Flag 14

CANTON (Stars)

First Church - Ipswich, Massachusetts

Glitter gathered from a Sunday School activity where children used it to represent their prayers.

FIELD (Stripes)

Bruce Herman’s Art Studio - Gloucester, Massachusetts

Oil paint splattered and dripped by Bruce Herman during the act of painting in his home studio.

CANTON DETAIL

CANTON STORY

This section of the flag was created during a Sunday School activity with small children at First Church in Ipswich, Massachusetts. The Sunday School teacher used the glitter as a physical symbol of the students’ prayers. Each student was asked to grab some glitter and throw it into the air as they spoke their prayer aloud. They then talked as a group about seeing each other's prayers - that there was a real beauty in sharing those prayers with each other and that there was something special that happened when those different prayers and thoughts were overlaid onto each other. I loved watching and listening to the students talk about their prayers with such a lightness and openness.

The circles on the flag section were made by the end of a cane from one of the teachers. She really wanted to be involved in the creation of the section so she made sure to leave her own print with the childrens’ “prayers”.

FIELD DETAIL

FIELD STORY

This section of the flag was made in Bruce Herman’s studio. Bruce is a painter whose art has been exhibited both nationally and internationally. Herman’s art is in many public and private art collections––among these, the Vatican Museums in Rome, Cincinnati Museum of Fine Arts, and Hammer Museum Grunewald Print Collection in L.A. Bruce is also a close friend, a mentor and my former boss. For two decades I’ve watched Bruce use his artwork to guide students, artists, collectors and friends through a deeper engagement with the world around them. He takes art seriously and I’ve watched him use it to build up the community around him.

The colors captured on the board are splatters, drips and marks created in the process of working on some of his paintings. I love what a mess he makes in the process of creating his work. There is weirdly something very American to me about embracing messy processes with a trust and hope that they will result in something beautiful.