LEWES, Del. - St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Lewes held an art exhibit over the weekend to honor the lives lost from COVID-19, as well as healthcare heroes. Reverend Mark Harris, a priest and printmaker, created four memorials for the exhibit. The most recent is a silk screen with 500,000 dots to symbolize the half a million dead in the United States.
The exhibit was called “Remembering and Naming.” Reverend Mark Harris took WRDE through the exhibit, starting with the first piece of art from the New York Times.
“They listed 1000 names. I did an overlay on top of that, saying that I saw that as catastrophic. Catastrophe,” said Harris.
He found a way to remember the numbers of people who died worldwide and in the U.S., as of All Saints Day 2020.
“So I did two books of numbers. One including a number for every person throughout the world, and one for every person in the United States, and I printed that on rice paper with overlays.”
One of the most grand pieces entitled “Hovering Spirits.”
“I tried to figure out a way to represent the numbers of 500,000,” he said.
Father Harris says it only took him 7 to 8 days to create the compilation of dots on a 5 ft by 13 ½ ft set of panels.
“The real issue was to remember the names of the people who died. Individual names. The numbers was one thing, but the names was entirely different,” he said.
Visitors wrote down the names of people they know who died, and were given a space to pray and meditate. People were also able to write messages and names on Post-It notes to place on top of the church’s old steeple cross.
“It will continue to be my best way of expressing what the 500,000 was about, but the pandemic is not over with so there may be more pieces that get developed,” said Harris.
Father Harris is taking down the exhibit, so it is no longer open to the public.
“However we look at this in the future we need to remember both the size of this catastrophe, but at the same time the names of these individuals who we know and love who have died and suffered with this,” he said.
Father Harris encourages people to continue to honor the lives lost throughout this pandemic.