Environment & Art

The beginning of Advent is a great “clean slate” for the environmental designer. The seeds and themes planted during Advent can come to fruition throughout the liturgical year. At this stage there is no need to know what that fruition will look like; the important thing is to plant good seeds. If you have taken to heart the suggestions of previous articles, you will have studied the Gospels for Year A and shared some parish discussion about themes everyone felt might echo between the historical readings and your parish community. Ideally, these discussions will take you in new and exciting directions. Continue to dialogue with the community throughout the liturgical year.

There is a very important technique used by storytellers that you as a visual artist need to remember. A storyteller always knows the end of the story with its moral or message and uses the story to bring the audience to the point of hearing and accepting that ending. In the same way you can decide what you want to create for Christmas and work backwards to Advent.

One year I wanted to create a nativity creche out of cardboard boxes, recent newspapers and other items similar to those used by the homeless to create shelters. Bad-news items of disease, war and economic fallout were well-documented in pictures and words and pasted on the “walls” along with gold-painted words like “hope,” “joy,” “peace” and “love,” with a candle below each word. Those who came to this initially unattractive scene quickly saw that the Christ Child came as Good News to a world in need of it. The pastor spoke most elegantly in his homily that our life stories are like newspapers, with Jesus as the Good News; in his homily he linked the word with the environment. It gave people something to talk about to their children, this linking church and life.

The environment was very simple, and, according to the parish evaluations, effective.

If you plan such an environment, food and clothing collection bins for the hungry and needy could attend the scene.

As preparation for such a Christmas scene, mark the space where the nativity set will go, as a way to develop an expectation. If you are worried about offending parishioners with something too avant garde, you might place the wreath in the center of the soon-to-be nativity space, with an Advent candle at each corner of the area, the whole marked off with purple cord or rope. (Any cotton-covered rope will dye quite easily.) If you are able to risk something more adventurous, maybe you could use yellow “caution” tape hung between orange traffic cones, all roughly painted with Advent colors.

In either case, as each candle is lit, items could be placed at the foot of that week’s candle to develop the idea of the homeless nativity. Safe items would be: a clock, (for the first week), a tiny tree (for the second week), a white cane or pair of crutches (for the third week) and a pair of baby shoes (for the fourth week). If you read the Scriptures for each Sunday in Advent, you will find many other items to use. If you wanted to be more “edgy” try dismantling the clock, snapping the tree, breaking the cane and hanging the baby shoes over a small cross.

Perhaps you have some feelings in reading the foregoing. You might find the ideas outlandish or great or “too much” or frighteningly interesting. You might feel threatened or let down, saying to yourself, “This has no practical use in my parish.” Please use these feelings to ask yourself what you think is important in liturgical design. Is it about making people feel as if they are in a pretty picture-card Christmas scene or is it finding a way to begin the process of metanoia, of continually turning to the transformative God who calls us home? There is no one “right” answer. Each community must grow and change at its own pace, but it will never happen without visionary leadership and without artists.