Category: Quaker Artists 3

Four stained glass windows depict Elizabeth Fry, the English reformer.

Elizabeth Fry (1780-1845), called the “Angel of Prisons”, was instrumental in improving the conditions of prisoners, especially female inmates. Her life was spent visiting prisons to help in any way she could: providing food and clothes, establishing schools for children, teaching skills that could be used in jobs after release. She was responsible for the 1823 Gaols Act and helped pass the 1835 Prisons Act. She also worked for the homeless and against slavery and opened one of the first schools for nurses.

Fry was born into the Gurneys, an old Quaker family, and married into the Frys, another old Quaker family. Inspired by the preaching of Friends minister William Savery in 1798, she became a Plain Friend and was recorded as a minister in 1811. Stephen Grellet, another Quaker minister, persuaded her to begin her prison ministry. More than a thousand people stood in silence during her burial. Her grave is located at the Friends Burial Ground in Barking, Essex.

The “Elizabeth Fry Window” is in the north wall at St. Mark’s Church, an Anglican church, in Camberwell, a suburb of Melbourne, Australia. It was created c. 1935 by Napier and Christian Waller.

The “Noble Women Windows” in the west stair and atrium of the Liverpool Anglican Cathedral contains a panel portraying Fry. The original window was designed in 1921 by J.W. Brown but was destroyed by bombing during the Second World War. It was replaced in 1948 by a simpler version made by Carl Edwards and James Hogan.

The “Humanitarians I Window” in the north wall of the nave of the Washington National Cathedral, an Episcopalian church, displays Fry. It was produced in 1958 by Rowan and Irene Matz LeCompte.

The “Window to Womanhood” in the north wall of the nave in All Saints’ Church, an Anglican church, in Cambridge, England, has a panel showing Fry. It was constructed in 1944 by Douglas Strachan.

In addition, Elizabeth Fry is commemorated by a statue in the Old Bailey Criminal Court in London and by her image on a £5 note issued by the Bank of England. She is also shown on panels E5 and E6 in the Quaker Tapestry.

Two quotes by Rowan LeCompte:

“May all the windows work together to achieve a great visual music that will sing harmoniously with the architecture so to truly lift the heart and in every moment of daylight offer up its radiant prayer of passionate praise and gratitude.”

(Recalling that when his rose window was unveiled, a young girl danced in the colored light that poured onto the floor within the cathedral and when asked what she was doing, she said), “I’m dancing because I found the end of the rainbow.”

Stained glass windows do not show up in Friends Meetinghouses, though they do appear in Friends Churches. I prefer the plainness of our Meetinghouses. But I glory in the colors of these windows!

(Below are St. Mark’s Church, Liverpool Anglican Church, Washington National Cathedral and All Saint’s Church).

Gary Sandman

March 2023

Norman Morrison burned himself to death in front of Secretary of Defense McNamara’s office at the Pentagon on November 2, 1965.  He did this in protest of the Vietnam War.  Morrison had been inspired by Buddhist monks, who were setting themselves on fire in Saigon.  He was a member of Stony Run Meeting in Baltimore as well as its Executive Secretary.

“Of Late” is a poem by George Starbuck about Morrison’s death.  It portrays the burning of a draft card, the burning of Morrison and the burning of Vietnamese.  It describes the media reaction to Morrison’s act.  Finally, it explores the language of Morrison’s burning and what Starbuck saw as the Quaker connection to that language.

George Starbuck (1931-1996) was an American neo-formalist poet.  Generally, he composed light, humorous verses.  A passionate opponent of the Vietnam War, however, he also wrote angry anti-war poetry.  His books included Bone Thoughts, Talkin’ B.A. Blues, Visible Ink and Poems Selected from Five Decades. He taught at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop and Boston University.   Among other honors, he was awarded the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize,the Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry and the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize.

I think “Of Late” is a powerful, horrific piece.  It reflects those bloody days of the Vietnam War.

While I remain convinced that Morrison’s act was wrong, I continue to be haunted by it.  

A link to George Starbuck reading “Of Late”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vytZ4fZEoEM&t=820s. For those whose links don’t deliver you to the poem directly, the reading begins at 13:40.

(Above is a photograph of the Quaker vigil held at the Pentagon on the first anniversary of Morrison’s death).

