Archives

by Melissa Lauber
UMConnection Staff

Art, Pablo Picasso says, “washes the daily dust of living off of our souls.” It enlivens, provokes, stirs, enrages, soothes and allows the spirit within us to be nudged into new ways of seeing, thinking and being.

Art can draw us into the presence of God. Unfortunately, art is also something the church today understands little of, and embraces even less, says Catherine Kapikian, founder and director emerita of the Henry Luce III Center for Art at Religion at Wesley Theological Seminary and a distinguished artist-in-residence at the seminary.

Addressing this monumental oversight, Kapikian has become a nationally recognized prophet and a quiet crusader seeking to awaken the church to the transformative power and possibilities of art.

Although she’d never take on those titles, Kapikian, a working site-specific, textile artist, began an academic program for religion and the arts at Wesley Seminary in Washington in 1979.

The unique program seeks to weave art throughout the seminary experience, training church leaders to allow art to shape their ministries and the life of a congregation.

In June, Kapikian offered a course to nine students on the Holy in Washington D.C. Art.

Only one or two of the students in the class considered themselves artists. The others were curious, seeking to broaden their understanding of creativity and the sacred.

Kapikian dove straight in with a definition of art (“the articulated metaphor of an engaged perception”) and then challenged the students, through a visual survey of religious art throughout history, to define for themselves the relationship between art and theology.

Repeatedly, she stressed the idea that both are “architectures of meaning, fragile structures through whose doors and windows we glimpse the mystery of our being.”

The church must reject the ornamental, decorative and easy, sentimental illustrations – focusing instead on “awakening the imagination in an encounter of meaning-making possibility,” Kapikian said.

The class then took to the road on an academic pilgrimage, using the nonverbal vocabulary of art that includes line, shape, color, value and texture and more, to examine the spiritual meaning of art throughout the city of Washington.

Before every piece, Kapikian encouraged the students to immerse themselves in a reciprocal, contemplative encounter with the art. “Stop, see and be,” she said.

The artwork became inspirational as well, pointing students to their own ability to create art and to recognize that the act of creation is sacramental. “Art is less a product and more a process,” said Kapikian. She encouraged the students to draw on the “radical particularity” of their own experiences to create art of their own.

Too often, she explained, churches tend to think of art as the product, the picture they hang in the narthex. But, like an iceberg, the product is that which is above water. The process is 70 percent. “The church needs to embrace the process of creating art. With that understanding will come transformation.”

As a working artist, Kapikian has a deep understanding of process. “The process has dominion over me,” she said.

Her experiences as an artist, with installations in a variety of settings across the country, lends authenticity to her teaching, leading of workshops and her consulting work with local churches, Kapikian said.

She has designed more than 80 large-scale installations in such places as Metropolitan Memorial UMC, George Washington University Medical Center, the National Naval Medical Center and Constitution Hall. She designed the presidential kneeler to honor Gerald R. Ford at the National Cathedral. Among her latest projects is a wood and needlepointed tapestry Tree of Life in the chapel of the University of Maryland.

Images of much of her work can be found on her website http://catherinekapikian.com.

All of her work is site-specific, designed for a particular community in a specific space. Most make visual theological proclamations. Discerning the context of the community and the intention of the artwork is an essential part of her process. “It’s about ‘I am because we are,’” she said. “It’s a different way of working.”

At the start of the class, Kapikian introduced herself to the students by talking about her creative process. But she also shared a personal tragedy that has been coloring her days. In February, her husband Albert died. He was a prominent virologist at the National Institutes of Health. They had been married 54 years. “He was “heroic and expansive,” she said. “Learning to live without him has been difficult beyond measure.”

But she is now beginning to re-enter her life of teaching and making art, even venturing into a new, challenging and intricate art form, making woven tapestries. She is trying to adopt the idea that “life is reverberating with new possibilities. If you don’t’ take risks, you never usher in new meaning in life,” she said.

