Closing out this second part of my last post, I shall discuss here the events of Holy Week. Following the Holy Week play “The Death of Jesus Christ” there was still one big event I had to prepare for, a Stations of the Cross art exhibit at MANNA (Many Angels Needed Now and Always). This was planned as a walk-through exhibit to be held in the Sanctuary at the Cathedral Church of St. Paul on Good Friday.
Leading up to the exhibit, I had spent more than a month inviting community members to create visual or written pieces to correspond with a specific station of the cross to which they felt called. We offered a variety of artistic media (watercolor paints, pencils, markers, pastels, and crayons) for community members to engage with in a quiet space. Interest in the project varied at times while a few devoted community members chose to create offerings for many stations. At times I felt unsure if we would have enough art work for a robust exhibit, but I kept on encouraging folks to create and highlighting the stations that had not yet been represented. In total, we wound up with almost twenty pieces of artwork representing all the stations!
In the days leading up to Holy Week I began preparing easels and mounting the artwork along with typed artist’s statements. On the day of the exhibit, artwork was displayed on tabletop easels spread across the sanctuary. Tables for each station were displayed in a clockwise circle with Station 15 displayed in the center. The exhibit was open to the public. Quiet choral music played in the background creating a solemn environment to reflect on one’s own connection to the various stations.
Oftentimes, slowing down and finding a comfortable silence can be challenging for me. Yet this exhibit and artistic process felt like such a welcoming pause for reflection. It was a unique experience to learn about the stations from community members’ reflections and personal narratives. I was struck by the depth and variety of the artwork. Each piece held such a personal connection to the station from the artist’s own experiences. I was inspired by the community members who chose to create multiple stations; it was empowering and poignant to see the reflections of their own journeys mirrored in that of Jesus’s journey.
Working on this project piqued my interest in generating more art-therapy activities that bring together writing and visual arts in integrated ways, beyond writing an artist statement or description of the work. There were so many valuable narratives and reflections within this exhibit that I would like to learn more about narrative writing and storytelling in the practice of expressive therapies. Oftentimes, community members at MANNA and common art take great joy and pride in sharing stories about their experiences both verbally and in written form. I feel as though more integration of storytelling into the arts could be a dynamic way to honor the community’s experiences and artistic process. I look forward to exploring this in my last weeks as an intern with common art and MANNA.
-Isabelle Olsson