WASHINGTON, D.C.—The exhibition features twenty of Margaret Adams Parker’s Laments: woodcuts that treat subjects as diverse as genocide in Darfur, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder among combat veterans, and the consequences of unsafe drinking water in the developing world. These moving images of suffering bracket the fourteen Stations of the Cross: stark, black-and-white woodcuts that commemorate Jesus’ journey to the cross. The combination of Stations with Lament constitutes a powerful Lenten meditation.
Parker writes about these images: “In creating the Stations of the Cross my goal was to convey the physical and spiritual weight of Christ’s Passion. Working on these images—across the span of 10 years—constituted a powerful meditation on the ways that the incarnate God suffers with us and for us. That experience intensified my sensitivity to suffering and has led, quite directly, to the creation of the other Laments. I hope that, as the Stations allow us to participate in Jesus’ journey to the Cross, so the Laments call us to witness to the world’s suffering and then stir us to respond.”
A long-time resident of Alexandria, Virginia, Margaret Adams Parker is a printmaker and sculptor who also teaches at Virginia Theological Seminary. Her woodcuts accompany Ellen Davis’s translation, Who Are You, My Daughter? Reading Ruth through Image and Text (Westminster John Knox Press); her set of 15 woodcuts, WOMEN, is in the collection of the Library of Congress; and African Exodus serves as frontispiece to the UNHCR publication Refugee Children. Her sculptures include MARY, installed in the Cathedral College of Washington National Cathedral, as well as in churches across the country. Her sculpture Reconciliation, depicting the parable of the prodigal son, was commissioned by Duke Divinity School, and her sculpture Grieving was among six final designs considered for Alexandria’s Contrabands and Freedmen’s Cemetery Memorial. Parker is currently depicting the Communion of Saints, life-sized figures to be etched onto glass, for St. Agnes Catholic Church, Shepherdstown, West Virginia. Parker has served as adjunct instructor in Theological Aesthetics at Virginia Theological Seminary since 1992. She writes and lectures widely on the church and the visual arts.
The exhibition is open daily through Good Friday, from 10 am to 5 pm.
Two programs are centered around the exhibition:
Friday, March 13, 6–9 pm
The Way of the Cross: A Lenten Pilgrimage
with artist Margaret Adams Parker
$30/regular; $25/student or senior
Pre-registration required: (202) 537-2373
or pilgimages@cathedral.org
Sunday, March 15, 2–4 pm
Reception with artist Margaret Adams Parker
Artist’s talk at 3 pm
Open to the public
SOURCE: Washington National Cathedral