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Interview: Wendy Shaw, curator, Burning Bush Barn

by
18 January 2013

'If you want people to stick around and be contemplative, they need to be warm, comfortable, have a drink, feel that they're loved.'

My title is Bishop's Officer for Ministry through Creative Visual Arts. In effect, that means I am full-time curator of all events, workshops, exhibitions, and experiences that take place at Burning Bush Barn.

Burning Bush Barn is a contemplative art space situated in Rockland St Mary, a village six miles south of Norwich. It is a restored stable or barn that used to belong to the Old Rectory, but it's now retained in the grounds of the new rectory, where I live with my husband, John. He's the Rector of this six-church benefice.

I'm paid part-time, but, of course, I'm working here full-time, because it's my life. It's a resource for the diocese and beyond. We have a Christian foundation, and, as a priest, my concern is holding the core sacramental tension between the arts, creativity, and spirituality.

The idea had been forming over many years' thinking about art, healing, and prayer. It's "contemplative" because we are running out of places where we can be silent, undisturbed, ask questions, and ponder the mysteries. It's "art" because it's non-verbal, expressive, ancient, and inclusive. It's "space" because life needs to be more spacious, simpler.

Less is more, and that's a daring thing to say these days. We are not a big project, and we're not trying to be a big project.

We tried driving around trying to meet people's needs in other parts of the diocese, but the depth at which we were trying to work was impossible to set up in a church hall, full of clutter. We'd spend an hour trying to make these spaces more visually pleasing and warm.

Just as we came to the conclusion that we needed a permanent space, this vicarage came up. We had an obstruction from the planning department to begin with. It's in a narrow lane, used by a school, and there were obvious traffic issues. But we asked the man to come and stand in the Barn as it was then, wet and damp, and he did - a miracle in itself. There's such a presence there, he said: "I get it now." That sense of safety is beyond anything we can provide. Some spaces are just like that. We got permission because we said we wouldn't encourage any visiting between school-traffic times.

People come for our foundation days from Canterbury, Devon, Sussex, Norwich, Cambridge. . . And every Thursday the local community of artists, some driving for 40 or 50 minutes to get here, have a breakfast here, break bread informally, break open our lives together, talk about our work and struggles, encourage each other. Three exhibitions have come out of it.

We honour process above product. We are a growing collective of visual artists, weavers, sculptors, musicians, photographers, ceramicists, poets, writers, filmmakers, and sound artists, and we all have "process" in common. We all share the same struggles, isolation, emptiness, and celebration. That process can be a spiritual experience.

But we're not a gallery; we're not a church. We're more than that. Local people are very proud of it, and have been very supportive in terms of upkeep.

It's quite a struggle to hold that space between the arts and the church, and I think it needs a priest to do that. It is the sacramental part which is in the space between the two. It's not a church - "let's make a body of people" - nor a school of artists. We are about sticking in the middle.

Why should we box something by giving it a classification? Perhaps we'd call it a school, or a para-church, or "Fresh Expression" in order to say that we know it, determine what direction it will take, or who will participate. But I dislike boxes. They are restrictive to creative growth, uniqueness, and individuality, and also, in a sense, relate to permanency. I prefer to acknowledge layers, where different identities can merge and overlap making something new. Maybe the Barn is none of those classifications, or maybe it's all of them.

Living creatively is a way of life, not a thing that we do. It's a movement in time, constantly changing with the people that come.

The sacrament is very important. We do this in a very informal way here. We use the art or a piece of sculpture, and out of that come the eucharistic words - and that changes every time. I have people here who are not Christians, might be on the edge, might feel that the Christian faith is not for them, but they are happy to be here.

Our rule of life is that we live for what we have, not what we haven't. Everything is a gift. We give thanks for that.

It can be very lonely. Most pioneering ministers would say that. We're always on the edge. But it's OK if we don't understand and we don't know.

Our different gifts and callings were carefully considered by our bishops here in Norwich. To find the right placement, however, took courage to wait, and enormous trust in something unique, unknown, and emerging.

If you want people to stick around and be contemplative, they need to be warm, comfortable, have a drink, feel that they're loved. I guess there's a feeling here of coming home, a bit. We have to look after our bodies - they are the house of our spirits. It makes my heart sing if I walk in and find someone asleep here.

Eric Gill said: "Not every artist is a special kind of person, but every person is a special kind of artist." I think that that is what is intended, as we are made in the likeness of God who created, still does, and will do through us all. The trouble is, through unhelpful education and judgemental attitudes, we've lost the confidence that creativity is our nature. The Barn is about enabling people to reclaim that creative identity.

A childhood in an inner-city pub taught me how to listen and to serve, albeit in a very harsh way. Teaching profoundly deaf children taught me about non-verbal, visual ways of communication. Theological study and consequently ordination to the priesthood is teaching me about the God who loves to play, create, make, mend, shape, carve, weave, colour, in and through our lives.

My short-term ambition is to raise £75,000 for a common room, with space to locate the developing library of art and spirituality books, DVDs, and image-loan service. Long term? I'd like to chill out in that space.

My childhood ambition was to go to art college. I haven't made it yet.

Alongside my immediate family, John, Jo, and Jake, I have been most influenced by Cicely Jellyman and her husband, Don, who were my art-teachers at secondary school in Worcester. They taught me the meaning of creativity in life situations. Like: a problem isn't the end: it's an opportunity for something more.

Important books: A Way of Life, by Jim Ede; My Name is Asher Lev, by Chaim Potok; The Artist's Rule, by Christine Valters Paintner.

My home is my favourite place: a door to close, a feather bed, a hot bath, and food on the table. It is where I belong and I am loved.

I love the Visitation in Luke 2, and, of course, the Burning Bush in Exodus 3. Both of these narratives underpin our work here.

The phrase "We've always done it this way" makes me angry. And exclusiveness, particularly in the Church. We do things in ways that mean some people can't participate, and we can be so reluctant to change to accommodate them.

Usually, for me, happiness is related to being centred, at one with myself, content in the moment wherever or whatever is happening.

Yes, I do pray. But to me prayer is more like a place that I enter rather than a doing or an asking. My practice is to pray non-verbally with colour, mark, and line. The American painter Edward Hopper said: "If I could say it in words I wouldn't need to paint it." Prayer is a realm beyond words for me, and so I cannot use words to describe it, but I know that I am changed, and release happens by being in that place.

I'd like to be locked in a church with Bill W., the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous. Richard Rohr says: "The New Testament called it salvation and enlightenment, the twelve-step programme of AA calls it recovery." The same things, but different language: suffer to get well, surrender to win, die to live, give it away to keep it. AA is a programme that I've seen help change people's lives and bring them to their higher power. It may not be the same higher power that we experience, but it still takes them on a journey. I'd love to know what he looked like, have a conversation with him, explore this further. Bill would be able to help us with some of the unnecessary patriarchal power addictions we have in the Church, and would echo Mary's song, "He has lifted up the lowly and brought down the mighty from their thrones of power." But, then again, I'm not sure Bill would come. He would probably choose to stay in the inner room.

The Revd Wendy Shaw was talking to Terence Handley MacMath.

bbbarn@gmail.com

burningbushbarn.blogspot.com

 

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