Proposed Projects
Earth’s Crammed With Heaven is a project that will bring artist and curator Sarah Bernhardt to Messiah Lutheran Church in St. Louis for one year to create and curate works of art with its community. The central work is a large-scale sanctuary installation shaped through listening, image gathering, material studies, workshops, and artist-led collaborative fabrication.
The Installation echoes historic stained glass windows opposite in the sanctuary, inviting a reflection on the church diachronic. Blue tones recall baptismal waters and textile or clay materials connect with biblical material themes of God’s fabric tabernacle dwelling, being clothed in Christ, being clay in the hands of the Potter, and formed as God’s workmanship.
These materials that have been used for millennia combine with contemporary photographic images printed on cloth in cyanotype or ceramic decals, and record a particular expression of God’s story in this specific time and place, now. Congregants and neighborhood residents will contribute local imagery related to the 7 days of creation. Crafting something large of many parts, made by many hands, over many hours, turns hearts again and again to practice attention, to remember those everyday saints who have nurtured faith, and to see all of creation, flora and fauna, as our neighbor.
The artwork invites us to take off our shoes. To see a blade of grass, a dog’s eyes, a billowing cloud, a grandmother’s hands, and even a common snack break as a moment holy. In our worship, such an artwork attunes us to how very common, how very ordinary our divine Creator became, and how brutally ordinary was his death. This artwork attunes us to how extraordinary, how afire is this creation we steward. This artwork will finally point us to a renewed creation our extraordinarily risen Christ invites us into. A new creation absolutely crammed with Heaven.
