Viola Bordon and Joshua Stamper - re-member (night) / re-member (morning) (2025):

Viola Bordon: 
violabordon.com

Joshua Stamper: 
joshuastamper.com

A recurring theme in the story of both Good Friday and Easter is the word "remember". Bible scholar and theologian Ellen Davis renders 'remember' as ‘re-member’, which shifts the emphasis from simply rehearsing what happened in the past to a continual activity of 'membering' the past to the present. (It is deft punctuation.)

re-member (night) and re-member (morning) are a diptych - two pieces that together make a whole, one conversation between two speakers. Night and morning, Good Friday and Easter, lament and celebration exist together and deepen each other. The 'membering' of both the cross and the empty tomb is daily work, and both are foundational to our discipleship.

Another potent theme in the story of Holy Week is light.

We do not see light, as such. If we see it, we see it because of what light encounters. When light meets or moves through a thing, our understanding of what light is increases. This suggests that we only understand a thing by its relationship to other things. We know the wind by the tree that it moves, and we know the tree by the wind that moves it. 

These encounters between what is seen and what is unseen—between the material and the immaterial—reveal a continual and exponential unfolding of the "capital-R reality" under the surface of things. Planes of light meet planes of fabric, and sight is the necessary effect of the encounter.

The theological analogue is of course an apprehension of God uniquely mediated by the material, incarnate Christ. Our own imitation of Christ means we too become material that light moves through, and light becomes visible. The Illuminating King.

Installation + Bulletin Art by Caleb Stoltzfus.

Wounded Lamb (Center) Where are my ambitions leading me? 

Jacob’s Ladder Diptych (Left/Right) Where does heaven meet earth? 

Town Center (Aisle)   Who might be affected if I embraced a spirit of abundance? 

Thank you to Resurrection Philadelphia for inviting me to install these works for Holy Week. I find a lot of satisfaction in the intriguing and puzzling textural relationship between cardboard and decaying fresco. This material dialogue became the impetus for my installation.  

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Floral artworks by Grace McDonald and Katie Brindley

The Divine Dark, Vol. 1 - a three-song EP, released December 15, 2024

Settings and arrangements composed by Joshua Stamper

Listen Here

Engineered by Christopher McDonald, Jeremy McDonald, Ryan Kelly, Sarah Long, Cole Kamen-Green, Matt Poirier, and Joshua Stamper

Mixed and Mastered by Matt Poirier

Design by Viola Bordon
Cover art courtesy of Isaac Tin Wei Lin with Lydia C. Lin, and Fleisher/Ollman Gallery

The Divine Dark - Volume I was made possible through a grant from the New Jersey Council on the Arts, and by the generous support of Lisa and Esuga Abaya and Resurrection Philadelphia.

© and ℗ 2024 Joshua Stamper / Long Map Music (ASCAP)

Installation by Viola Bordon

violabordon.com

The Singing Church 2023, Vinyl counterbalanced by hymnals and pews

Interruption hovered
Interruption created
Interruption flowing
Interruption reflected
Interruption rested
Interruption of incoherence
Interruption of empire
Interruption of safety
Interruption of acceleration
Interruption of space
Interruption in time
Interruption in humanity
Interruption in sound
Interruption in pain
Interruption in expansion

Installation by Kately Towsley
katelytowsley-art.com

Interactive fibers installation: cloth, string, pins, bleach, water in large bowls

[Part I] Before entering the Good Friday (a Christian observance commemorating the crucifixion & death of Jesus of Nazareth) service on April 7th, visitors were invited to cut a piece of fabric from the dark curtain that adorned the entrance to the sanctuary. They were then directed to let the cut cloth be a part of their experience during service, and to leave their cloths in basins of water as they left the church building. Throughout the evening and the following Holy Saturday, the cloths lay in pools of water, mixed with bleach. A slow transformation ensues: the dark color of the fabric ebbs away.

[Part II] On Easter Sunday (a Christian observance of Jesus of Nazareth’s resurrection from the dead), the shadowy veil that adorned the entrance to the sanctuary on Good Friday is no more, replaced by flowing white. The dark swatches discarded into watery pools have been transformed, and now hang in an ascending array. The cloths imbued with the emotions of and reflections on Christ’s death have been washed, and have now passed into a risen state of joy; the praises lifted up this morning rise with them today as hope & life are celebrated.

