Talk to Discuss Ties Between Religion and Arts

Friday, January 26, 2001

The church offers fertile ground for exploring the intersection of art and religion, according to artist Catherine Kapikian, whose lecture, "Art and the Holy," will be presented at Duke Divinity School on Jan. 30. As founder and director of the Center for the Arts and Religion at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C., Kapikian has fostered the center's growth to include visiting artists, an art studio and museum-quality exhibit space in the Dadian Gallery. Kapikian's talk and slide show will be from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. in the Alumni Memorial Common Room. A Jan. 31 workshop, "Re-Visioning Worship Space," will take place from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. in the Divinity School's York Chapel. The artists are encouraged to audit Wesley's theological courses. An open-door policy at the art studio encourages interaction between visitors and the working artists. In addition, students at Wesley, a sister school of Duke Divinity (both are among the 13 United Methodist-affiliated seminaries in this country), are required to take at least one studio art course. The goal, said Kapikian, is to help form clergy who are as literate in the arts as they are in scripture. "In the visual arts, there is a vocabulary that is as alien to many seminarians as Greek or Hebrew," she said. "If you don't understand the vocabulary, you cannot comprehend visual theological proclamation. You also need to understand the history of the traditions that have engaged this kind of vocabulary." Kapikian began her art career as a painter and now works in textiles. She also serves as a consultant and accepts commissions from churches and synagogues across the country, often designing artworks that church members complete in needlework.

For more information about the Stuart C. Henry Religion and the Arts series, contact the Divinity School's Center for Continuing Education at (919) 660-3448, or by e-mail at div-conted@div.duke.edu.