Gary Sandman

February 2023

Tracy Chevalier (b. 1962) is a British/American writer. Though considered a historical novelist, she explores issues with which people still struggle, like racism and sexism. Her books include The Virgin Blue, Falling Angels, Remarkable Creatures and A Single Thread.  Her best-selling work is The Girl with the Pearl Earring. She is a Trustee of the British Library Board and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Chevalier has worshiped with Friends for over 40 years. As a child, for seven summers, she attended Camp Catoctin, a Baltimore Yearly Meeting camp. Years later, on a New York City street, overwhelmed by its noise, she remembered the 15 minutes of silent worship in which the campers participated every morning. It led her back to Friends Meeting. Now a British citizen, she continues to worship at Hampstead Meeting in London. She has also appeared in a film about her visit to Pendle Hill, highlighting a new Quaker Walk there.

The Last Runaway is Chevalier’s novel about Honor Bright, an English Friend who emigrates to Ohio in 1850. Bright slowly becomes involved in the Underground Railroad. Silence (and quilts) are repeated motifs in the book. Accounts of the racist customs which Friends practiced, like the infamous Negro Pews, on which Friends of Color were forced to sit, separate from White Friends, are also included.

Tracy Chevalier is a fine writer. I loved The Last Runaway. Bright’s experience of Meeting for Worship is something I’ve rarely seen described in fiction. As well, I found the depiction of the inner life of Bright as a woman remarkable and, at times, very moving.

A quote about writing The Last Runaway and about Meeting for Worship:

“I found, too, that it is not easy to describe silence. When I sit in Meeting, I am constantly chasing away thoughts, which are made up of words. Ideally, when I manage to hold thoughts at bay, I enter into a state that I cannot describe. This is true as well when writing about silence.

“The best I can hope is that my imprecise attempt to describe silence will pique readers’ curiosity into seeking it out for themselves. It is worth quieting the mind for.”

Gary Sandman

January 2023

Chris Zurich (b. 1987) is an American singer and songwriter. His music is a blend of folk and electronica while his voice is reminiscent of Sam Cooke. His album Black Ink contains original songs, and he plays many cover songs on his social media. Zurich performs regularly in the New York City subways. As well, he has appeared on the X-Factor as a finalist and provided back-up vocals on Kanye West’s album Life of Pablo. Nowadays, sometimes, he is to be found in Los Angeles.

Zurich is not a Friend, but he attended and later taught at Quaker elementary schools. At the schools, he says, he learned about equality, peace and the environment. He adds that he saw that Quaker worship was open for anyone to lead it.

I was charmed by Chris Zurich’s soulful, expressive voice and his deeply felt songs. He is one of those performers who should be better known!

A quote: “I have only good things to say about Quakerism… It’s about treating everyone with the same respect… So I always found that cool and something I could get behind. I wouldn’t say I think about it on a daily basis right now in my New York existence, but it’s definitely embedded in who I am. I try to leave people and situations better than I found them. That’s a very Quaker way of going about life”.

And two links, one to his “Destinations” video and one to his “A Change is Gonna Come” busk in the Times Square subway station:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rJDGrCbsbU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLv8sL3sL7Y&t=87s

Gary Sandman

December 2022

Ye Quakerre Weddynge (1894) is a pencil sketch on brown paper by Richard Morris Smith.  (Pictured below).  It shows the marriage ceremony of Bertrand Russell and Alys Pearsall Smith at the Westminster Friends Meetinghouse.  The guests were a mix of Friends and non-Friends, a few of the Quakers still in plain dress.  Humorous captions appear near many of the people as well as the warning, “Kyinde Friends are requested to observe that this does not purport to be a precisely accurate representation of a Ffriends silent meeting”.  Written descriptions of the event also differ from the sketch.  (The Meetingroom itself was bombed by the Luftwaffe in World War Two and had to be rebuilt after the war).  In 1999 a photograph of the drawing was donated to Britain’s National Portrait Gallery by Barbara Halpern.

Little is known about Richard Morris Smith.  He was a cousin of the bride. A caption in the lower right of the sketch refers to one person as, “Having no name for the gent on the right, he was dubbed Hon. Noisy Cloqueur”.  (He is yelling “Bravo”).  That is probably Smith.

Russell agreed to the wedding ceremony because Smith wanted it, but he was reluctant since he was an atheist.  (He joked that he was going to compose a poem, “From all Quaker weddings, Good Lord deliver us” and later recalled the experience as “terrifying”).   After a guest offered ministry about the Miracle at Cana during the ceremony, Smith, a temperance advocate, felt distinctly uncomfortable.  Smith adored Russell, calling her love for him “a kind of religion”.  Nevertheless, they divorced in 1921.  Smith never remarried, though Russell did so three times and also engaged in many affairs.

