CREATIVE SPACE

     Walk into the Grace Cathedral in San Francisco from now till the end of February and you’ll find a gorgeous art installation that features 20 miles of ribbon cascading from the church’s vaulted ceiling arches. Artist Anne Patterson is behind Graced With Light, an installation consisting of nearly 1,000 satin ribbons with colors inspired by stained glass. It took the artist months to prepare, which she did in her art studio in Manhattan by constructing a 3/16-inch scale model of it with embroidery floss. Then, on site, it took Patterson and the Grace Cathedral community eight days to hand-assemble the project.

     Graced with Light incorporates both music and video projection. The artist envisioned it as “a series of light pathways, connecting heaven and earth, manifest as ribbons. The ribbons carry our prayers, dreams and wishes skyward, and, in turn, grace streams down the ribbons to us.”So what’s it like to actually experience this? “Many people chose to lay down in the pews,” says Patterson. “One audience member told me that it was the best therapy session he had ever experienced. As he was lying down looking up at the ribbons, he imagined the things he wanted out of his life flowing up the ribbons and the things he wanted to welcome into his life streaming down the ribbons into him.”