As General Convention prepared for Eucharist each morning, artwork as well as music greeted the bishops, deputies and guests gathering in the worship space.
The “visual preludes,” projected on two large screens and arranged by the Episcopal Church and Visual Arts, created an atmosphere for worship appropriate to each day's theme, including Gracious Spirit, Spiritual Sight and All Things into Christ. The preludes enhanced the worship and gave contributing artists a unique, spiritual experience.
“My creativity is a gift and a treasure, and I feel the power of the Holy Spirit alive in my work, beside me as I work and responsible for the spontaneity with which I make art,” said Susan Tilt, 62, who attends St. Christopher’s church in Springfield, Va. “Where else could it come from? The results always surprise me.”
Tilts works mostly with needle and thread, creating fiber art, quilts and handmade vestments, many used at her home church. Two of Tilt’s quilts – titled You Power of Wisdom and The Sun of Righteousness Shall Rise – and a liturgical stole were used in the visual preludes. The quilts featured brilliant images of the sun and planets surrounded by bold ribbons of color.
The art used in the preludes ranged “from contemporary realism to the purely abstract, with approaches from the contemplative to the confrontational," said curator and EVCA Communications Director Brie Dodson. "What unifies the work is this: Every piece in the preludes is a direct response to God. The breadth and depth of these responses speaks to the infinite wonder of the one who unites us all."
Curators Dodson, Jan Neal and Anne Wetzel selected art from more than 500 submissions from more than 135 artists. Some of the featured contributors were professionals, including painters, stained-glass and mosaic artists, sculptors, jewelry makers, calligraphers and icon writers. Video Editor Dan Hardison created streaming meditations for each day’s worship.
“The use of the arts at worship during convention is so very right,” Tilt said. “To be able to see expressions of visual art at a time when great creativity is called upon, as part of the discernment process, is fitting indeed.”
The visual preludes began at the 2003 General Convention in Minneapolis. ECVA called earlier this year for artists in the Episcopal community to submit images of original art for use as projected visual presentations at the 2006 General Convention in Columbus, Ohio. "We're delighted to have the opportunity for an encore," Dodson said.
One of the prelude themes, For She is the Breadth of the Power of God, commemorated the 30th anniversary of women’s ordination. Neal, 55, from Oplika, Ala., helped curate the art shown in connection with that theme and contributed four digitally created pieces to the preludes.
Working with a theme celebrating women was especially meaningful because she has lived through “many of the struggles women have faced finding a place at the table,” said Neal, who attends Emmanuel Episcopal Church.
“This feels like a ‘fullness of time’ moment to not only be able to curate that theme, but to have my work … shown on the day our church elected Bishop Jefferts Schori [as presiding bishop],” Neal said. “What an honor to even have my work present on such a historically significant day in the Episcopal Church.”
Tilt said she hoped her art continued to touch people long after they left the Columbus Convention Center and returned home.
“It is my hope and my prayer that my art did speak to others at convention and will continue to speak, perhaps in a different voice than the one I hear or use,” she said. “That's part of the joy. I want others to feel free to enjoy my art in their own way.”
