wfn.org | Painter creates icons to commemorate Sept. 11

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Sept. 4, 2002   News media contact: Tim Tanton7(615)742-54707Nashville,
Tenn.  10-71BP{388}

NOTE: Photographs are available with this report.

A UMNS Feature
By Ann Whiting*

Artist Pamela Chatterton Purdy is creating a series of icons to commemorate
the first anniversary of the terrorist attacks on America.

A lifelong United Methodist, Purdy has been painting since childhood -
mostly still-lifes, portraits and landscapes. She and her husband, retired
United Methodist pastor and district superintendent David Purdy, live in the
Cape Cod town of Harwich, Mass.

Asked in August to provide a theme for her next gallery showing to open on
Sept. 14, she decided on "Icons of 9-11." The icon is a new genre for Purdy,
marrying biblical images with her art. She created her first icon last
spring, after seeing red altar decorations for Pentecost Sunday, and she
began to see the possibilities of expressing scripture in visual images. She
created the first three Sept. 11 icons in six days.

Icons are meditational pieces, religious art. "To me it's a much more
meditative way, a sacred way, of depicting what I know through my faith to
interpret 9-11," Purdy says.

"Probably like writing or creating a sermon, 90 percent of the work is in
your head. You work it through in your head and then it germinates and it's
born," she says.

Purdy began developing the images for the icon by going first to the library
and then to the Internet. She found photographs taken on Sept. 11, the day
when terrorists crashed hijacked planes into the World Trade Center in New
York City, the Pentagon in Washington and the Pennyslvania countryside. She
spent several days printing out the pictures that spoke to her. 

"In the images of the wreckage of the Twin Towers you could see images of
crosses," Purdy says. "They are really cruciforms for all the people who
died." 

Spending the past year in a Disciple Bible study helped her select the
scriptures depicted in the icons, she says. "During the year, as we groped
with who God was for the early Hebrews and so forth, I always saw it as an
evolution of who God was in the mind of humanity. ... God is still revealing
himself/herself as a spirit of love and reconciliation. We are looking
through a 'glass darkly,' but God is always love," Purdy says.

"Through a glass darkly" (from I Corinthians 13) is the theme for one of her
icons. In the center is a "spirit figure" holding a clear glass circle.
Stars are moving off the American flag and through the glass, where they
turn into doves. 

"We all felt that spirit of grace," Purdy recalls,  "people coming forward
with money, donating blood or standing by cheering workers clearing the WTC
site. ... If God is love, God was present, in the form of the Holy Spirit
moving through humankind for reconciliation."

Purdy agrees that the "through a glass darkly" theme is subtle. "It says
that my faith isn't always clear.  I can't see clearly all the time, but
that scripture allows that to be OK. Now I see through a glass darkly, and
maybe someday I'll understand. But I don't always have to understand. My
faith doesn't require that I understand everything about God. That's what
the message of this scripture is to me.

"The stars going through that glass and turning into doves are symbolic of
peace and reconciliation," Purdy says, "and symbolic of the Holy Spirit
moving from the disaster into the kind of 'Holy Spirit movement' in this
country, where people were opening up their hearts to comfort the families
and friends of those who were murdered." 

The first 9-11 icon Purdy created depicts the rescue workers carrying the
body of Father Mychal Judge, the New York Fire Department chaplain. The men
are enveloped by doves and backed by the American flag. Intertwined with the
birds' wings and the flag are Christ's words in John 15:13, commanding "that
you love one another. No one has greater love than this, to lay down his
life for a friend."

The third completed icon depicts a figure that evolved into an archangel,
Purdy says. The scripture is from Romans 5: "...but where sin increased,
grace abounded all the more." The angel holds a draped flag that appears to
have weight, like a wrapped body. "She is holding the burden of America in
her arms... like an archangel lifting the weight of a nation up to heaven,"
Purdy explains.

"As an artist," she says, "the whole process is for me to engage the viewer
in thinking about the presence of God in this terrible, terrible tragedy
because all of us initially asked, 'Where is God?' The atheist said, 'See,
there is no God. Look at all those innocent people.' But the Christian asks,
'What does my faith tell me?' And you struggle... but it is the struggle
that keeps me going back to scripture and look at things with a fresh eye. I
want to experience it and feel it and see it. And as a visual artist, I want
to see it more than anything." 

Purdy describes her work as "mixed media." She uses paper and decoupage to
blend photographic images with her painting. She picked images of 9-11 that
people would recognize, making no effort to romanticize them. She included
photos of the burning World Trade Center towers and victims being pulled
from the site. The images are gritty. 

There is nothing ethereal about her work. "Jesus was born in a stable ...,"
she notes. "God chose to go there, not some palace. God is always present in
the most horrific places."  She is thinking about doing a series about
Martin Luther King Jr. "It has been fermenting in my mind since his
assassination. ... Walking into the line of fire, he knew he was going to
die, and yet the Holy Spirit kept pushing him on.

"The backdrop of terror and horror is when God shows himself/herself most
brightly," Purdy says. "The Holy Spirit is so powerful against the backdrop
of horror. It's like lighting a candle in the darkness. It's much brighter
than a candle during the day. When we mark 9-11, I hope there will be a
return to reflection about what went on then and what is the best about this
country. I hope an exhibit like this will facilitate some of that rethinking
and meditation on values, priorities, what's most important."

When interviewed, Purdy was working on the Ephesians 6 passage about
"putting on the whole armor of God," thinking of the uniforms of
firefighters and police officers "who literally became representatives of
the incredible love of God." 

"I'm coming from a different place in my art," Purdy says. "I'm putting
words in, but the words are already poetry. ... The way I put the scripture
in is integrated into the flow of the composition."

Purdy's pastor at Harwich United Methodist Church, the Rev. Elizabeth
McClintock, observes: "With the use of scripture, Pam is drawing from our
past with God, but then bringing it into a future that filters through this
horrific experience, so we have not only a new understanding of these verses
but also an understanding that is old, that God has always been there."
McClintock also notes, "What she's portraying is profound, and by using
familiar images she is making it accessible."

"When I look at my work," Purdy says, "I see horror and pain, but the doves
come through more clearly. The overwhelming reality of 9-11 wasn't the
horror. The overwhelmingly reality was the love. And when all the dust
settles, the only thing that is real is love."

Purdy holds a master of fine arts degree from the University of
Massachusetts. She taught art at the college and high school level for 30
years before retiring. She regularly meets and shows her work with three
other women, billed as "Four Friends and Paintbrush." Her icons will be on
display at the Star Gallery in Orleans, Mass., beginning Sept. 14.  
# # #
*Whiting is editor of the Michigan Christian Advocate, the newspaper of the
United Methodist Church's Michigan Area.

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United Methodist News Service
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