- Title of Piece: Passages
- Date of Creation: 2007
- Location: Meditation Room, George Washington University Medical Center, Washington, DC
- Brief Description: This non-objective work (no recognizable imagery) designed and fabricated by Kapikian is the centerpiece of this inter-faith, minimalist space frequented by the resident Muslim, Jewish, and Christian community. Because it bears painted design on both sides of its wooden vertical slats, the work is a non-static piece. With each movement of the viewer, it is seen and experienced differently. It communicates through the power of suggestion and nuance, obliquely.
- Photographer Info: Catherine Kapikian
- Title of Piece: Passages (detail)
- Date of Creation: 2007
- Location: Meditation Room, George Washington University Medical Center, Washington, DC
- Photographer Info: Catherine Kapikian
- Title of Piece: Chapel Reredos
- Date of Creation: 2000
- Location: West Market Street United Methodist Church, Greensboro, NC
- Brief Description: This work, designed by Kapikian and needle pointed by members of the congregation, faces a wall of glass at its opposite end. On the other side of this glass wall is an entrance area with large glass doors fronting a major street in downtown Greensboro. At night this work is illuminated and thus offers a gesture of visual hospitality to the surrounding community. Closer viewing discloses an unfolding Christian drama of creation companioned by symbols of the salvation story. The wooden tracery in this work, its painting, the blocking of the individual pieces of needlepoint, and its installation, as in other work created through a process of participatory aesthetics, were accomplished by members of the congregation.
- Photographer Info: Catherine Kapikian
- Title of Piece: Chapel Reredos (detail)
- Date of Creation: 2000
- Location: West Market Street United Methodist Church, Greensboro, NC
- Brief Description: A close-up of some of the symbols used in the reredos.
- Photographer Info: Catherine Kapikian
- Title of Piece: Kneelers
- Date of Creation: 2000
- Location: Abiding Presence Lutheran Church, Greenbelt, MD
- Brief Description: These kneelers, comprised of sixty running feet surrounding a rectangular communion rail, were designed by Kapikian and needle pointed by members of the congregation. This visualized salvation story, intentionally designed as a painting surrounding table, pulpit, and lectern, yields a transparent form that undulates through the total piece and through which the congregation views symbols of the salvation narrative. The undulating form symbolizes the water of baptism, a particularly significant ritual to this community that annually participates in a service of baptismal renewal. At the entrance of the sanctuary is a very large and handsome baptismal font.
- Photographer Info: Catherine Kapikian
- Title of Piece: Exodus Kneeler (on the wings of an eagle)
- Date of Creation: 2000
- Location: Abiding Presence Lutheran Church, Greenbelt, MD
- Brief Description: This details of the Exodus Kneelers is part of the sixty running feet surrounding a rectangular communion rail, designed by Kapikian and needle pointed by members of the congregation.
- Photographer Info: Catherine Kapikian
- Title of Piece: Reredos
- Date of Creation: 2000
- Location: Kennedy Heights Presbyterian Church, Cincinnati, Ohio
- Brief Description: Prior to this installation designed by Kapikian and needle pointed by members of the congregation, only the central rectangular wooden tracery enclosing a brocade dossal cloth existed. The cross, a gift given in 1960 and also suspended over the original dossal cloth, was a prerequisite of the new design. A single cell or square unit of design, divided by the same number of fixed lines, provided the unifying visual substance for this Trinitarian work. By rotating or reversing this cell and coloring each one differently, the Creator (six pointed star), the Redeemer (cross), and the Sustainer (descending dove/Holy Spirit) exist as separate entities despite their being of the same visual substance. This design solution spoke to this racially balanced, integrated community.
- Photographer Info: Catherine Kapikian
- Title of Piece: Reredos (detail)
- Date of Creation: 2000
- Location: Kennedy Heights Presbyterian Church, Cincinnati, Ohio
- Brief Description: Detail of the Six Pointed Star symbolizing the Creator
- Photographer Info: Catherine Kapikian
- Title of Piece: Table and Ambo Paraments for Advent
- Date of Creation: 2000
- Location: Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary, Evanston, IL
- Brief Description: There are six seasons represented in this commissioned sets of paraments designed and fabricated by Kapikian. Each set is respectful of the chancel furniture distinguished by open rectangular forms puncturing their surfaces. On the table parament of each set, all four sides contain imagery, and in the Lenten set, every side is a different image taken from the narrative of Holy Week. The visual imaging of light in the Advent set symbolically suggests the in-breaking of the kingdom of God, while the Advent cross (missing its upper arm) symbolizes the as yet unfulfilled scripture heralding the coming of the Messiah.
- Photographer Info: Catherine Kapikian
- Title of Piece: Table and Ambo Paraments for Pentecost
- Date of Creation: 2000
- Location: Garrett Evangelical theological Seminary, Evanston, IL
- Brief Description: In these panels visual imagery references tongues of fire and the Holy Spirit descending upon the disciples.
