August 2002
The ART of the Great Gathering Liturgical artist Nancy Chinn signs on for Great Gathering gel Gabriel and the archangel Michael, adapted especially for Upper South Carolina from one of the artist’s most popular designs. The centerpiece of the display will be an original art work created especially for the Great Gathering—a paper lace cut image of Theotokos, the “God-bearer.” Chinn, who began her career illustrating bulletin covers for her church on an Oregon Indian reservation, is now known for her watercolors and mixed-media works. She’s since become well-known as the creator and designer of large liturgical spaces, including the 25,000 paper origami cranes assembled and hung at San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral as an act of prayer for those who died from AIDS, people with AIDS, and their families. From the beginning, she says, she was interested in liturgical art, but couldn’t identify or name what it was. “I had incredible urges to adorn
SC artist Mike Williams to donate original sculpture for Great Gathering
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The processional cross made by Williams for St. Francis of Assisi, Chapin. Etched into the cross are heron, fish, dragonflies, and various plants. Cut-out sculptures of the symbols for the four evangelists appear on the front of the cross, and on the back is a circle of three fish, symbolizing the Trinity (photo by Pam Steude).
PAID
Mike Williams, one of South Carolina’s most prolific and successful artists, is hard at work on an original sculpture commissioned especially for the Great Gathering. The sculpture, a generous gift from the artist to the diocese, will be given away during the festivities on October 26 to the congreMike Williams gation that preregisters the largest proportion of its membership for the great event. For Williams, offering the gift is a natural consequence of his life as an artist. “I believe that we’re put here to discover what it is that we’re supposed to do. Use your gifts, do what you love, and it will come. I’m incredibly lucky. Art isn’t something I do; it’s something in which I participate. I’m just a conduit for the
expression of relationships that are already there.” Two aspects of Williams’s work make him particularly suited to the Great Gathering commission: his profound love of God’s creation and his enduring fascination with water and fish, both potent Christian symbols. An avid sportsman, South Carolina born and bred, Williams finds the inspiration for both his paintings and his sculpture in the natural world—for him the sacred space at the center of his contemplative life. Art, in Williams’s view, is “about one’s relationship to God”— the dynamic of creator and created and the continuing challenge to bring into being something new, waiting to be born. Although his art is nature-based, it’s not representational. His career, in fact, evinces a steady trend away from representation toward abstraction. “I’m fascinated,” he says, “by the relationship between the two and by their combination, which produces tension and ambiguity and
spaces—they were physical; my hands itched when I’d go into church. If I got bored, I’d start drawing possibilities.” She started on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation. “We were very poor. So, in order to be able to work on printmaking, which interested
Nonprofit Org. U.S. POSTAGE
By Peggy Van Antwerp Hill
Paper lace Tree of Life hanging, 36 feet long, 9 feet wide, created by Chinn for Grace Cathedral, San Francisco
Permit No. 848 Columbia, SC
Nancy Chinn, a California artist known nationally for her gift of creating and transforming liturgical spaces, and author of Spaces for Spirit, has been engaged to bring her Spirit-filled vision to the Palmetto Expo Center for the Nancy Chinn Great Gathering of the diocese. On October 26, thanks to the vision of Gatherings worship chairperson, the Rev. Canon Michael Sullivan, and committee member Sue Zoole, Chinn’s spectacular hangings will adorn the Palmetto Center’s “Hall B,” where the diocese will gather for worship.
Chinn, featured in the “art & soul” section of the most recent edition of Episcopal Life (July/August 2002), has been artist and consultant for some 500 church installations, conventions, and gatherings. She is known for her oversized artwork that sets the stage for the liturgy. Much of her art is created for a single, special occasion, using paper or fabric. Original to Chinn are her oversized “paper lace” works, designed to evoke a sense of mystery and sacred timelessness. “Paper lace” is a term Chinn uses to describe large sheets of paper that have been designed and cut to create lace-like images that have patterns and shapes embedded within the structure. For the Great Gathering Chinn proposes to create three separate paper lace hangings, each six-feet wide by 16-feet long, to be suspended from the ceiling in the enormous worship space. On either side will hang images of the archan-
Episcopal Diocese of Upper South Carolina 1115 Marion Street Columbia, South Carolina 29201
By Peggy Van Antwerp Hill