This past week, Tom Hutton (our wonderful Congregational Administrator) hung up art from our last four years of “Artist of the Year” monthly theme art. I can’t express how I feel to walk past that art every day–to remember the themes they represented and how we explored them together, and to think of the amazing artists in our community who helped create them.

Actually, WES is a community of many artists. I see that every time we decorate for a celebration like Winter Festival, or even when we throw a party! This year, we are looking for ways to bring even more art, and more artists, together to enhance our visual experience of our time together. Here are two ways you can be involved.

(1) Artist of the Year – WES’ children and youth! This year we are inviting our children and youth to submit photographs of the upcoming month’s theme (a list appears at the end of this blog). We will create a collage of their images for the monthly art. Please email photos to me at amandap@ethicalsociety.org by the 20th of the month before (except this month–because of summer schedules, we will accept photos until August 30th). Parents: please share this invitation, and your phone cameras, with your kids!

(2) Monthly Visuals – Inspired by workshops several of the program staff have taken from Marcia McFee (who calls herself a “ritual artist!”), and based on ideas from a gathering in June with about twenty WES members who wanted to talk about how to engage with our themes, we are increasing the visuals we have around us on Sunday. You’ll see some of that in the slides we project, but we also have some pretty amazing ideas for how to incorporate visuals in the Main Hall and Social Hall, including interactive displays that can connect us more deeply as a community. If you are someone who enjoys thinking about and creating visuals (if you like decorating, or building, or crafting, or designing), you might want to be part of a monthly team! You can let us know which month you’d like to work on–based on your availability, or based on which theme really speaks to you–and we’ll connect you with others and with the ideas. We’ll also reimburse the cost of supplies, of course.

I often think of our Community Sharing time as one of the ways that we “democratize religion” at WES–intentionally including space for other voices (and watch out for how we will play with that a bit this coming fall too, creating different kinds of spaces for those of us that aren’t public speakers!). These opportunities for art feel like another opportunity for democratizing our time together, giving space for your creativity to inspire engagement from many people. I’m so excited to see what we will build together. Please let me know if you’d like to be part of the fun!

~Amanda

Monthly Themes

September – Vision

October – Sanctuary

November – Memory

December – Mystery

January – Possibility

February – Trust

March – Journey

April – Wholeness

May – Curiosity

June – Beauty