ordination

It's been a very long time since I have updated this site, let alone worked on a bowl. Thank you to people who have checked on the site, and have contacted me--I am so sorry for the horribly long delay, but this has been on the back burner for awhile. I'm hoping to change that once the holidays are over, so bear with me! Thanks. If you're working on a bowl, feel free to email me and I can hopefully put up your progress on this blog!

This weekend is a very special occasion: the ordination of one of my dearest friends and mentors, D. He and his wife commissioned me to make the most recent bowls for their trip, and they have been so supportive and wonderful ever since I was in high school. After a very long process, the classes, paperwork, interviews and everything else Lutherans can throw at one, he will be able to wear the snazzy tab collar and officiate stuff and all the benefits and challenges of being a full-fledged pastor.

With those challenges in mind, I made this bowl. If you remember, I tried my hand at bead weaving this summer, on a cheapo kiddie loom that worked pretty well. It stayed half-finished for months, and then I thought about it again. I was all ready to make a verse bowl, but somehow it seemed too small, couldn't encompass what I was thinking and feeling. So I finished the woven panel, then passed more warp wires through the panel sideways to attach it to the loom again. I wove more beads up to the center panel, then added my favorite stones, lapis lazuli. These are used to make ultramarine blue pigments, ground into a powder. They are very expensive in their purest form, mostly originating in Afghanistan.

After the cross was finished, I made two rings to hold the bowl together. Each of the warp wires snugly fits between the gold beads on the ring, then onto the bottom ring. The tension of the wires hold the shape of the bowl. It was challenging, but I'm pretty happy it turned out.

The symbolism is pretty clear, I think: the cross is the dominant shape, which should be the major focus of any pastor, and every Christian. The people of the Church are represented by the beads, each beautiful by itself but even more stunning when unified and woven together. The gold wire is very thin, but holds everything in place, like the Holy Spirit--we can't see Him, but without Him we would fly apart. It's hard enough staying together with the Holy Spirit. So. I bundled it all up in an old, heavily taped cigar box and sent it off to Michigan, where D moved so many years ago. I wish I could have given it to him in person, but it's just not a good time to travel with so much going on over here.

wherever you go

This is the last piece I made for friends of friends, and is unfortunately wandering somewhere in Germany, lost in the post. I am wondering what to do about that, and perhaps I might need to make another one and send it again. That's ok though, because the verse is excellent: "Be strong and courageous. Do not be dismayed or terrified; for the Lord will be with you wherever you go." It was hard to get a good picture of this one, as I made the "bowl" shape a little more abstract, and the wherever you go section travels out from the top center to the bottom edge. I like what I did with the Lord's name, putting more crimp beads along the L to make it stand out more. Perhaps people could pray that it finds its way to the lovely family for whom it was intended!

love one another

This is another piece I made for friends of friends. The verse is ."..as I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know you are my disciples, if you love one another." The wire was a smaller gauge than the other bowl, so it went a lot more quickly. The last "love one another" part comes up over the rest of the piece, as the command is an over-arching one.

in progress

I've just started to figure out how to weave beads, using a bead loom I found for super-cheap. Here's some gold beads with wire as the warp and weft, which hopefully I'll be able to form into a bowl shape. It's tedious work, so I think the prayer might be for unity in the church. Getting every bead in line, incorporating them into the fabric of the piece, is very difficult at first. So here's a sneak peek...

abby's bowl

My friend Abby recently finished this beauty, which is wire woven onto thicker posts soldered around a bronze (?) washer, about 8 inches across. It's an amazing example of something my friend found in a commentary on Revelation: each successive event in the book of Revelation radiates from the throne, further and further out to encompass the whole world and bring the new heavens and new earth into being. The radiating circles of praise and worship of the Lamb become wider and wider. It's lovely, Abby!

poema

This bowl I made on commission for some friends, and it is the passage, "for we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do." (in Ephesians) In the Greek text, the word for workmanship is actually poema, which is where our word for poem comes from. It's nice to think of our lives as a poem, carefully crafted with just the right words and flow and meter, rather than a construction site or something more cobbled together with steel I-beams.

I ordered gold-colored copper wire from an awesome jewelry site, Fire Mountain Gems, but I realized as I worked on the text that I ordered a gauge larger than the other wire I have. As a consequence, my hands were nearly spent by the time I got to wiring the bowl together. So this bowl is a bit larger than the others, but it will be more sturdy as well.

peace bowl

This is made from about 16 or 17 origami peace cranes, which I then glued together by the wing tips. It looks like a crown as well, so I call it the crown of peace.

some ideas to share

First, here is an article about master basketweavers in Rwanda, who are experiencing healing and forgiveness as they work on baskets for sale in America.

