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Faith in art
Prayer Bowls
Video
A West Farmngton, OH couple has found a unique way to express their spirituality and art by making prayer bowls from dried gourds.
Prayer bowls hold messages of good will
By LINDA M. LINONIS
west farmington
Cynthia Gale and Rainer Hildenbrand combine their artistic talents and spirituality to craft unique prayer bowls.
They believe the power of art and the power of prayer unite in the prayer bowls.
The tangible side is the dried gourds, which start out in a plain, tan state, and are transformed into one-of-a-kind works of art through paint and beads by the talented twosome.
The abstract aspect of the prayer bowls is that they hold messages of good will from family and friends for such occasions as baptisms, weddings, graduations and new homes.
Some messages are written and take artistic form such as tiny quilts; others are spoken over the bowl, the words held dear as a sweet memory.
Prayer bowls crafted by the couple may be found in 17 countries and 44 American states.
But how the prayer bowls have evolved is as much a story about art as it is a story about healing, hope and love.
Gale was raised in the Lumbee American Indian community in Pembroke, N.C.
“I came to appreciate that everything in life does matter,” she said, noting that she learned that from American Indians who revered nature.
She graduated from Sarah Lawrence College, Yonkers, N.Y., and became its dean of student affairs. She also had a career as an award-winning fiber artist.
But both came to an end in 1981 when she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. “For a while, I was just lost,” she said, noting that she also was legally blind. “Then I had a wake-up call.”
Gale said she did not want to be defeated by the disease, so she turned to her faith, her love of art and the appreciation of natural healing garnered from the American Indian community.
“There is a mind, body and spirit connection,” she said. “I think my life was out of balance. Healing brought me back.”
Gale did get better — so much so, she resumed her art career and exhibited her ceremonial art.
Hildenbrand had experienced tragedies in his own life. When he was 16, he was hit by a drunken driver, and after multiple surgeries, he lost his left leg above the knee. Two years later, his mother died of leukemia, and his first-born child, a son, died in a house fire.
Hildenbrand, who had lived in Canada, was engaged in boat building and also was a master cabinetmaker.
He brings his woodworking skills to the creation of prayer bowls. Hildenbrand also is a glass artist.
Hildenbrand met Gale at All Matters Gallery in Burton, which she had opened in 2002.
“I worked with her on small projects, and we ended up in a relationship, then marriage,” he said.
They married secretly on Thanksgiving Day in 2004. “Then we sent out 250 announcements on Valentine’s Day,” Gale said.
Each announcement included a gourd seed. “We asked that people send us a prayer or a poem,” said Gale.
What they received were more than 200 cards and items, including an Apache wedding prayer, mini- quilts with best wishes, prayer arrows decorated with beads and feathers, a pouch of sand from a temple in India and a small locket with a prayer enclosed.
“These are sweet treasures,” Gale said of the congratulations that took many creative forms.
They store these messages of congratulations in their wedding-prayer bowl. It’s decorated with human figures in celebration mode along with four suns and four moons. “It focuses on the celebration of life,“ Gale said.
Gale said the couple marks their anniversary by looking at the cards, and Hildenbrand reads them aloud to recall memories of their wedding day.
The couple said the bowls generally contain messages, but in a few instances, they were asked to craft the bowls with lids.
In one instance, a couple used the prayer bowl to hold the ashes of a stillborn child, and in another, a woman asked the artists to use her husband’s favorite fishing lures on the lid, and she also used the bowl to hold her husband’s ashes.
Though Gale had made the prayer bowls before she met Hildenbrand, their collaboration has taken the artwork to another level. Gale credited her husband with doing fine beadwork.
“The word bead is derived from an ancient word meaning prayer,” she said, noting how the beads add another element to the bowls.
Their work also is infused with prayer. “Rainer and I try to remember to be grateful for each day ... for the uniqueness of each hour and day. I think we have a deep regard for all creatures on our beautiful planet,” Gale said.
Hildenbrand said the concentration it takes to work on the prayer bowls puts him in a “contemplative and meditative state.”
Though both had a mainstream faith tradition in their lives, they don’t attend any one church. “We’re comfortable in all kinds of houses of worship,” Gale said. “We think of the earth itself as our church.”