The Brooklyn Rail

The Cathedral of Saint John the Divine on the Upper West Side of Manhattan serves both as a spiritual sanctuary and a cultural one, with a dedicated program to visual arts and music. Divine Pathways (2023) is Anne Patterson’s newest installation in a place of worship, coming ten years after Graced With Light (2013) in the Grace Cathedral of San Francisco. Hundreds of colorful ribbons hang from the nave of St. John’s tall vaulted ceiling, organized into even intervals. Grouped together, they form a large, pointed mass like a long chandelier.

The ribbons have different textures varying from matte to satin to laser cut, which cumulatively capture light, causing the fabric to glisten and give the illusion of movement. During the day, light comes in through the stained-glass windows on the sides of the nave and dances within the corpus of ribbons, breathing life with subtle but animated gusto. In addition, specific colors have been chosen and placed such that when looking at the installation from the cathedral’s entrance, one can observe an order of hues converging concentrically from the outermost ribbons of blue, green, and violet, followed by reds and oranges, to ribbons of white and gold at the center. The whole begets us to bring our gaze to the heavens. Beyond the ribbons towards the choir, above the high altar, the colors of the recently restored stained glass window Christ in Glory are in direct conversation with Patterson’s installation. In this depiction of Christ returning to Earth, he wears a vermillion robe that perhaps signifies his blood and his martyrdom. Patterson responds to this window as well as to the space and architecture of the cathedral which, since 1892, has been designed by four different architects and is still as of today unfinished. The church also holds permanent works by woodworker George Nakashima, sculptor and printmaker Elizabeth Catlett, and artist Keith Haring, among others, who have contributed to the Cathedral’s unique aesthetics.

To be uplifted, to transcend, to be in communion with Heaven, to enlighten, in essence to float, are all possible associations we make with the Divine. Patterson has successfully called upon each one of these states of being with her minimalist installation piece. There is a beautiful simplicity. We look up, we feel the lightness of the ribbons floating in mid-air and also the density of the installation, which holds us in contemplation. Perhaps like trompe-l’oeil tondo ceilings of Italian churches, with their illusion of angels in the atmosphere, this contemporary work of art gives us a more conceptual pathway to the sky above. The ribbons serve as tangible streams of light, a forest of verticals reaching up into the unknown. Before they were hung, Patterson asked members of the New York Episcopal Diocese, as well as visitors and tourists to St. John’s, to transcribe a personal prayer on the topmost end of each ribbon. This community involvement with real prayers and hopes for individuals adds conceptual weight to the collection of fabrics before us as it also brings us back to Earth, to the suffering, problems, and collective hope that we all feel as mortals.

When looking up at the installation, it’s not immediately clear that it is composed of ribbons, a lightweight moldable material we associate with wrapping presents or tying a bow. The whole initially comes off as metallic solids hanging in multiples. These colored strands, together, catch light in such a way that we get the sense that they’re strong enough to carry prayers upwards and grace downwards back to us. We can visualize the movement of these invocations; perhaps they’ll come true. With more and more artists engaged in textiles and fabric as a material for making both two- and three-dimensional artwork, Patterson’s installation stands out for doing what great art can do best: Divine Pathways transcends its material.