By Rita McInerney

Liturgical tapestries inspired by the rag rug artistry of Southern Appalachia found their home at St. Francis of Assisi in Blairsville on Pentecostal Sunday, May 26.

Four large sanctuary hangings, four lectern covers and four handwoven baskets were presented to the pastor, Father Bob Poandl, by the artist, Sister Nancyann Turner, during the 11 a.m. liturgy. Her Pentecost weavings, a rich harmony of reds and yellows, were hung for the celebration of new life through the Holy Spirit.

In her brief presentation talk, Sister Nancyann told the parishioners, many of whom had contributed sheets, shirts, dresses and other fabrics of their lives for the liturgical weavings:

“It is with much gratitude and joy that I pass them on to you. I trust you with them. You will remember that I told you I wouldn’t limit you by using pictures in the hangings. I believe in your unconscious, your imagination and that symbols rest in your hearts.”

“Hopefully, the movements, the rhythms, the colors and textures of these tapestries help you to focus, facilitate meditation, invite your prayer and celebrate the season.”

“I believe this place is holy, the ground is holy and this gathering holy. The Lord, the Spirit is with us and we have dressed with a new cloth a holy place. To a group already so loving and gracious, hopefully these rag rug tapestries will add a new note of warmth and hospitality to your faith community.”

“Thus I pray that this series of weavings will help draw each of you to God in praise, worship, thanksgiving and confession. I pray that these weavings will be a reminder to you of God’s faithfulness and love and of the Spirit’s dynamic and energizing presence with us this very day.”

In accepting the liturgical weavings for the parish, Father Poandl said the hangings would sometimes be away from the church on “visits” to other places but would always be welcomed back to “their home” at St. Francis.

Along with weaving the four sanctuary and four lectern pieces for the church seasons of Lent and Advent; Pentecost; Summer and Life, and Easter and Light, Thanksgiving and Harvest, Christmas and Epiphany, the Dominican sister from Adrian, Mich., presented four handwoven baskets to hold the fresh flowers and cut greens of the particular season.

For Lent and Advent, the hangings are woven of blue, red and purple in deep hues blended with soft pink and lavender. The basket is of coil hemp laced with ribbons in the colors of the weavings. Gradations of the green of trees and blue of water and sky are interwoven in the two pieces for Summer and Life. An oak split basket reproduces the reed baskets of the Cherokees. The Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas set is pale cream colored with bands of yellow-gold and earth tones. It is accompanied by a traditional Appalachian egg basket. A basket of vine is the companion piece for the Pentecostal hangings.

Colors and design are both dramatic and subtle. In the richly somber sanctuary hanging for Lent and Advent a shadowy cross is in stark outline through shadings of red, blue, purple and mauve. The hand, touching the large Pentecost piece, discovers a tiny pearl button rooted in the woven rags. Even Sister Nancyann is surprised each time she finds it. It’s elusive, but it’s there, to the delight of the children who spy it. Symbolic? The viewer must decide.

The weavings, which Sister Nancyann worked on for almost two years, were begun after a period of prayer and reflection. These Scriptural reflections have been preserved in calligraphic records which accompany each set of hangings.

“To weave, to pray, to create,” have been the necessities of her life during the years spent as art director of “The Place” operated by Catholic Rural Social Services in Cumming. “When I came here six years ago the women didn’t realize their gifts,” she says of their skills in handcrafts. “I tried to make them aware of them.”

In reaching the women from the farmhouses and cabins of Forsyth County she was learning. Making them aware and proud that their rag rugs and quilts were objects of beauty made her aware that these symbols of independence, practicality and family history could be adapted to her own creativity.

As she grew more skilled in spinning, weaving, quilting, crocheting and basketry, she realized that she wanted to use these enduring Appalachian arts in her own contemporary creative expressions for prayer and worship environments.

She decided to commit herself to creating a series of rag rug weavings for a church in the area as her graduate project for a master of fine arts degree at the University of Georgia in Athens. She had to find a church community that would help her with expenses of the work and become involved in its development. A proposal and estimate as to the size, number, technique and cost of materials was submitted to the Blairsville parish.

After the parish council voted “Yes,” announcements in the parish bulletin described the kinds and colors of materials needed. Boxes were soon filled with remnants; old cotton sheets, skirts and aprons were donated. The parish gave her money to purchase fabrics in colors still needed. Parishioners came out for “cutting” parties.

In preparation for weaving, she pasted samples of 700 colors on three by five cards. To study movement and transitions of colors she draped fabrics on a clothesline in her studio. Weaving the pieces, the large one 42 inches wide by 104 inches long, the lectern piece 20 by 45 inches, was done on her own 20-inch loom and a larger loom, 45 inches wide, at the university in Athens.

“Most of the time it took an hour to do an inch because of the changing colors. The weft was packed so tight there are sometimes 24 rows of colors to an inch.” (In weaving, the weft, or woof, of cloth are threads that are carried in the shuttle and across the warp. Warp are the threads extended lengthwise in the loom and crossed by the weft/woof.)

“It was a gift to myself. It focused me, entered my prayers. I am a different person now because of it,” she says of her project.

Sister Nancyann is leaving “The Place” around June 21. After her job was phased out, there she accepted an opportunity to work as an art therapist at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, D.C., and will start on June 24.

While there is sadness at ending a fruitful six-year ministry to the poor, she is looking ahead to working with young people in the armed services. Many are incapacitated by personal problems they brought with them into the service from dead-end lives in rural and city ghettos. Others have service connected emotional burdens.

Though she will be gone from the North Georgia mountains and the people she served with love, the rag rug weavings will be her link, especially to the faith community in the Blairsville parish.