EDITOR'S NOTE: This story originally appeared in our July/August 1994 issue. It is being presented again here as part of our 30th Anniversary celebration.
You don’t have to travel to Europe to see paintings that look as if Michelangelo held the brushes. Or to experience the miracles of their creation. In two small Episcopal churches in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina’s Ashe County, Italian-style frescoes inspire and renew a never-ending stream of visitors.
"THE MYSTERY OF FAITH."
A dedication to the memory of artist Ben Long's grandfather, the 12' x 27' fresco was completed in 1977.
Some people cry, they are so moved by the scenes,” says The Rev. Dr. Robert H. Crewdson, Rector of the Parish of the Holy Communion in Ashe County, N.C. The parish includes the two fresco churches – at West Jefferson and Glendale Springs – and a third, St. Matthew’s at Todd, which has a “wonderful bell cast in England.”
Tiny “Carpenter’s Gothic” St. Mary’s church is actually in Beaver Creek, hardly even a hamlet, at the southwestern edge of West Jefferson. American chestnut is its wood, fashioned into a house of worship by hands of faith in the 1890s. Ten miles away, in the village of Glendale Springs, only 400 yards from Blue Ridge Parkway Milepost 258, white clapboard Holy Trinity, dates to 1902.
By what miracle did small rural churches come to be recipients of art masterpieces of immeasurable, far-flung influence? For the story is not only of beautiful paintings, but of their catalystic effects on hopes renewed, communities revitalized, lives changed and changing still.
For more than 30 years the first rector, much-loved Father William Rutherford Savage, rode the circuit on his horse, Logan. When Savage died in 1934, the churches became ill, too. Interest waned. The buildings began to deteriorate, especially Holy Trinity. The communities lost some heart. For almost four decades the churches limped along without regular services.
In 1972, Father Faulton J. Hodge came from New York's largest cathedral as resident rector to begin the task of restoring the ailing churches and re-building congregations whose membership had dropped to 13. What happened next you may call predestination, fate, a remarkably happy coincidence, or the hand of God at work.
At a social gathering in the Blowing Rock home of artist Phillip Moose, Father Hodge met artist Ben Long. Native North Carolinian Long had studied for four years in Italy to learn fresco techniques. Back in this country, he searched for a church where he could donate a fresco to try his skills. Over and over churches turned him down.
Long told Father Hodge of his quest. The genial Hodge, the story goes, threw open his arms expansively as he exclaimed, "We'll take it." Then-"By the way, what is a fresco?"
If the story is partly apocryphal, the frescoes are real indeed. So real that between 75,000 and 125,000 pilgrims come annually to view them. Some estimates say as many as a quarter of a million. There is no admission, only free-will offerings. No records document the numbers who come around the clock-alone, in small groups and by the busload- to look at the paintings in reverence and meditation, which was the way Ben Long executed them.
Long began in 1974, and he worked mainly in silence, requesting his helpers, his students and those who watched to do the same. For several summers he continued to transform the little churches, asking no pay except artists' supplies and a place to stay.
"It was as if he poured out his soul," says Father Crewdson.
From the beginning, the miracles continued. Consider two.
In St. Mary's church, as he and Hodge contemplated suitable Biblical scenes, Long said, "I feel a great expectancy about this place."
Hodge answered, "This is St. Mary's-why don't you paint Mary expecting?"
Long began to look for a model for Mary's face. The answer came in a stranger he met on a country road. He asked permission, and she waited obligingly while he sketched. As she turned to hurry away, Long remembered to ask her name. "My name is Mary," she answered. It was the only time he saw her. No one in the small community knew of any young woman who answered her description. In that first fresco, "Mary, Great With Child," Long's model from the head down was his pregnant wife, Diane. This painting and "John the Baptist" flank the centerpiece "Mystery of Faith," Christ's crucifixion/ascension.
While Long painted at St. Mary's, Hodge contemplated the fate of Holy Trinity. He could struggle, with no funds, to repair a building that seemed beyond rehabilitation, or he could just let it go. One day as he stood in the churchyard, a car drove up. Its elderly occupant had come to see his mother's childhood church. Hodge explained the predicament, pointing to the fallen altar wall.
"How much would it take to rebuild it?" the stranger asked.
"Around $1,500," Hodge ventured. The man pressed a $1,500 check into the astounded rector's hand. Repairs cost $1,400. The small surplus bought paints. Now finished at St. Mary's, Long began work on Holy Trinity Church's new wall panel to produce the masterwork, "Last Supper."
Local people were models for the figures except for Judas, Christ and the servant lady. The betrayer Judas is going out the door, his back to viewers. Christ's face is a spiritual portrait of compassion and love. One face is Father Hodge's; another is the artist's. An old dog who came each day represents faithfulness.
Long's frescoes contain layers of meaning. For many, the surface beauty alone is enough to bring peace, to renew faith, hope and love. For others, inspiration stems from deeper ecclestical symbolic meanings of Christianity that undergird the paintings. No one leaves empty.