Original illustration for Lessons & Carols service 2023 Bulletin by Janelle Delia.

Installation by Kately Towsley: 

katelytowsley-art.com

Installation: cloth, ink, acrylic paints, lights, pins, cables

Coming is an Advent-themed textile installation work that features nine hanging cloths. Advent is a season of intentioned waiting, anticipation, and celebration observed by most Christian denominations between the end of November and December. Each of the nine cloths is covered in handwritten text that corresponds with nine biblical scriptures that predicate the coming of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, the central figure of Christian faith. The words on the cloth are tangible, paralleling the celebration of the divine scriptures' incarnation in Christ’s first coming. The cloth is also hung in a way that could be interpreted as ascending or descending, just as the holy Word has been given from heaven and yet is lifted up again through contemplation and veneration. The unveiling of this installation took place during a Lessons & Carols service in the historical church building at Sansom & 17th Street in Center City, Philadelphia, USA. During the service the cloths engage in a sort of performance where Towsley illuminates a single cloth as its' inscribed scripture is read aloud by a liturgist. The congregants of Resurrection Philadelphia participate in the traditional liturgy of this service (songs, lessons and scriptures may be explored in the bulletin below) while the installation itself conceptually enriches the worship of those who attend the service.

A tenth cloth hung at the front of the sanctuary above the baptistery features a painting of an abstracted landscape inspired by Malcolm Guite's poem, ‘O Oriens.' The words of this poem are written on the eleventh cloth draped in front of the painting:

First light and then first lines along the east

To touch and brush a sheen of light on water,

As though behind the sky itself they traced

The shift and shimmer of another river

Flowing unbidden from its hidden source;

The Day-Spring, the eternal Prima Vera.

Blake saw it too. Dante and Beatrice

Are bathing in it now, away upstream . . .

So every trace of light begins a grace

In me, a beckoning. The smallest gleam

Is somehow a beginning and a calling:

‘Sleeper awake, the darkness was a dream

For you will see the Dayspring at your waking,

Beyond your long last line the dawn is breaking.’

Paintings by Lisa Chin Abaya
abayaworks.com

Installation in the Woodland Annex, 2022

How shall I call upon my God, my God, my Lord? Surely, when I call on him, I am calling on him to come into me. But what place is there in me where my God can enter me? Lord, my God, is there any room in me which can contain you? - St. Augustin, Confessions

My work questions the design of sacred space, and its effects on the nature of worship. I am particularly sensitive to how architecture, furniture and light of a particular environment shape a viewer’s posture into a heightened spiritual awareness. The altar and icon have particular significance to this body of work and how each gathers weight and presence. This work considers an evolution of the design language in the altarpiece, a symbol of God’s meeting place on earth. People first stacked stones when they met God on earth, yet gradually altars became more elaborate and were made with precious materials. Altarpieces become visual timelines of our evolving aesthetic preferences and our views about God. I am interested in this phenomena of multi use space or the repurposing of deemed “sacred” and “mundane” spaces. Currently, many churches meet in basements and high school auditoriums while old church buildings are repurposed for boutique hotels and condos.    

Consider this Altar is a proposal to rework the traditional architecture of worship space such as the altarpiece and to focus on the use of transient materials such as scent and light. 

Consider this Altar is a modern altar composed of a series of light reflective paintings stacked like totems on the wall. Their flat shapes convey portals and work to deconstruct the abstract for the viewer with embodied pictures of heaven. The surface of the material refracts light and creates a “presence” that responds to the light and viewer. The ovals and circles draw from an ancient understanding of shapes; the circle is symbolic of God’s wisdom and the square symbolizes mankind’s rationale. I reference these shapes in order to change the viewer’s orientation: these are not altars we have seen before, yet they are not entirely new.  The surface material is a high visibility fabric that refracts light back to the viewer through tiny spheres adhered to the surface. The result is a highly reflective surface that performs well under poor light conditions, just as gold leaf functioned in Orthodox icons. 

