Duke Divinity School. And her sculpture of Mary is installed in the chapel of the Cathedral College, Washington National’s Cathedral, and at churches across the country.
Parker is the co-author, with Katherine Sonderegger, of Praying the Stations of the Cross – Finding Hope in a Weary Land (Eerdmans Publishing, 2019), which features her 14 woodcut Stations of the Cross. She created 20 woodcuts to accompany a new translation and commentary by Ellen F. Davis in Who Are You, My Daughter? Reading Ruth through Image and Text, (Westminster John Knox Press, 2002.) WOMEN, her suite of 15 woodcuts, was purchased by the Library of Congress, and her art has been published by the United High Commissioner for Refugees, Christian Century, Tikkun, The Church of England Reader, ARTS (The Arts in Religious and Theological Studies), and Episcopal Journal. As a member of ECVA (The Episcopal Church and the Visual Arts) she has served as both juror and exhibitor.
Parker has taught on the adjunct faculty at Virginia Theological Seminary since 1991. She writes and lectures extensively on the “voice” of the visual arts in Christian life. Parker earned the BA degree, Phi Beta Kappa, Summa cum Laude, from Wellesley College and the Master of Fine Arts from The American University, where she was awarded the Wolpoff Prize for Drawing and Works on Paper and the Glassman Award as Outstanding Woman Artist. She served as Artist in Residence at Wesley Seminary, a Coolidge Fellow of ARIL (The Association for Religion in Intellectual Life), and a Calvin Summer Symposium Fellow, and was awarded a Virginia Commission for the Arts Fellowship in Painting.
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