The Art Center has purchased a work by British artist Cornelia Parker with funds from the Edmundson Art Foundation, Inc.  Over the course of her career as an artist, Parker has found herself at times drawn to sites of destruction such as bombings, lightning, or fires. Once there, she collects materials that have been affected by the devastation which she transforms or incorporates into a work of art. After the materials have undergone drastic changes, Parker directs the viewer—often through her titles—to meanings conveyed by these found objects in both their altered and unaltered states. For this diptych, Parker confronts viewers with the temporal nature of physical material in the form of hymnals saved from two church fires. She captures the spirit of those who worshiped in the Kentucky church—burnt by bikers who made sport out of racial harassment—by transforming the fragile hymnal into a work of art that functions as a testament to violence directed against African Americans. The hymnal saved from the church struck by lightning correspondingly acknowledges the church’s congregation; however the burnt hymnal is converted into a work of art that points to the conflation of the physical and spiritual in Christianity. This is the first work by Parker to enter the collections.  Source: Apr May Jun 2017 News