The frescoes and their models could easily fill another article. So could other art objects in the churches: frescoes by Long's students; unusual windows; wood carvings; crosses; surprising oils, such as "The Laughing Jesus" by 19-year-old Bo Bartlett. Or Holy Trinity's undercroft of columbarium, grotto and chapel; its English garden cemetery; the Mission House across the street with a history and life of its own. Another tale of glad tidings might tell how Long's work set off a chain reaction of spiritual awareness, increased church membership, building restorations, an inpouring of visitors, culminating in a self-supporting parish for the first time. An area arts and crafts movement is only one example of ways the frescoes have helped prime the local economy.
"In the beginning we worried about leaving the unattended churches open night and day," says Mack Preston, one of the docents who comes on request to conduct tours. "Then rewarding stories began to filter back and we knew the blessings outweighed any concerns."
For example, the mother of a modern-day prodigal son wrote to Father Crewdson in gratitude. Her son had been on drugs. Driving on a deserted road in the wee hours, he had somehow stopped at the lighted church and stumbled inside. Whatever he experienced as he sat alone that night revolutionized his life, turning him around, setting him on a totally different course.
Father Crewdson speaks modestly, casually, about his contributions to his churches and their communities. But when he talks about the frescoes, his voice takes on a different note. He is definite and sure about their mystical, far-reaching effects.
"Gifts and prayers make it possible for us to keep the doors open 24 hours," he says. "The paintings are a significant, singular ministry."
The frescoes are always open. Church services: St. Mary's-Sundays at 10 a.m. year round. Holy Trinity-Sundays at 8 a.m. May-October. Mission House and church office: 919/982-3076. Information or donations: Parish of the Holy Communion, P.O. Box 177, Glendale Springs, N.C. 28629.
Pocahontas, Va., Blowing Rock, N.C.: Other Frescoes In The Blue Ridge Region
There are several other examples of interesting, unusual church art scattered throughout the Blue Ridge Mountains. Here are the stories of two:
Pocahontas was Virginia's first coalfield boomtown. In the 1880s and '90s, Hungarian miners and their families were among many Europeans who came flocking to the town. They named their Catholic church for St. Elizabeth, patron saint of Hungary. The church was alive with activity, its 150 seats filled each Sunday.
It was Father Anthony, an energetic young German Benedictine priest, (pastor from 1909-1931), who thought of decorating the church. His artist friend, Theodore Brasch, came from Cincinnati in 1919 to stay for a year while he painted 10 murals on the walls and ceiling. Each is 8' x 12', with life-size Biblical figures. "St. Stephen" and "St. Elizabeth Feeding the Poor" flank "Last Supper" above the altar, spotlighted during services. Father Anthony's friends contributed much of the $1,800 cost. Pocahontas Fuel Company erected scaffolding at no charge.
Nowadays Father Dan Brady conducts services on Sundays at 9 a.m., Wednesdays at 7 p.m. As a fund-raiser for the historic church's preservation, an annual Hungarian cabbage roll dinner the last Sunday in October is a 60-year-old church tradition. Last year members made 2,500 cabbage rolls. St. Elizabeth's celebrates its 100th anniversary in 1996.
Pocahontas is about 15 miles off 1-77 via Rt. 460 to Bluefield, Va., then on Rt. 102 a few miles northwest. To see the paintings, contact Edna M. Drosick, church member and official historian for the Town of Pocahontas, P.O. Box 473, Pocahontas, Va. 24635. 703/945-5844.
Although he lived and worked in the northeast, the Blue Ridge Mountains can claim artist Elliott Daingerfield (1859-1932) as a native son; he was born in Harper's Ferry, Va. (now W.Va.). Professor of painting and composition at the Philadelphia School of Design is only one aspect of this diversely talented man. Besides being a religious and landscape painter, an illustrator and a teacher, he also wrote and lectured.
Daingerfield's work hangs in New York's Lady Chapel of the Church of St. Mary the Virgin and in the Metropolitan Museum; in Washington, D.C.'s National Museum; the Chicago Art Institute; City Art Museum in St. Louis; and other prominent places. A magnificent large painting graces the space above the altar in Stringfellow Memorial Episcopal Church in Blowing Rock, N.C. How fortunate for residents that Daingerfield spent his summers in their town. He worked on the painting from 1917-1919, donating it to the native stone church that was then a mission.
An art encyclopedia will tell you that Daingerfield's glowing color quality and depth of feeling are dominant features of his art. He was "an imaginative painter, with a strong sense of decorative beauty, who subordinated realistic facts to effect." This is especially apparent in the Blowing Rock work. A blue-robed Virgin Mary holding the Christ child creates a striking effect against a Blue Ridge mountain background.
"Daingerfield was fascinated with the legend, found among mountain people world-wide, that on summer solstice, the Virgin Mary walks at dawn," says church historian Jean Lee. "If she walks in light, there will be a rich harvest. If in shadow, a year of sadness follows."
Recently retired Father James Harris adds, "Wherever she steps, flowers bloom. That's why you see flowers in the picture that would not ordinarily bloom at the same time."
The Episcopal church is on the south end of Main Street in Blowing Rock not far off the Blue Ridge Parkway, near Milepost 290. Services are at 8 a.m. and 10 a.m. during summer, 10 a.m. only in winter. P.O. Box 14, Blowing Rock, N.C. 28605. Church office: 704/295-7323.