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Photographed by Janelle Delia

PRIMEMOVER, by Joshua Stamper, is a collection of chamber works commissioned by City Church Philadelphia (now Resurrection Philadelphia) from 2015 to 2021, written for services marking holidays in the church calendar: Ash Wednesday, Good Friday, Easter, Pentecost, and Advent.

Cover art by Lisa Chin Abaya

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Press Here

This installation is a collaboration by Caleb Stoltzfus and Lisa Abaya.

calebstoltzfus.com
abayaworks.com

This past year, Caleb and Lisa attended an online residency program through the Brehm Center to explore art for the church. For Easter, the artists decided to focus on using contemporary visual language and technology to contrast the architecture of Liberti's building. The floral element was designed by Lisa Abaya to frame the image and blend the boundary between painting and architecture. The image above the baptistry is a digital painting by Caleb Stoltzfus that has been printed using a large scale printer. A response to a shooting that took place on 33rd St, Caleb began by constructing a traditional figurative composition using the details of this story. He then pulled the many layers of the painting apart. Through filters of inverted and adjusted colors, the painting searches for signs of the resurrection through the layers of this story, and in the many difficult stories of this city. The artists sought to contrive a tension visually through their materials: digital and hand painted, foraged and arranged, wild and graphic.

Watch the video here

"come the countless echoes of the first eternal Word"  

by Joshua Stamper

“...we might think of the creative Word as spoken into the vast cavern of potential that is the first moment of created existence; that from that darkness come countless echoes of the first eternal Word, the 'harmonics' hidden in that primal sound. When we rightly respond to, relate to, anyone or anything, it is as if we have found the note to sing that is in harmony with the creating Word. Or, to use language more familiar in Eastern Christian thinking, each living being in the world rests upon a unique creative act of God, a unique communication from God within the infinite self-communication that is the one eternal Word. Every being has at its heart its own word, its one 'logos'. A truthful relation to anything is an uncovering of that word.” 

– Rowan Williams, Where God Happens

The mechanism by which all tribes and tongues encountered the gospel of Jesus at the first Pentecost is remarkable—an explosion of languages like the sound of a rushing wind; a burst of comprehension; an inverse tower of Babel. But as I've been ruminating on what that morning might have been like, I can't help but think that Pentecost is about more than impressively efficacious evangelism, or a proto-United Nations summit of languages and cultures. 

When Williams speaks of harmonics, we're reminded of the physical fact of sound: how any one sound is a composite of thousands of other sounds. There is the fundamental, the most prominent sound, and then a constellation of other resonances, harmonics that are less audible but vital to the character of the sound.

At Pentecost, with all of those languages (or harmonics) intertwining, something fundamental was revealed, about God and humankind. As each new tongue emerged from the cloud of voices to proclaim the best tidings of all joy, it beckoned toward a world made new; toward the "harmonics hidden in that primal sound" that a right response and relationship to one another and to God represents. The cloud of voices is an uncovering of the First Voice. We hear resonances and echoes and shockwaves of the first creative Word. The full harmonic spectrum is not just audible and visible, but inhabitable.

In Romans, Paul describes a direct relationship between wickedness and godlessness and the suppression of truth; truth about God, about humankind, about our relationship to one another and the earth that we share. That we human beings have such power to delay the advancement of Truth is a sobering reality. As I write this, the nation is reeling from the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, the latest named-and-noticed casualties of the godless scaffolding of racism that crushes millions while propping up, for a select few, the American Dream. We forget ourselves—who we are and whose we are.

But if unjust action, thought, speech, and character suppresses truth, then the inverse is also true: love, justice and, godliness reveal truth.

Williams’ “truthful relation” to things speaks to the fact that to refuse to see the image of God in another results in an incomplete rendering of God’s image; I am dooming myself to an inability to see. But in “truthful relation,” the aperture is widened: a paradigm is revealed where the personal and the communal are no longer pitted against each other, but instead function in tandem to create an emergent elasticity—strong and pliable and able to respond to the needs of this good earth and the people and creatures who fill it. It is a paradigm where human beings find one another and find God. This paradigm is what comes into view at Pentecost, the birth of the church. This is the picture that the church is to be and to share: countless echoes of the first eternal Word.

