Martha Bean is a master gardener and grew nearly all of the fruits and vegetables in this Thanksgiving arrangement herself. She creates an arrangement like this for St. James each Thanksgiving, to symbolize the many fruits of the harvest for which we are thankful.

On View: Thanksgiving Arrangement #1 by Martha Bean. Photo by James R. Wilson
Floral art, 2005. St. James Episcopal Church - Texarkana, TX

As Seen In: Visual Preludes 2006 - All Things in Christ, an exhibition of Episcopal Church and Visual Arts. Anne Wetzel, Curator.

"The 2006 Lebanon War is the motivation of this work.

"The conflict killed more than a thousand people, most of who were Lebanese, and displaced approximately 1.4 million people. Although most of the displaced were able to return to their homes, parts of Southern Lebanon remain uninhabitable due to unexploded cluster bombs.

"The image shows a result of this war: a Lebanese man stands amidst the devastation of his community, destruction is everywhere.

"Warfare is a recapitulation of the Christ’s passion. Those who die as a result of warfare share in the death of Christ on the cross. The solution to warfare is found in the words of Christ from the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” Forgiveness is breathed over the whole creation on Good Friday, may forgiveness blow through the hearts and minds of those who wage war."
- The Rev. Paul Fromberg

On View: Good Friday : Lebanon Bombing, by The Rev. Paul Fromberg, Photoshop, 2006, 2251 pix x 1500 pix.

As Seen In: Feasts for the Eyes, an exhibition of Episcopal Church and Visual Arts. Judith McManis, curator.

"Art like worship and study should be functional, serve a definite purpose and out of that purpose can come beauty of expression and all other decorative characteristics."
— Allan Crite, The Artist Craftsman's Work on the Church, Commentary on the 1950s, Vertical File, Library, National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

In memoriam: Allan Rohan Crite, 1910-2007. Lux perpetua. Gloria Deo.
As reported in Episcopal Life Faithworks, November 2007, print edition, page 14.

On View: School's Out, painting by Allan Rohan Crite. 1936. Oil on canvas. 30.25" x 36.125". Image courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

About the Artist: Brought up in Boston, Crite received his art training at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree at the Harvard University Extension School in 1968. He worked for most of his life as an illustrator in the Planning Department of the Boston Naval Shipyards, retiring in 1976, but continued to paint at the same time. Biography courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

On View: Door with Ivy, Photograph by Lynn Park, San Francisco, California. For more information about the photography of Lynn Park, contact the Art Editor.

My friend Erling Hope is the artist and craftsman who designed and constructed this cross for Good Shepherd Episcopal Church in Silver Spring, Maryland. Erling wrote in a note to me this morning that he selected a small section of a much larger pattern to evoke the sense of a Celtic interlace within the cleft of the cross. The idea to use bright variegated colors came from the congregation and the design committee. "I resisted at first," writes the artist, "but now see that it was the right idea for the space." You can see an image of the cross, installed at God Shepherd Silver Spring, here.

On View: Cross by Erling Hope, Hope Liturgical Works. 2007.

Creativity and innovation can be a counterforce against the violent unmaking of our society. - Michael S. Roth, in the San Francisco Chronicle, June 29, 2004

Michael S. Roth, immediate past president of the California College for the Arts, lobbied for the necessity of art in a time of war. He counseled the artists and poets and filmmakers who made up the graduating class of 2004 to consider how the skills of making are powerful, proactive and peaceful responses to destruction, deprivation and degradation. And I agree, heart and soul.

Artists are our both our hope and our conscience. They tend to speak when propriety might recommend they be silent; artists will shout when propriety might recommend that they whisper. Artists preserve the ability to hold at bay the tidal waves of current events in order to create from a reserve removed from time and place; and they also proclaim the right to use the subjects of current events to announce their reactions to the world as it is around them. And artists, when organized, have contributed to the rebuilding of society.

One example is the Arts and Crafts Movement of the 19th century, which began as a response to industrialization in Europe and the United Kingdom. A reformation in its own right, the Arts and Crafts Movement was rooted in quality, integrity, craftsmanship, skill and purpose. Whether or not the styles emerging from the Arts and Crafts Movement echo the reader's own personal taste, the movement itself reformed society's thinking about the role of the artist and the essential nature of the work of the artist in contemporary culture.

On View: Nor Any Drop to Drink by Margaret Adams Parker. 2007. Woodcut over collagraph with solarplate etchings. 23" x 19".

As Seen In: Landscapes and Laments, Woodcuts, Etchings and Sculpture by Margaret Adams Parker, at the Washington Printmakers Gallery, 1732 Connecticut Avenue NW, Washington DC.