Over thirty years ago, I began to develop a visual vocabulary of symbols and techniques using the relatively restricted color palette of red and yellow ochers, chromium green oxides, and ultramarine, with copper leaf taking the place of the gold that is typical of historical Christian iconography. Imagery included knot-work patterns that referenced both Celtic and Islamic sources, motifs borrowed from ancient prayerbooks, and juxtapositions that arose from my own dreams and memories. 

As I approached retirement from my work as the Director of the Center for Arts and Religion at Wesley Theological Seminary in 2019, a new series of works began to emerge. Using the same visual vocabulary, but this time virtually drained of color, I began to explore the idea of reliquaries, in which something simple and precious is hidden within an ornate and symbolic container. In these works, however, the relics are not the bones of saints or other bits and pieces of the past, but rather pieces of copper newly-shaped with fire and hammers in my studio. Now, in a very different time, these Night Visions continue to speak to me in dimly heard murmurs and whispers. I hope to someday know what they mean.

-Deborah Sokolove

www.dsokolove.com