This winter the Rev Holly Ratcliffe held an exhibition in the historic Maison des gouverneurs in Sorel-Tracy. Featured was her ceramic work that was completed while she was artist in residence at the Centre for Studies in Religion and Society at UVic in Victoria BC.
Entitled Pentimenti, her work, composed of urns and other funerary vessels, focuses on “restoring to the human experience of death to its contemplative dimension.”
According to Ratcliffe “My pieces question the contemporary Western aversion to and discomfort in the face of death in order to open new avenues of perception around the human dignity of the person in this most vulnerable condition. I believe our common humanity is found in befriending grief and death.”
According to Sally Harrington Philippo, who visited the exhibit, “Spending time with the stories of such a variety of life experiences facing a common certainty of death, was a very fruitful meditation. One retains lingering reflections charged with the reality of ones own mortality.”
Holly is grateful to the Centre for Studies in Religion and Society and to the Anglican Foundation for supporting the residency that made this exhibition possible, and to the Ville de Sorel-Tracy for help in mounting the show.
To learn more about Holly’s work – and to see pictures – visit her website: www.hollyratcliffeceramic.ca.