I thought Ye Quakerre Weddynge was delightful.  Some of the other captions read, “a Weightie Elderre (20 Stone)”, “Ye 2 naughtie Elderres” with one noting to the other, “Beholde how fayre shee bee”, and an adult admonishing two young girls, “Children don’t fidget”. 

Because the drawing is difficult to see unless you expand it, here is a link where you may do so: https://www.google.com/search?q=a+quaker+wedding+drawing&sxsrf=ALiCzsY0hcGZdIIKEDMhvTo315cYibwOrg:1667704235714&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj7hL20ypj7AhVGEFkFHS9qBRwQ_AUoAXoECAIQAw&biw=1367&bih=842&dpr=1#imgrc=aUE_bCRy3oit1M

Gary Sandman

November 2022

Janet Hyland is an Irish painter and writer. Influenced by British artist L.S. Lowry, using “Lowry colors”, she paints in the naïve and icon traditions. She calls herself, more than anything, a sign painter and her pictures Plain Paintings. The Quaker Meeting, to the right, uses pastels and is mounted on wood. Pillars of Power is a painting of a Meeting for Worship that gathered on the steps of St. Paul’s Cathedral during the time of the Occupy encampment there. As well, many of her paintings are of English and foreign village scenes. Hyland writes a blog, Janet Hyland’s Paintings: Scribbles on Wood, commenting on Quakers, travel, painting, family, pop culture and her goth teenage years. Several of her paintings appear in the blog.

Hyland is an Irish Quaker. She first became involved in Friends during a memorable visit to the Jordans Meetinghouse as a teenager in the 1970’s. She said, “That night I stepped out of my safe sheltered world into the endless vistas of possibility”. In 2017 she gave a talk at Britain Yearly Meeting on “The Art Behind Icons”.

Janet Hyland’s paintings are delightful. The Quaker Meeting is a charming picture of Friends. But her daughter Jessy’s observations about the painting say it best:

“It’s bizarre Mum. It looks right but it’s all wrong. What have you done to me? I don’t look like that. And why is the room moving? They seem to be floating. And where’s the light coming from? There’s no real shadows. And what’s the daffodil doing between the dark twins. It sort of goes up through the man sitting bolt upright to the light above. That man’s leg is just an arch and he has no hands. And why are their eyes all open? What are they looking at? That bench is weighed down at one end which isn’t possible. Is that a young boy or girl sitting next to the old man? They sit together but they look the other way. Nothing is real and nothing fits, like things aren’t in proportion and other bits are missing…and yet it does sort of fit and it feels calm and peaceful.”

Hyland’s blog also contains wonderful pieces, especially “The Memory Twig Tree”.

Gary Sandman

October 2022

A photograph of Lucretia Mott was taken around 1875.  It depicts her in a traditional Quaker bonnet and dress with a shawl, seated.  The photographer was Frederick Gutekunst, the “dean of American photographers”, who took the pictures of many celebrated personages, including Lincoln, Whitman, Longfellow and Grant.  In addition, he was known for his photographs of the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Gettysburg battlefield.  The original photograph rests now in the Library of Congress.  Three other photographs and two paintings also show Mott, either as an individual or in a group.

Lucretia Mott (1793-1880) was a member of Abington (PYM) Meeting.  Raised a Nantucket Quaker, she attended the Nine Partners Friends School.  In 1821 she became a Quaker minister, and in 1827 she joined with other Friends to form the Hicksite branch of Quakers.  She was also a clerk of the Philadelphia Women’s Yearly Meeting and helped found Swarthmore College.  Mott was a prominent abolitionist and feminist, participating in the American Anti-Slavery Society and the Equal Rights Association.  She assisted slaves to escape through the Underground Railroad.  During the 1838 Pennsylvania Hall riot she was threatened with violence by a pro-slavery mob.  A pacifist, Mott was active in the Universal Peace Union, of which she was vice-president. The Portrait Monument in the United States Capitol Rotunda commemorates her, along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. 

The Lucretia Mott photograph is striking, a clear picture of Lucretia Mott’s indomitable spirit.

