“Taking Flight” is open for public viewing starting January 9, 2025 until the February 26, 2025. You can drop by St. Faith’s to see the works during regular office hours, Tuesday-Friday, or between services on Sundays.

Pieces on display at this show are for sale. For more information and pricing, please contact the church office.

The first piece of original art I ever owned was an engraving given to me by a college art major friend. Entitled “Captain Nemo at Home,” it was an early indicator of his ability to depict all things cartoonish and whimsical. Thus began my love of ink on paper of every kind: screenprints, lithographs, woodcuts, engravings, linocuts, and letterpress.

I have lived a life in the world of public activity for more years than I can now count—teacher, brand manager, executive director, priest, bishop and archbishop. All the while I have found myself drawn again and again into the world of creativity and art, both through collecting art and now through block carving and letterpress. What keeps drawing me in is the discovery, often through mistakes, of a new thing coming into being.

I am a beginner! The gift in being a beginner is that most everything is a discovery and that in making something, I have to give up any of my illusions of perfection (whatever that is). I love the many steps both in the letterpress and in the block carving process—decisions about what to focus on, the actual planning and creation of the block or of what will go onto the press, and, of course, the printing process, itself, with its attention to placement and color.

For me, the whole process is about following the movement of what in the Christian tradition we call the Spirit. The Spirit stirs up the desire to create. The Spirit is the companion at every step of the process. The Spirit works through learning from others, experimenting, and making mistakes. My task (and, I believe, our task) is showing up on a daily basis to be a person through whom the Spirit will do her work, with all the necessary “wrong” turns and new discoveries that this may mean.

All of the pieces in this show are personally designed and hand-printed, which means that no two pieces are alike and that all the pieces bear the characteristics of being hand-printed. Little “imperfections” are a part of the hand-printing process.

About the Artist

The Most Rev. Melissa Skelton has served as Bishop Provisional for The Episcopal Diocese of Olympia in the Episcopal Church and Archbishop of the Diocese of New Westminster and Metropolitan of the Ecclesiastical Province of BC and Yukon in the Anglican Church of Canada. Prior to this, she was Rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Seattle, WA and Canon for Congregational Development in the Diocese of Olympia. While in her diocesan role in Olympia, she founded and created The College for Congregational Development (known as the School for Parish Development in Canada). She previously was Head of Staff at General Theological Seminary, Vice President at the Tom’s of Maine company, and Brand Manager at Procter & Gamble.

In all her various roles and jobs, the ones she has loved the most are the ones in which either individually or in a team she has been a part of creating a new thing or breathing new life into something in need of renewal.

Archbishop (retired) Skelton currently lives in Seattle WA and continues to teach at Vancouver School of Theology. She is married to The Rev. Eric Stroo, a mental health counselor, and is mother to son Evan and grandmother to five grandchildren.