Opening the Eyes: Harvard Square Churches

Photos by Portia Brockway

March 23 - April 20, 2002

Gallery hours by appointment
Phone: (617) 864-9642 ext. 7
Email: Portia Brockway

Resurrection Angel
Tiffany Stained Glass
First Church Congregational

Photo by Portia Brockway
Digital image prepared by Nancy Beckwith
Used by permission of First Church Congregational and Portia Brockway
All rights reserved

Artist's Statement

Opening the Eyes: Harvard Square Churches features over 100 photos of 16 Harvard Square area churches. Each church's story begs to be told. What I have put forward here only begins to weave the patterns of each one's history, future, and grace.

I would like to believe that somehow through these photographs I have begun to show how Church functions at its most ecstatic, an opened door that releases our pain, and which allows us to live day-to-day knowing awareness and bliss. The reason for churches is that they aid us in our loving devotions, through tools of worship, including light.

I have experienced a sense of being watched over as I traveled from church to church, met with clergy and laity, and was allowed into the sanctuaries for an hour or so. Each time, in my intimate state of aloneness, I received vital, visual images, an abiding sense of quiet, and fragrant beauty, from the smell of the wood to the lingering scent of people coming and going.

Opening the Eyes: Harvard Square Churches began by chance. I had taken some photos of angels, and had just picked up the prints. I felt the desire to go and sit at Hartnett's, the un-drug store at the corner of Church and Brattle streets, to view them. A friend of mine, the buyer there, came, looked over my shoulder, and, to my surprise, declared that she wanted to sell the angel images as Christmas season greeting cards.

This gave me the urge to use one-third of profits from card sales to benefit the homeless shelters at University Lutheran and First Church. Then came the natural progression into the involvement of local businesses that donated goods and service, to the support of the Harvard Square Clergy Association for the show that you see here, even to the beginnings of new relationships between formerly disparate church entities. From the outset, Opening the Eyes: Harvard Square Churches has had a life of its own. As Father Vasken, of Holy Trinity Church, said, "I have never heard of such an idea before." And neither had I.

And so here you are. Ten percent of profits from your purchases will go to support the Harvard Square Homeless Shelter. Be well in the presence of Divinity!

Prices:
8" x 12" framed or matted prints: $100.00 each
5" x 7" framed or matted prints: $50.00 each