Installation Art for Transfiguration Sunday

Over the past several years, I've really enjoyed thinking about different ways of decorating the sanctuary--beyond paraments and banners and flowers.  There's a fine balance--I don't want the focal elements to be too distracting.  But I do want to see if I can create something non-verbal and non-musical that can add to people's understanding of the Gospel, that can help foster a different attitude.

Yesterday was Transfiguration Sunday, a festival day where we celebrate Jesus going up a mountain with a selection of the disciples.  While there, his clothes and face glow, and Moses and Elijah (dead prophets) appear.

I wanted to create some sort of piece that would speak to that.  I had shimmering gold cloth and gold ribbons and lights.  I had a vision for a piece suspended high, but I wasn't sure how to do it.

Then I saw my wedding veil, with its wired headpiece, and I had a plan.  I got to work an hour before the Sunday service started, and created this:

It's not exactly what I had in mind, but nothing ever is.  As I developed my plan through the week, I worried that it would evoke something different:  a ghost or something Christmas-y, or something from a wedding.

Here's how it looks from a distance:

I like that it evokes the crown that Jesus will soon wear after his transfiguring time on the mountain top:  the crown of thorns.  I like that I used Christmas lights and ribbons to end the season of Epiphany.

And then after church, I took it all down:  time to prepare for the much more somber time of Lent.