1. I don’t know much about art, but I know what I like.
A workshop at the Blackburn Diocesan Conference
Michael Everitt
27 November 2018
Welcome Explain about cultural issues
Short history of art in Christianity
What is distinctive about religious art
Icons
Tillich
Bible
Using Road to Emmaus
The art that is in parish churches esp stained glass
Missional ideas
'Going to church in the rain, Wasdale Head', 1937 Chiang Yee

2. Let’s StArt at The Very Beginning.
(Media, genre, style form
Elements: colour , contour, dimension,medium,melody, space, texture value
Design:arrangement, balance, contrast, emphasis, harmony, proportion, proximity, rhythm
Visual arts: Sacred and profane Oil watercolour, acrylic, digital,
Sculpture, architecture, painting, drawing fresco
Icon wood, gesso, prayer, earth, egg
Contemporary film, internet installation radio tv
Performance Dance, music, popular, classical, sacred
Literature Poetry prose drama
Aidan Hart, New Zealand born, Greek Orthodox. Original statue Flemish 15th century
Chapel on bridge in Aberdeen hidden during reformation)
7th Ecumenical Council If God has shown himself in Christ, in the world then we can too without risk of idols. Used to illustrate, illuminate and inspire.
“Our Lady of Aberdeen” Aidan Hart

3. ICONS Ancient and Modern
Prayer, WOOD, Linen, Gesso, Earth Pigments, Egg, Gold
Early Christian art either
On walls, but often hidden in catacombs
Or portable on wood or carving
Then once church permitted the buildings became adorned.
Icons, of the earth, soaked in prayer, linking wider community and tradition and the personal both the writer and the one looking at it.

4. The Walk to Emmaus Luke 24: 13-16
Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem,  and talking with each other about all these things that had happened.  While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them,  but their eyes were kept from recognizing him.
A familiar text, and a very famous image, but more to it than that.

5. The Journey Art can seek to be specific, historic, interpretive.
The Roaches Michael Everitt 2018
A localish scene to our conference, The Roaches in Staffordshire.
Don’t know where Emmaus was, 2 or 3 possibilities. It was a dangerous journey especially in the dark, familiar yet with trip hazards, animals, bandits etc.
“Holy in the ordinary” This landscape put in a new context can be for us the road to Emmaus.

6. Paul Tillich 5 dynamics of Religious Art
Holy in the Ordinary (numinous realism)
Mystical (sacramental)
Prophetic
Critical
Ecstatic
(German American Lutheran theologian left Europe before the war. Heavily influenced protestant theology including Bishop Stewart Cross whose hymn Father Lord of all creation is heavily influenced by Tillich.
Other theologians include Von Baltazahar. The concept of true beauty communicating something of the nature of God)
To give a framework of possible ways to engage with art, if desired.

7. The Encounter There and Not There Photo Michael Everitt Whalley 2018
One that shows a cross over, The WW1 images with school children reflected in it were numerous across the diocese. There and not there showed a linkage and an understanding of how perhaps the disciples in grief were not aware.

8. Sant Apollinare Nouvo Ravenna Mosiac 6th Century
Earliest extant image from Ravenna 6th Century
Journey to Emmaus, Christ clear but not in robes of glory.
(since pointed out to me he has clean and sandaled feet as distinct to the disciples either booted or dirty feet!)
Sant Apollinare Nouvo Ravenna Mosiac 6th Century

9. Ivory caring Metz 850-900 Remember my comment about portable.
Carving showing both the journey and the meal.
It is the point of departure, seeking to journey on and then the meal.
Ivory caring Metz

10. The Road to Emmaus John Runciman1744-1768/9
Rembrandt and others show the journey in a contempory style. This is a Scottish artist and the discipies are in stylised contemporary dress in a romantisied familiar landscape. Christ identiyable (Hint at the current American historical style films.)
The Road to Emmaus John Runciman /9

11. Mystical interpretation
The companion who draws alongside us on the way.
”As with there not there, we are eavesdropping. Christ not central but alongside, there, familiar yet not totally recognisable
Emmaus Janet Brooks Gerloff

12. It could be “Holy in Ordinary”
Yet also Prophetic & Critical
Prophetic: Homelessness
Critical:
Which one is Jesus?
(Talking, Looking, Listening)
Would you recognise him?
Road to Emmaus Gerard M Burns 1961-painted for the Emmaus Community in Glasgow that works with the homeless. Deliberately ambiguous
The subjects had all been homeless and had been housed through Emmaus.
The Looking figure, the listening figure, the speaking figure.
Road to Emmaus Gerard M Burns

13. This is my wife’s family home. Watercolour and ink sketch by me!
Holy in the Ordinary
This is my wife’s family home.
Watercolour and ink sketch by me!
Very ordinary!
“I will lift up my eyes to the hills”
“Road to Emmaus” ……
(A very quick 30 minute sketch. A village made famous by Joesph Farquharson)
A breather before the meal!

