St Peter und Paul, Reutlingen
St Peter & Paul, Reutlingen
Live Creativity in Church. In St. Peter and Paul, workshop participants dared make new experiences in church.
The high, inner walls and the stone floor in church are covered for their protection. Below the font there are pails and bottles of paint, along the aisles at the side there are five large canvasses on stretcher frames waiting to be worked on. St. Peter and Paul has become a studio for a “take part in art” © workshop. Guided by artist Hermann J Kassel, adults and children were invited to “take part in creating a work of art”. Co-organizer Paul Schlegl, head of adult education in catholic churches, called the happening of that afternoon “an experiment that should facilitate new ways of communicating in church”. He was, however, not sure how many people would dare take part in the experiment.
About eighty people braced themselves and made use of the opportunity to do something different in church. Participants, some of them in work clothes, courageously grabbed one of the available dried flowers, dipped them in paint and dabbed or swept the canvas. In the end, they had created five monochrome paintings in the liturgical colors green, red, white, purple and black. All of these will be exhibited in church until christmas, single ones will be on show later in accordance with the ecclesiastical calendar. Kassel thinks this is one of the most important outcomes of the workshop: “The idea is to create something that lasts.”
The experiment in St. Peter and Paul was successful. People created something permanent together. Dean Widman confirmed that the paintings really belong to the church and its congregation by consecrating the large-sized paintings after service on Sunday.
“I did not think that something like this would be possible in a catholic church”, a participant said with appreciation.