Visions

by Lisa Abaya

Visions was created to play alongside the original music piece by Joshua Stamper “come the countless echoes of the first eternal Word” for the Pentecost service 2020.

The video art piece Visions, depicts fractured visual elements within a larger symmetrical design in order to reflect the difficult truth of our world. We may only see shards, but each piece is subject to the beauty of the final design. The first Pentecost marks a moment in time we cannot truly fathom: what did the world feel like before the gift of the Holy Spirit was among us, and how would that pouring out effect the body, sight and speech? Acts 2 describes the physical manifestations of the Spirit on people as prophesy, visions and dreams. Visions imagines the outpouring of the divine counselor that day, glazing the sight of the people present and revealing a kaleidoscope of perspective. 

Music by Joshua Stamper

Video Art by Lisa Abaya 

Video Edit by Lisa Abaya & Christopher Andrew McDonald

Voices edit by Joshua Stamper

MUSICIANS:
Sean Bailey: woodwinds
Sophie Oehlers: oboe
Matt Scarano: drums
Joshua Stamper: piano, crotales, and vibraphone sequencing

READERS:
Jonathan Basset, Emily Breneman, Whitney Buchmann, Charlotte Hayes, H. Janus, Amy Lee, Stacey McDonald, Katrina Miciek, Sarah Miciek, Cyndi Parker, Ben Smith, Kory Stamper, Elise Taylor, Liz Voboril, Miriam Wattenbarger, Eunice Weeks, Mekenzie Williams, Elisabeth Yang, Shelley Zhang

To learn more about the project Suspension of Disbelief, click here.

This program is made possible through a Vital Worship Grant
from the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, Grand Rapids, Michigan,
with funds provided by Lilly Endowment Inc.

Video here 

Refracted Radiance

by Melissa Choi

The COVID-19 pandemic altered planned timelines for many individuals and institutions, and the installation of this artwork was no exception.

Originally conceived for Easter, this 12' x 8' work premiered instead on July 5, 2020, a date chosen for its significance not in the liturgical calendar but in the life of our church family. On this Sunday we had a sending service for two of our staff members, who were moving to different cities. It was also the first Sunday on which our leadership deemed it safe for all of the service participants to stream from a central location instead of individual homes; it was therefore the first time in four months that our congregation "saw" our usual worship space (a rented high school auditorium). This wound up being our last time to host a service in the space, as subsequent services took place in the building of Liberti Church, with whom we partnered for online services and would merge with later in the year.

Choi writes:

"Refracted Radiance was inspired by the glory of heavenly beings as they appeared to humans, specifically at Easter. Beauty, awe, lightening, fear, and discomfort were some of the words that inspired my piece. My original intent was to fill the room and bulletins with reflective materials and prisms, creating light reflections around the entire room. However, my design had to be tweaked to work for a zoom service. I realized that the timing of the install was actually perfect; in the uncertain and scary time that we are in, there’s nothing more comforting than a reminder of Easter hope, that Jesus has triumphed over every evil."

FRGMNT

Drawings by Isaac Tin Wei Lin / lighting design by Melissa Choi

choilindesign.com

Good Friday was the first "special service" that City Church and Liberti streamed online, about a month after we stopped meeting in person for worship. Videos of musicians alternated with a live feed of pastors and members of the congregation reading scripture, praying, and extinguishing candles in their homes. Artist Isaac Tin Wei Lin contributed a collection of drawings from which the worship director chose several images to appear on screen throughout the service, sometimes during music and sometimes during silence.