14. Emmaus Pontormo Jacopo Carruci 1527
Obvious sacramental dynamic. The Carthusians shown to show that Emmaus is not just historic but is also a current reality. The triangle very resonant of Rublev’s icon 100 years before. Depiction of the trinity.
Rublev The Oak at Mamre 1410
Emmaus Pontormo Jacopo Carruci 1527

15. Ecstatic “They recognised him in the breaking of the bread”
Darkness and Light. Christ, Disciples, Waiter
(In terms of the Emmaus journey, most famous and in some respects combining all is Carravegio’s Emmaus. There are 2 versions in this country the most famous one is in the National Gallery.)
The one you’ve been waiting for!
Resurrected Christ, moment of realisation the disciples and also the innkeeper, the outsider, not just for the church. Darkness (light and darkness in Caravaggio’s work)
It is evening, and Christ illuminiates
Supper at Emmaus Caravaggio

16. Velazquez: The Kitchen Girl at Emmaus 1618
My favourite however is in Dublin, by Velazquez. Christ is for the whole world.
Jesus an Asian, refugee in Africa, condemned by a European, helped by an African.
Early theologians African. Christianity is not a European thing!
Velazquez: The Kitchen Girl at Emmaus 1618

17. She listens, listens, holding
The man it was rumored now some women had seen this morning, alive?
her breath. Surely that voice
is his – the one
Those who had brought this stranger home to their table
who had looked at her, once, across the crowd,
don’t recognize yet with whom they sit.
as no one ever had looked?
But she in the kitchen, absently touching the winejug she’s to take in,
Had seen her? Had spoken as if to her?
 Surely those hands were his,
a young Black servant intently listening.
taking the platter of bread from hers just now?
swings round and sees
Hands he’d laid on the dying and made them well?
the light around him
 Surely that face-?
and is sure.
 The man they’d crucified for sedition and blasphemy.
The Servant-Girl at Emmaus (a painting by Velasquez) Denise Levertov
The man whose body disappeared from its tomb.

18. What of the Journey Back and the Return to the Disciples?
This was snapped on my phone after morning prayer with the bishops and Archdeacon Mark and the diocesan secretary
No painting of the journey back, facing the fears, returning to the familiar. Bishop’s house, “Fear and familiarity and also moments of wow”
Bishop’s House Blackburn Garden
Michael Everitt 22 September 2017

19. local context and mission
Stained Glass,
local context and mission
Blackburn Cathedral.
Yes stained glass yet also patterns and beauty
Blackburn Cathedral
Photograph Michael Everitt 2018

20. Images Direct and Indirect
Light through the glass reflections by the glass. Latter taken in Durham “accidentally”
Glass like mosaics good image of community. Broken items held together by soft metal to form something that shows Christ.
Blackburn and Durham Cathedral Michael Everitt

21. University of Cumbria Chapel. “Back Chapel”
St Martin’s in my day.
Cross and altar shown to all on journey from the refectory. Stained glass and clear glass. The latter an image to pray for the college.
Stained glass often wrong and yet useful. The ChiRho should be on the beggar.
The Halo has not yet been gained by Martin.
However breaking the boundary, Christ the beggar with the blue feet.
University of Cumbria Chapel. “Back Chapel”
2001 Michael Everitt

22. Look for the Detail Croston St Michael Window by Harry Stammer
Harry Stammer’s windows as an example of multiple opportunities

23. Details. Cross in the context of Croston, Croston in the context of the cross.
Despair being allowed within our faith journey, shown and then also transformed.

24. Shining in and Out Stained Glass at Midnight
Christ in our midst. Birth death and resurrection.
Dynamic of the midnight mass. Windows speaking not to the gathered community but to the outsider and not at expected time!
Use of digital projectors and details to focus on what is there in our midst.
St Wilfrid’s Standish
Detail in the East Window by H Stammer