Community of Saints: Curator's Statement
Let your light shine before others,
that they may see your good deeds
and glorify your Father in heaven.
~ Matthew 5:16
How might we tell a story about our values and value?
The deeds and words of our saints, of our martyrs and mystics and philosophers, of our makers community, be they visual artists, poets, or writers, of our teachers and wise elders, of our congregants and our neighbors: these comprise those “great clouds of witnesses” in whom we might see ourselves, our hands inviting and open, our halos mostly askew, our mission to partner, collaborate, inspire, and serve.
This special exhibition, “Celebrating Our Community of Saints," has been created for St. Michaels’s 75th Anniversary. It aims to show us ourselves in the images of those who throughout our long communal history have offered us examples to live by. Few of us aspire to sainthood in the traditional sense, even far fewer, perhaps, to martyrdom; yet, the men and women whose names and portraits appear in this exhibition — Saints Michael and Luke and George, Patrick of Ireland, Hildegard of Bingen, Teresa of Calcutta; civil and human rights activists Elizabeth Ann Seton, Frederick Douglass, Dorothy Day, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis; poets Sylvia Plath and Mary Oliver; writers James Baldwin and Thomas Merton; philosophers and thinkers Jean-Paul Sartre, Frederick Buechner, Oscar Romero, Henri Nouwen; leaders Joan of Arc, Theodore Roosevelt, Desmond Tutu — once were as we are still: the builders, the administrators and instructors, the advocates and doers, the evangelists and the prayerful, the givers who in service to others walk alongside God.
We are both privileged and delighted to welcome to our anniversary celebration the artists Dana Ellyn, Elise Ritter, Christopher Santer, Kathleen Stark, Kreg Yingst, and George Ziobro. Collectively, these makers show us the many and varied faces in whom we might or do recognize ourselves. Their portraits, no two alike, speak to the diversity we cultivate, the vulnerabilities we expose, the dialogues we inspire, the issues we attend to, the good deeds we do. Look at these portraits and celebrate you, for in this “one body with many parts” we make room where before there was none.
Maureen Doallas
Curator
Leader, Arts & Faith Ministry