This philosophy is one that often guides her. It led her in 1979, upon graduating with a Master’s degree in Theological Studies from Wesley, to march into the dean’s office and tell him that theological education at the seminary was truncated by a lack of the presence of the arts. She challenged them to start an artist in residence program. They initially turned her down, but she persevered.

Gradually, she was given a studio space and a course to teach. Her enthusiasm and “a conceptually correct idea” that the arts make an essential difference in the church ignited the spark of a program that has made Wesley Seminary the leading institution for arts and religion in the nation.

In 2001, Henry Luce endowed the Center for $1.7 million. It’s a remarkable story but it doesn’t surprise Kapikian, who constantly stresses the idea of Imago Dei – that we are made in the Image of God – to her students. “We have the capacity to create because we are a reflection of our creator,” she said. “We should not truncate possibility by averting risk.”

As the former director of the Center, Kapikian kept a sign on the studio door. It read: “An artist is not a special kind of person, every person is a special kind of artist.” That’s the lesson the students this June learned first-hand. It’s a cornerstone of the seminary’s identity.

The arts community is a new mission field for the church, said Kapikian. “We intone a sense of the divine and help people engage in the deepening of their own lives.”

The Luce Center for Arts and Religion is an innovative and sacred space at Wesley Seminary in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to explore the intersection of art and faith; to encourage dialogue between artists and theologians; to help artists find ways to join their faith and their art; to help local churches discover ways to include the arts as a medium of transformation and hope; and to remind the Church Universal that the arts are intrinsic to the full expression of what it means to be created in the image of God. Learn more at www.wesleyseminary.edu/lcar.

Catherine Kapikian’s website is at http://catherinekapikian.com.

---

Journey into the holy ...

As part of a summer course at Wesley Seminary, students traveled throughout Washington exploring the intersections of art and theology. You’re invited to follow in their footsteps, encountering some of the city’s religious art and discovering its meaning in your own spiritual journey. But don’t just look at the art — take the time to really see and enter into an encounter with the images. If you’re interested in learning more, consider taking an art-related course at the seminary. Visit www.wesleyseminary.edu.

---

Legend

• Metropolitan Memorial UMC Reredos behind the altar table by Catherine Kapikian http://www.nationalchurch.org/ 3401 Nebraska Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20016
• Washington National Cathedral Among the vast array of artistic treasures, spend time with the Creation sculptures and the tympanum over the front doors. http://www.nationalcathedral.org 3101 Wisconsin Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20016
• St. Sophia Greek Orthodox Cathedral Soak in the grandeur of Christ the Pantokrator in the ceiling and other icons. http://www.saintsophiadc.com/ 2815 36th St. NW, Washington, DC 20007
• Dumbarton Oaks A prestigious collection of Byzantine art www.doaks.org 1703 32nd St. NW, Washington, DC 20007
• Francis Asbury Statue “The prophet of the open road” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Asbury_(Lukeman) 16th Street and Mt. Pleasant Street, Northwest, Washington, D.C.
• Stained glass window at People’s Congregational United Church of Christ See the magnificent work of African-American artist David Driskell. http://peopleschurchucc.org/ 4704 13th Street NW Washington, DC
• Franciscan Monastery Explore a replica of the ancient Christian catacombs in Rome. http://www.myfranciscan.org/ 1400 Quincy St. NE, Washington, DC 20017
• Smithsonian American Art Museum See James Hampton’s folk art “Throne,” Bill Viola’s video installation of “The Fall into Paradise.” http://americanart.si.edu/ 8th and F, NW, Washington, DC 20004
• National Gallery of Art Vincent Van Gogh’s work started a radical shift in religious art. See his work and a thousand other masterpieces. www.nga.gov 6th and Constitution Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20565
• Freer Gallery of Art One of the most important collection of Biblical manuscripts outside of Europe. http://www.asia.si.edu/ 1050 Independence Ave. SW, Washington, DC 20560