Second, here are some ideas for materials a friend sent me: rice feed bags (UN rations, anyone?), plastic bags (albeit now overdone), trokosi fabric [fabric worn by women shrine slaves in Ghana, where my friend worked last summer]... these are the "people" I have been thinking about. Representational prayers?

I have also been thinking a lot about my hometown, Baltimore, with both sad and happy materials one could use to create a prayer (bullet casings, crab shells, crack vials, stones from different neighborhoods...). I am considering going on a little scavenger hunt of sorts, combining all found materials and then gold-leafing them, or casting them in resin.

I'm currently working on a larger beaded crochet bowl, which will hopefully be quite beautiful. I have one completed bowl in delicate wire of the Lord's prayer, but I have yet to take a good picture of it. It's quite a difficult object to photograph.

life verse prayer

This one encapsulates what I pray most for myself, and it comes from my favorite psalm. "Search me, o God, and know my anxious thoughts," comes from Psalm 139. I have returned to this psalm over and over, and it is a comfort and a plea--God knows every single detail of my existence, better than I know myself, and the plea is to help me understand where all these anxious thoughts are coming from. It ends with, "see if there is any offensive way within me, and lead me into life everlasting."

The bowl is formed of gold (probably brass) wire, letters in cursive that spiral out from the center. It's about 5 inches in diameter, and you can see how the shadows cast by the wire can make the letters more legible.

tiny prayer

This one's a little beaded crochet bowl, which is the first one I made. It's about 3 or 4 inches in diameter.

grief prayers

The inspiration for these comes from Romans 8:26-27
In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will.

When I crochet, sometimes impossible knots form in the skein, and I spend many frustrating hours unraveling the mess. It's formless and chaotic, and many times it's unclear where it starts and ends. This is such a perfect parallel for difficult times, tragic experiences and depression. All one can see is the mess, the groaning and distress, yet we have hope because the Spirit gives those expressions a form, brings order from the chaos.

The bowls here are made from yarn unraveled from a sweater (and pieces of the same sweater). The smaller bowls are made with cotton weaving thread. I soaked the knotted mess in elmer's glue and draped each blob over a plastic bowl to dry. The insides retain the shape of the bowl, and the outsides are still rather messy. After all that, I spray-painted the bowls with gold.

celebration bowl

Here's a big happy prayer bowl, made from wire coated with gold cellophane stars (normally used for gift wrap and Christmas decorations). It's about 2 feet wide and 10 inches deep, my biggest one so far. It was a joy to make, except when the wire attachment pieces poked me...

Welcome!

Here's the idea: I was reading Revelation a few months ago, and the passage on the header stuck out like a beacon, the most stunning image. The idea--the surpassingly beautiful idea--that our prayers are, in God's eyes, golden bowls filled with incense, made me re-think the notion that our petitions to God are just humdrum, commonplace, and of little consequence. They are not stashed in burlap sacks in a heavenly warehouse, mouldering away in obscurity. Instead, prayers are treasured, lifted up in worship of Christ, and give off a heady aroma of holiness. Even the tiny prayers, the parking-space prayers and the late-for-work prayers are beautiful and they matter to God.

So, great, that's cool. But wouldn't it be amazing to see these prayers, here and now? To make them concrete, to express through materials and craftsmanship the myriad petitions and praises that come from a relationship with God?

I decided to do just that. So far, there are only a handful, but they're all very different, challenging, and so fulfilling to make. Each time I think about the project, more ideas come and more things to explore, more shiny material is available to me. But I don't want to keep this idea to myself.

I want to start something that can be done anywhere, just using this idea and some creativity (and a bit of gold leaf or spray paint!). It's not the "perfect" medium, but I thought this site would be good to get things moving, to inspire us all to work on our own golden bowls, to share photos of them, progress, scriptures and insights related to prayer. Eventually, and hopefully soon, I would love to bring all the bowls together for a large-scale installation, and/or do the following:

• have a prayer conference at a church, displaying the bowls, and giving the congregation an opportunity to make/display their own and meditate on the privilege of prayer.
• make prayer bowls related to a specific ministry, person, or idea, sell them and give the proceeds to benefit those people.
• transform a huge empty gallery with hundreds of bowls hanging, on pedestals, on the floor, and some brimming with incense.
• work on the bowls as we pray, bringing them into daily disciplines of scripture-reading and prayer for family and friends.
• the sky is the limit! so many more things can be explored!

If you want to be a part of this, email me at mk@ganap.com, and I'll put your info into Blogger so you can add your own posts to this one. You can insert pictures, video, scriptures, comments etc, all having to do with this project of course. Link us to your own art pages, flickr albums, church websites. Become a community of prayerful artists! Blessings and peace to you all. MaryKate, Baltimore, MD.