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Long before Terry Given decided to take classes at Bangor Theological Seminary, she wrote, under a photograph of Mount Katahdin, “I will lift my eyes to the hills.”
She snapped it from the Abol Bridge as the peak was covered with the first snowfall of the season. At lower elevations, fall’s vibrant colors clung to the sides of the mountain.
Like many Mainers, Given, a high school history teacher in Millinocket and part-time seminary student, turns to the mountain that dominates her home for spiritual inspiration and comfort.
The color photograph is one of more than 20 pieces of artwork by seminary students, faculty and staff on display through the end of the month at the White Gallery at Husson College in Bangor.
“I’ve gotten a lot of comfort from it,” she said of the photograph of Mount Katahdin. “It’s part of who we are.”
Two seminary students, Sarah Pringle-Lewis of Bangor and Edner Mae Fago of Brewer, put on what they hope will become an annual event. Both women are artists. Fago is a sculptor and fiber artist while Pringle-Lewis creates art on her computer. The show features several works by each artist.
Titled “Encountering the Spirit,” the show includes photography, prints, sculpture and fiber art. The vast majority of the work is by students and, in a rare departure from the typical amateur art show in Maine, there are no paintings.
“There are a lot of creative people at the seminary,” Pringle-Lewis said in explaining the germination of the exhibit. “We’d talked about an exhibit, but no one seemed sure of how to pull it together. So Edner and I said we’d do it.”
They worked with Julie Green, director of media and cultural affairs at Husson College, where the seminary recently has moved. She schedules shows in the White Gallery in the student center in Peabody Hall.
Some of the work is the result of final class projects, Pringle-Lewis explained at the opening reception for the show earlier this week. Including them in the exhibit allowed a wider audience to see how a Torah class inspired Catherine Kimball, a Master of Divinity student from Waterville, to knit the stories told in the Torah into a scarf.
Fago offered no explanation in the catalog for her quilted piece titled “Creation.” The deep crimsons painted on the top and the bottom of the fabric, with deep greens and blues in between, suggest the fire that forged the earth. That was not the creation Fago, who is working toward a Master of Arts degree, had in mind when she created the piece.
“For me, it represents the birth of my son,” she said. “That’s the type of creation I’m referring to.”
Pringle-Lewis began making digital prints on her laptop computer several years ago while she maintained a vigil at her aunt’s deathbed. She creates her art by cutting and pasting images from other sources onto a digital canvas. She then changes their shapes and coloring with a computer program and gives them texture by superimposing digital screens over them.
Four of the more than 100 images Pringle-Lewis created while she “was waiting on God” were inspired by the Annunciation and are on exhibit. The story in the first chapter of Luke tells how God let Mary know that “she is enough for God,” according to the artist.
“The Annunciation resonates with me,” said Pringle-Lewis, who is earning a Master of Divinity degree.
While the seminary artists all are amateurs, their work has not gone unrecognized.
Jordan G. Shaw’s black-and-white photo of a boat in Boothbay Harbor won the 2007 Outstanding Amateur Photograph of the Year from the International Society of Photographers. For the photographer, who is working toward his Master of Divinity degree, it is more than a quaint wooden dinghy tied to a dock.
“In many respects, making a life decision is much like ‘just doing it’ and untethering our boats from the comfort of the dock. Knowing that, as soon as we do, God will be our rudder and steer us in the direction we need to go,” said Shaw, who is from Wales and is working on his Master of Divinity degree.
“If we sit too long,” he said, “barnacles will attach to our bottoms and if we move too quickly, we may miss the puffins along the rocky coast. We must trust that when we ‘Just do it’ and untether our boat, we leave ourselves open to the Holy Spirit’s work in the right time.”
That is exactly what the exhibit does – shows the divine at work through individual artists who just happen to be associated with the 193-year-old seminary.
The Robert E. White Gallery is open from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. For information, contact Julie Green at 941-7129.
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