For Pentecost this year, we invited two local artists to create pieces for the sanctuary to help us remember and celebrate the receiving of the Holy Spirit's power and the birth of the Church. Artist Savannah Hart created this installation with over 900 used produce bags, collected overtime by herself, friends, and Midtown members.
"In the fragility of these organic, fluid tapestries, a once disregarded material—the mesh of used produce bags—has been reclaimed and repurposed, given a new life entirely. With their vibrant color mimicking the decor of a Celebration, as that day must have been, countless individual pieces, in their diversity, unify into a new Body of Work, alluding to the birth of the Church, upon the Resurrection and start of the New Covenant. And as with the Holy Spirit, they spill forth into the space." - Savannah Hart
"Pentecost" by Savannah Hart. Used produce bags, pushpins.
Artist Jenny Stopher started this community art project on Easter Sunday, inviting participants to weave colorful yarn into a hospital blanket, a visual metaphor for weaving our lives into Christ's. The banners, one with a cross and the other with flames, remind us of Jesus's promise in John 14:26 to send the Holy Spirit to the disciples, and in Acts 2 when the Spirit poured out.
"When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance." Acts 2:1-4
"Pentecost Banners" by Jenny Stopher with Sojourn Midtown. Hospital blankets, yarn, fabric, thread.