Making “Canticle of the Creatures”
by Margaret Adams Parker
Sister Water from Canticle of the Creatures
As a liturgical artist, I reflect–in visual form—on holy figures and sacred writings. It is a privilege to linger over these texts: exploring the narrative, pondering the medium (sculpture, painting, or print) that will best embody my understanding, and then shaping that medium to express my vision. In this work I am particularly sensitive to the way the gesture of the body conveys a person’s story, calling upon observations and insights honed through decades of sketching directly the world around me.
Sister Bodily Death from Canticle of the Creatures
From the artist’s sketchbooks
For a 2023 commission, I created two-color linocut prints to explore, in a limited-edition letterpress book, St. Francis of Assisi’s magnificent Canticle of the Creatures. The Canticle invited me to enlarge my focus beyond the figure into the wonders of the natural world, for the Canticle opens as a hymn of praise to God for the variety and beauty of the natural world — Sir Brother Sun, Sister Moon and Stars, Brother Wind, Sister Water, Brother Fire, and Sister, Mother Earth – and ends with two sections written later: praise for those who pardon, and (with Francis’ own death imminent) gratitude for Sister Bodily Death.
Brother Wind from Canticle of the Creatures
I decided to make my own translation, hoping to convey the directness and simplicity of Francis’ language, and I designed the linocut prints to complement the unadorned character of his text. It was particularly moving to live with Francis’ words and ponder the ways that line and color might express his love for each of the “creatures.”
The project presented exacting challenges. I carved two blocks for each image: the “key” block that would be printed in black, and a second block to print the custom color I mixed to embody each of the creatures. As I printed, I had to align the black image precisely over the color image, while at the same time positioning the two-color image precisely onto a page that had already been printed in letterpress.
I collaborated on Canticle of the Creatures with Chip Coakley at Jericho Press (Alexandria, VA.) He set the text in Marathon and Monotype Garamond type on Somerset Book paper. The book features my nine two-color linocuts, two of them with additional hand coloring, and was bound at the Campbell-Logan Bindery (Fridley, MN.) Issued in a limited edition of 10, the book was created to honor the 50th Anniversary of the John Moorman Library (named for the great Anglican scholar of St. Francis) at the Anglican Centre in Rome.
Margaret Adams Parker is a long-time liturgical artist and theological educator. Her work – as sculptor, painter, and printmaker – includes commissions for Virginia Theological Seminary and Duke Divinity School and is in the collections of Duke University Chapel, the Cathedral College at Washington National Cathedral, the Library of Congress, and churches and religious institutions across the country. Parker is co-author of Praying the Stations of the Cross, Finding Hope in a Weary Land (Eerdmans) and Who are you, my daughter? Reading Ruth through Image and Text (Westminster John Knox.) Her art has been published by the United High Commissioner for Refugees, Christian Century, Tikkun, The Church of England Reader, ARTS (The Arts in Religious and Theological Studies), and Augsburg/Fortress Press.
Parker feels a special call to enlarge the canon of religious imagery by depicting holy figures as persons from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages (Revelation 7:9) and is currently working on a Navajo Christ for the Episcopal Diocese of Navajoland and a Bedouin Christ and Mary for the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem.
