Photo by Karl Merton Ferron
This call to prayer answered by few
Jean Marbella for the Baltimore Sun
March 4, 2008
The art student thought she could pray for summery weather, but given yesterday's sunny skies and shirt-sleeve temperatures, it looked like someone had beat her to it. The unemployed inventor might have prayed for a job, or at least money to continue his life's work, but he doesn't kneel very well since a skydiving accident.
Neither Rin ("short for Katherine") Lack nor Tim Silverwood stopped to take advantage of "Prayer Booth" as they walked by it yesterday, but then, few apparently do. For one thing, it just looks like another phone booth, graffiti-smeared and slightly grimy, that has been abandoned during these cellular times.
But the blue-and-white sign above it says not "Phone" but "Prayer." And there's no way to call anyone -- on Earth, at least -- because there isn't a pay phone inside, but instead a fold-down kneeler like you'd find in a church.
Someone making a statement that Baltimore is a city that needs but doesn't have a prayer? Or that you shouldn't waste time on earthly beings but try for a direct line to God? Or even commentary on Baltimore as the one-time home of the world's most famous atheist, Madalyn Murray O'Hair?
None of the above, it turns out. I noticed "Prayer Booth" only this weekend, but it's been on its site -- a grassy island just off Cathedral Street, north of the Meyerhoff -- since July, when it went up as part of the Baltimore Sculpture Project. It's one of 30 pieces of public art installed on downtown sites last year as a way of extending the spirit of the Artscape festival beyond its usual summer weekend.
Yesterday, most people hurried past the piece, plugged into the privacy of their iPods or cell phones, or so accustomed to the sculpture that it no longer registered. Most said they'd never seen anyone using it -- despite instructions for folding down the kneeler and diagrams showing where to rest your folded hands -- for prayer.
"It seems so public a place, and praying is so personal an issue," said Lack, 20, a MICA sophomore.
Lack grew up a "very devout Catholic" and used to pray every night before bed. "Make me pretty so the boys will like me," was a common prayer for her back then, she said, but now she tries to make less "trivial" appeals.
"I try not to ask for things in my prayers," Lack said. "I feel like my life is so good I should be content with things. Which I am."
Well, maybe not entirely: She was carrying a big artist's canvas and headed off in search of gesso, a primer, to cover up what she initially had painted on it so that she could start over.
What surprised me yesterday as I accosted passers-by near the piece is how many people do pray -- just not in the "Prayer Booth."
"I don't think it's the right place for it," said Seulki Lee, 22, another MICA student, "There are people passing by and too many cars going by."
She prays in her head in restaurants before meals, or at the start of the day.
Silverwood, 32, the inventor, said he also prays, but not anywhere specifically. "I just do it while I'm walking," he said. His most fervent wish right now: more money because he has spent all his savings trying to invent the world's fastest motorized skateboard.
"Prayer Booth" artist Dylan Mortimer, 28, was nice enough to answer my call yesterday -- from my office phone, not in his booth -- even though he had just gotten off an airplane. Mortimer, who is based in Kansas City, is a pastor at a nondenominational church, and all of his artwork deals in some way with the subject of private faith and public places.
He has four "Prayer Booths" in various locales, and they tend to draw both "sincere and sarcastic" users. The artist uses a bit of both himself: His instructions in "Prayer Booth" include the warning, "Please avoid the booth if you are sensitive to or feel threatened by actions that are religious in nature."
"I'm for people exploring their faith in public, in ways that honor those around them," Mortimer said. "It's a balance between censorship and propaganda."
Mortimer's pieces sometimes get vandalized -- the Baltimore "Prayer Booth" has graffiti, and one side panel has been knocked out -- but he's not sure whether it's because of his message or just that public art tends to attract defacers.
Kim Domanski, public art coordinator for the Baltimore Office of Promotion & the Arts, which launched the sculpture project, said she hasn't heard any complaints about the piece, which will remain on display until the end of April.
"It sort of melts" into the landscape, she said. "That's part of the beauty of it."
Even though "Prayer Booth" will vanish in about a month, and even if not many have used it to get down on their knees and pray, it's made its point, said Becka Dowding, 20, a MICA student.
"It's something Baltimore needs -- prayers," said Dowding, who hasn't availed herself of the opportunity to kneel down on Cathedral Street and say one of her own. "I don't think you have to have a designated area to pray -- you should pray anywhere. But I think it works, even if you walk past it."
jean.marbella@baltsun.com
Copyright © 2008, The Baltimore Sun
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