Curator's Introduction

Victor Challenor of Challwood Studios created four Stations executed as textile banners for St. Philip's Episcopal Church. St. Philip's is an historic African-American church in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, New York. These banners were designed to reflect the church's African-American tradition. They are all done in silk appliqué. Though these works hold to a recognizable narrative, they are abstracted from reality. Jesus is represented in different tonalities of brown skin, mirroring all of our differences each from the other, but in particular here the differences of African-Americans each from the other, in which Jesus participates through his commonality.

Artist Information

Liturgical artist Victor A. Challenor, the first life professed black lay brother of the Order of the Holy Cross, is a native New Yorker and was Sacristan at the Church of the Intercession in Harlem at the time he painted the Christ in Glory processional cross. Shortly thereafter he left the order to work in the library of the Union Theological Seminary before taking up full time design and creation of liturgical vestments in 1985. Today he and the Reverend Paul Woodrum, partners in Challwood Studio, Brooklyn, New York, are dedicated to creating contemporary, custom designed liturgical vestments and church appointments.