During the following summer, Lin compiled his drawings into a zine, which he printed and distributed to members of the City Church congregation -- a tangible artifact during a season of virtual encounters. In the zine is this introduction, Isaac writes:

'FRGMNT' is a zine of my ballpoint pen drawings. For this project I collected some drawings, which are part of a larger body of work made in the past couple of years, that relate to ideas I associate with Good Friday. For me, drawing is a form of meditation, a visual diary and a way to explore Uncertainty. It is an important part of my studio practice where I work out ideas and compositions that sometimes turn into paintings. Although I am not an illustrator the center spread is a Crown of Thorns, an obvious image choice for Good Friday. I think about 'Thorns' as a metaphor of Clinging and Repulsion and how that pertains to our relationship with Christ at the moment of crucifixion. Thorns warn people to stay away but if unheeded we become enmeshed. I hope this collection of drawings can be a Visual guide for Good Friday and help us contemplate and understand ourselves/each other, our life together and our relationship with the Trinity. Please think on these ideas while looking at 'FRGMNT': 

Deconstruction / Brokenness / Assemblage - putting together and taking apart Pieces

Caution - wariness and uncertainty

Binding - self-protection

Mystery - unknowable and unnamable

Growth - natural but harmful

Fear

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In order to create a greater sense of visual cohesion and engagement for the online Good Friday service, Melissa Choi conceived of a lighting design for the musician videos. Each musician received a dark backdrop, a smart bulb, and instructions for creating the desired effect.

Choi writes:

Good Friday during a pandemic with stay-at-home orders really limited my options for creativity but also created an exciting new means of communication -- Zoom! I watch a lot of horror films, and red is an obvious choice when depicting themes of horror. I wanted to create a somber and sinister mood by simply using lighting and black clothing that could be easily replicated at home, highlighting people's faces. The keyboardist Christopher McDonald really nailed this with his disembodied head and hands.

Installation by Melissa Choi & Isaac Tin Wei Lin

choilindesign.com

The cube represents the physical manifestation of God's presence. When the Israelites were wandering in the desert, the presence of the Lord dwelled in a tent. We wanted to create a tent like structure to reference God's first dwelling with us as a parallel to the birth of Christ when God's presence came to dwell with us in Jesus.  We wanted to bring other imagery of 'God with us' without referencing baby Jesus. The large size of the piece (9ft square) looming over the back of the congregation served as a physical reminder that God is here at Lessons and Carols even though we cannot see him. We sought to create a sort of comfortable/uncomfortable reminder.

We created an illusion of a floating Cube to represent a physical manifestation of God's Presence. Advent is the celebration of the arrival of Christ, but right now we are in a time of waiting for him to return to make all things new. The floating aspect of the Cube symbolizes the transition of coming or going which reflects our experience of God - sometimes He feels close or far away even though He is always with us. 

We used sheer fabrics to reference a Presence or Spirit, something not concrete.The lights on the ground caused the cube to glow, emphasizing an 'other worldly' aspect. Melissa wasn't able to find fabric wide enough for one side of the cube, so she pieced fabric together which became a feature instead of a defect. Her design was inspired by Korean Pojagi quilting and used large seam allowances and flat felled seams to emphasize the patchwork. 

We were hoping the congregation would feel the presence of the Cube even though it was not in constant view. With the Cube floating just above the seats, we wanted it to be a physical Presence that feels both there and not. 

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photography by Sebastian Gutierrez.

Part of the “Suspension of Disbelief” project, made possible through a Vital Worship Grant from the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, Grand Rapids, Michigan, with funds provided by Lilly Endowment Inc. 

Installation by Lisa Chin Abaya

Rope lights, tape.

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Music by Joshua Stamper / Mark Allen - alto saxophone / Mike Cemprola - tenor saxophone / Christopher McDonald - rhodes / Joshua Stamper - piano / Engineered by Christopher McDonald and Joshua Stamper / Mixed by Joshua Stamper / Commissioned by City Church Philadelphia, Pentecost 2015

released April 21, 2017
song cover art by Caroline Santa

joshuastamper.com

all rights reserved

As By Fire Between Walls (2014)

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EP, all selections commissioned by Resurrection Philadelphia (then City Church)

Ansa Stamper - voice
Mike Cemprola - flute
Jay Webb - trumpet
Paul Arbogast - trombone
Christopher McDonald - mellotron
Liz Ciavolino - harp
Bethany Brooks - piano
Erica Miller - violin
Naomi Gray - cello
Joshua Stamper - double bass
Matt Scarano - drums

Music by Joshua Stamper
Engineered by Christopher McDonald and Joshua Stamper
Mixed by Joshua Stamper

Artwork by Ansa Stamper