- Photographer Info: Catherine Kapikian
- Title of Piece: Sunday after Pentecost Paraments
- Date of Creation: 2000
- Location: Garrett Evangelical theological Seminary, Evanston, IL
- Brief Description: In these panels, the tree, an image taken from nature, symbolically alludes to the idea of spiritual growth while a symbol of the Trinity roots the tree.
- Photographer Info: Catherine Kapikian
- Title of Piece: Reredos
- Date of Creation: 1990
- Location: Metropolitan Memorial United Methodist Church, Washington DC
- Brief Description: Metropolitan Memorial United Methodist Church, Washington DC
Description: This chancel tapestry (10’x 30’), designed by Kapikian and needle pointed by members of the congregation. The upper tier bears symbols of our Trinitarian understanding of God, the middle tier symbols of the disciples, and the lower tier crosses for six liturgical seasons. These symbols float upon an interconnected design compatible with the work’s Gothic Revival architectural context, as well as provide the congregation with a richly complex visual for meditation. In their aggregate, the panels form a cross. The vertical bracketing stepping stone pattern in each of the panels mimics the massive stepping stone pattern in the masonry walls flanking the central isle.
- Photographer Info: Catherine Kapikian
- Title of Piece: Reredos (detail of Advent panel)
- Date of Creation: 1990
- Location: Metropolitan Memorial United Methodist Church, Washington DC
- Brief Description: Metropolitan Memorial United Methodist Church, Washington DC
Description: This chancel tapestry (10’x 30’), designed by Kapikian and needle pointed by members of the congregation. The upper tier bears symbols of our Trinitarian understanding of God, the middle tier symbols of the disciples, and the lower tier crosses for six liturgical seasons. These symbols float upon an interconnected design compatible with the work’s Gothic Revival architectural context, as well as provide the congregation with a richly complex visual for meditation. In their aggregate, the panels form a cross. The vertical bracketing stepping stone pattern in each of the panels mimics the massive stepping stone pattern in the masonry walls flanking the central isle.
- Photographer Info: Catherine Kapikian
- Title of Piece: Worship Center (closed and unfurnished)
- Date of Creation: 1987
- Location: Asbury Methodist Village Health Care Center, Gaithersburg, MD
- Brief Description: Residents who are able to sit in wheelchairs are transported to an all purpose room in the basement where they participate in a variety of activities including the tossing of a plastic ball at plastic pins set up under this object. Other times, crafted two -dimensional works by the residents are tacked against this tryptic (41/2’ x 14’ x 7”). On Sunday morning in a manner of seconds, it swings open and the covered furniture (swiftly uncovered) with castors is wheeled over to transform an otherwise utilitarian space into a worship space able to accommodate wheel chairs. This very tactile worship center designed and fabricated by Kapikian yields bold imagery for infirmed eyesight.
- Photographer Info: Catherine Kapikian
- Title of Piece: Worship Center
- Date of Creation: 1987
- Location: Asbury Methodist Village Health Care Center, Gaithersburg, MD
- Brief Description: Residents who are able to sit in wheelchairs are transported to an all purpose room in the basement where they participate in a variety of activities including the tossing of a plastic ball at plastic pins set up under this object. Other times, crafted two -dimensional works by the residents are tacked against this tryptic (41/2’ x 14’ x 7”). On Sunday morning in a manner of seconds, it swings open and the covered furniture (swiftly uncovered) with castors is wheeled over to transform an otherwise utilitarian space into a worship space able to accommodate wheel chairs. This very tactile worship center designed and fabricated by Kapikian yields bold imagery for infirmed eyesight.
- Photographer Info: Catherine Kapikian
- Title of Piece: Song of Songs Huppah
- Date of Creation: 1987
- Location: B’nai Israel Synagogue, North Bethesda, MD
- Brief Description: This Jewish Wedding Canopy (15’ x 15’ x 10’)with its lacquered wood frame in which over fifty fine linen appliquéd panels embellished by wool braid reside, was designed and fabricated by Kapikian. The lower tier yields imagery symbolic of a literal interpretation of the Song of Songs. Here images of the lovers, or the woman longing for her lover, are seen through a visual transparency of images of the flora and fauna of the Holy Land. The upper tier yields images of exodus and exile intermingling with images of an eagle, a symbol of God in the Hebrew Bible. For the Jewish People, The Song of Songs is a symbolic representation of God’s love for the chosen people, represented in each of the four sides of the upper tier. The people visualized in each of the four sides of the lower tier represent the chorus found in the scripture.
- Photographer Info: Catherine Kapikian
- Title of Piece: Song of Songs Huppah (detail)
- Date of Creation: 1987
- Location: B’nai Israel Synagogue, North Bethesda, MD
- Brief Description: This detail shows the upper tier with Moses holding the Tablets, the Chosen People and olive trees from the Holy Land.
- Photographer Info: Catherine Kapikian
- Title of Piece: Song of Songs Huppah (detail)
- Date of Creation: 1987
- Location: B’nai Israel Synagogue, North Bethesda, Md
- Brief Description: Detail of a Jewish Wedding Canopy showing the lower tier presented on the studio wall.
- Photographer Info: Catherine Kapikian