Sacred Voices

The springboard for the suite of works presented here is the serendipitous discovery of a cache of discarded pipes—amputated from their keydesk and removed from their casement—from an old organ at a church in San Antonio. The brass pipes had been sold for salvage, but the tin pipes were considered unworthy, even by the scrap metal yard. An instrument created for sacred service was now dismantled, and the voices of its pipes silenced. For me, the abandonment became a metaphor for the people, the relationships, the lives and voices and histories we discard. I took the pipes as found—rough and undisguised—and have given them voice again in visual incarnations. It has become popular to boast of salvaging material to recycle into artwork.In my decision to create this suite of works is an effort not to repurpose or recycle, but to return the pipes to their consecrated calling, to restore their voices as instrument of a cadenced manifestation of the meaning and mystery of the world into which we are born.