Faith Made Visible

by Barbara Chaapel

These words of a Navajo prayer guided the sixty-eight women who attended Princeton’s Women in Ministry conference last spring. Titled "The Arts of the Spirit," the event explored theology and the arts, using the expertise of several area artists who led interactive workshops in sculpture, prose, poetry, cooking, music, and textile arts.

"Everyone should be creative," sculptor Nena Bryans told the group. "It is a God-given gift. When I sculpt, I feel that I am taking clay to form an image of the resurrected Christ, much like God took clay and made us. Art can be devotional and it can be a response to social issues." Bryans, who wrote Full Circle: A Proposal to the Church for an Arts Ministry (Schuyler Institute for Worship and the Arts, 1988), agrees with Presbyterian writer and theologian Frederick Buechner, who writes that "one’s art is one’s prayer."

Terry-Thomas Primer, a quilter, said that her art "arose out of chaos," like Bryans, choosing an image from the biblical story to express her calling as artist. "I am drawn to the symbol of the cross in my work: it is a symbol of God’s making, breaking, and remaking."

Her Front Yard Castañer, Puerto Rico
	By Chrissie Knight, inSpire photographer, PTS Class of 1998, and minister of youth and outreach at Trinity Episcopal Church in Princeton, New Jersey I like the tension—the poor, patchwork front yard interrupted by her light-touched bubbles. One does not outweigh the other. It is the same tension that occurs throughout Creation—love and robbery, creation and destruction, peace and war, abundance and poverty. She blows bubbles over her hurricane-torn town. No matter our personal situation, we cannot forget these present tensions in Creation. These are the tensions that Jesus sought to destroy. We need reminders, biblical or otherwise. She reminds us. And not only of the tensions, but also of our part in them, of our God-appointed responsibility to do all we can to bring Creation into the very good it is intended to be.

These artists, and many of the women who attended the conference to try their own creativity on for size, believe that one of the exciting, growing edges of the church is the arts, and the relationship between the arts, spirituality, and worship.

Staff at PTS’s Center of Continuing Education agree. When they planned the new Erdman Hall Conference Center, they made sure to include both an art studio with a pottery kiln, and an open foyer space that can be used as an exhibit gallery. In its first year, Erdman Gallery hosted six art exhibits, including works of sculpture, paintings, quilts, and found art objects.

Acting program director for congregational life Lisa Hess views the introduction of art to the center’s program as "a renewed dance between Princeton Seminary and the artistic community." Even though the Reformed tradition and the arts have been "oft-cantankerous partners," Hess believes the light of God draws people of faith into new ways of seeing and toward new connections between theological reflection and artistic expression.

The coming academic year will feature five exhibits, the opening one by world-renowned and award-winning sculptor Thomas McAnulty of New York City from September 18 through November 3.  McAnulty is the chair of the sculpture department at Adelphi University, and his work appears in the illustrated version of Thomas Moore’s Care of the Soul. He received the 1998 Bene Award from Modern Liturgy for the main altar of St. Meinrad’s church in Indiana. He titles his exhibit "Niches."

He explains: "In my work I deal a lot with simple forms, timeless in their simplicity yet unexpectedly complex in their imaginative suggestion. I have discovered that putting the figure in an environmental niche not only became a way of isolating the figure but also of emphasizing a gesture with a sense of intuitive ‘rightness.’ Themes such as those in the Annunciation and the Visitation have led me to contemporary exploration of niches."

McAnulty’s exhibit will be followed by a November 13 to January 5 show titled "Witnessing to the Word." Sculptor Patrick Birge, potter Patrick Caughy, and painter Patrick Ellis, who met through a consortium of theological schools, share, in their words, "a passion for expanding understanding of creative imagination in both theological education and pastoral practice."

Lynda Juel, a sculptor who is also married to PTS professor of New Testament Don Juel, will exhibit her work from February 12 to March 30. She describes her process of sculpting as "women’s work," focusing on domestic imagery. "I sculpted first in ceramics, then in metal and wood; I began experimenting with aluminum cans and mesh wire. My sculpture is constructed from long filament can cuttings woven or wrapped into a mesh-covered armature. [The resulting] brooms and vacuums, empty dresses and shoes reflect on the realities of everyday life through metaphor and irony, playing in the space between light and dark."

A member of Princeton Seminary’s staff, Kathleen Nicastro works in stained glass and will offer an exhibit called "Preparing the Light" exploring the theme of light in the Bible from Genesis through Ephesians. The exhibit will open in the gallery on April 1 and continue through May 31. Nicastro says that for her, "the practice of art is faith and the practice of faith is art. Courage and freedom are as essential to this practice as the metaphor of God as light is to my work."

The year’s exhibit season culminates with a special exhibition of children’s art on loan from the Presbyterian Church (USA). Following a wide call for entries for a nationwide traveling exhibition to celebrate the denomination’s Year of the Child, more than 1,800 art pieces from children between the ages of five and eighteen were submitted. Each child was asked to reflect his or her spirituality through an artistic medium, and then all were asked to comment upon their view of themselves in God’s world. The Erdman exhibit, on display from June 1 through 29, is a smaller "traveling suitcase" from the children’s arts project.