Gary Sandman

September 2022

Edward Sorel (b. 1929) is an American cartoonist and writer. His work usually focuses on political topics, though occasionally it touches on other subjects, and it is enlivened with his sardonic humor. The cartoons are pen-and-ink sketches, filled out with watercolors and pastels. The best of them, in his words, are “spontaneous drawings”. Among the numerous magazines in which his work has appeared are The Nation, The Village Voice, Esquire and Vanity Fair. Sorel has published children’s books, Hollywood histories and autobiographies, in collaboration with others or on his own, including Johnny-on-the-Spot, Superpen: the Cartoons and Caricatures of Edward Sorel and Profusely Illustrated: a Memoir. He is also known for his mural at the Waverly Inn in Greenwich Village. Sorel has exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery, the Art Institute of Boston and Galerie Bartsch & Chariau. His honors include the Auguste St. Gaudens Medal for Professional Achievement, the Page One Award and the National Cartoonist Society Advertising and Illustration Award.

Sorel began attending Morningside Meeting in New York City in 1963. After he separated from his first wife and lost his job, he had been going through a dark period. Ed Hilpern, his therapist and a member of the Meeting, recommended that he explore Quaker worship. He met Nancy Caldwell, the love of his life, at the Meeting, and they were married there in 1965. (Below is a cartoon of the Sunday morning they met). Sorel participated in anti-Vietnam War marches in Washington DC with Friends and joined with them when they walked across the Peace Bridge at Rochester to deliver medical supplies for North and South Vietnamese civilians to Canadians Friends, who had agreed to forward the supplies. When he and his family moved upstate in the early 1970’s, they attended Bulls Head-Oswego Meeting. A gleeful atheist, Sorel is known for his anticlerical cartoons and has sat on the board of the Freedom From Religion Foundation. He felt, however, that he could become a member of the Friends because of Quaker social witness.

I have always loved Edward Sorel’s cartoons. I first saw them in Ramparts magazine in the mid-1960’s and enjoy them still in The New Yorker magazine. And I was delighted to see the cartoon below. I had worshiped at Morningside Meeting several times when I lived in New York City.

A quote from Sorel about his first Friends Meeting for Worship:

“What I remember best is the silence. It seemed to charge the room with a connectedness of yearning”.

Gary Sandman

August 2022

Charles Lamb (1775-1834) was a British essayist, critic, playwright and poet. A leading figure in the Romantic Movement, he wrote in an intensely personal and emotional style. His Essays of Elia offered reminiscences of his life and was a best seller of the day. His Tales of Shakespeare, co-written with his sister Mary, presented bowdlerized versions of the plays for young people and was also very popular. Lamb was the friend of many Romantic artists: William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Southey and William Hazlitt. He suffered greatly in his life, enduring periods of mental illness.

Lamb was greatly interested in Quakers. He called himself “an Honorary Friend” and “half a Quaker”. Widely read in Friends literature, he was especially moved by Woolman’s Journal and Penn’s No Cross, No Crown. He was also close to many Quakers, including the poets Bernard Barton and Charles Lloyd. He compared Friends to the Desert Fathers, early Christian hermits, whose contemplative practices he felt had parallels with Friends worship. Lamb was not a Friend, however. Initially he drew back from the Quakers after he heard a Friend give ministry in what he felt was a negative manner, and in the end he felt that he was unable to become a Quaker because of their cultural narrowness in that time.

Charles Lamb was an insightful writer. His writings on Quakers, especially “The Quaker’s Meeting”, remain of interest.

A quote:

“Reader, would’st thou know what true peace and quiet mean; would’st thou find a refuge from the noises and clamours of the multitude; would’st thou enjoy at once solitude and society; would’st thou possess the depth of thy own spirit in stillness, without being shut out from the consolatory faces of thy species; would’st thou be alone, and yet accompanied; solitary, yet not desolate; singular, yet not without some to keep thee in countenance; a unit in aggregate; a simple in composite:—come with me into a Quaker’s Meeting”.

Gary Sandman

July 2022

Ron Waddams (1920-2010) was a British painter. His work featured swooping, colorful figures, reminiscent of Miró and Matisse, while his themes centered around spiritual and social concerns, especially non-violence. The paintings are in acrylic on a hardwood base. A latecomer, Waddams spent most of his career as a graphic designer and became a professional artist only after he retired. His paintings are now displayed at the Palestinian Mission in London and the Bridgeman Art Library, among other sites.

Waddams was an attender at Jordans (BrYM) Meeting for many years, finally becoming a member in 1978. He first exhibited his paintings at the Jordans Meetinghouse. The Larren Art Trust now oversees his works, using any income to benefit the Friends Peace Testimony and the United Nations Association UK Trust.

I loved Ron Waddams’ paintings. It was difficult to choose just one to share. Finally, I picked out two: “Live Adventurously” (left), based on a British Quaker saying, and “Jordans Quaker Meeting 2” (right). This is fine art.

Gary Sandman