…We pray you to illumine the world with the radiance of your glory… Peace I give to you; my own peace I leave with you…
From Noonday Prayer, BCP page 107.
“It gives me great peace to see the wonderful, sometimes minute, detail that comes from my developing trays after I have carefully, or maybe not so carefully, composed the plants on the photographic paper. The little feathery fern fronds and uncurling fiddleheads, I watch emerging in the spring after a long snowy winter. I am, every year, thrilled by the beautiful bank of purple iris growing along my neighbor’s fence. Living where I do in Maine, I cannot miss the vast fields of Lupine! It is the utter simplicity of this material that I see when creating these images.
I spend hours collecting the plant material, from roadside ditches, farm fields, the sandy or rocky shores. It is an unending bounty all spread out before me in every season. Even with 10 inches of snow on the ground, there are always the evergreens. These are my inspiration laid on for me by God morning, noon and night; winter, spring, summer, and fall.”
– Anne Wetzel
Anne Wetzel is a photographer who lives on Mt. Desert Island in Maine. Her publications include Through the Window of the Ordinary; Experiences of Holy Week, a journey through Holy Week at St. James Cathedral, Chicago; and Lambeth Crosses, a montage of Bishops’ crosses taken at the 1998 Lambeth Conference of the Anglican Communion.
On View: Early Spring – Ferns, Silver Gelatin Photogram, 20″ x 16″ by Anne Wetzel, 2005
From: “Illustrating the Hours“, an exhibition of Episcopal Church and Visual Arts, ecva.org