Putting Godly Visions Down on Paper

In the 1930s, Shaker historian Edward Deming Andrews was shown a “gift” drawing, a drawing done after a religious vision, during a visit to a Shaker community. He was astonished because the religious order was known for its emphasis on simplicity and avoidance of decoration. “[W]e did not know, after 10 years’ acquaintance with this secluded folk,” Andrews wrote decades later, “that they ever attempted to depict the signs and objects of the spiritual world.”

Forgotten or hidden since their heyday in the mid-19th century, other drawings were eventually uncovered. In 1969 the first book on the subject, “Visions of the Heavenly Sphere: A Study in Shaker Religious Art” by Andrews and his wife, Faith, was published, showing that there was more to Shaker culture than elegantly spare furnishings and oval boxes.

Today, some 200 of these drawings reside in various collections in the Northeast, and nearly half of them are included in “Heavenly Visions: Shaker Gift Drawings and Gift Songs,” curated by France Morin and opening at the UCLA Hammer Museum on Aug. 29.

About five years ago, Hammer director Ann Philbin was excited to see her first Shaker drawing at a New York art gallery. “Next time I heard about them was when France came to me and asked if I’d be interested in a show on Shaker drawings,” says Philbin, who was then director of New York’s Drawing Center, “and I said, ‘Absolutely!”’ Morin, an independent curator, had spent four months living with the Shakers at Sabbathday Lake, Maine, running a program that brought contemporary artists to the community.

“At the Drawing Center we were especially interested in art that was unknown, unappreciated,” Philbin continues. “When I came to the Hammer, I realized that these works would be appreciated in Los Angeles too.”

The show became a joint project of the two institutions, and it will travel to the Drawing Center after it closes here.

For many, Philbin believes, it will be an eye-opener to see these works, especially so many at one time. “They have this totally true and primal beauty to them,” she says. “I think they inform us about Shaker life and culture the way other things do not, so they really do broaden our understanding of that culture.”

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The Shakers, or the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Coming, began in England in the early 1700s, an offshoot of the Quakers. They became known as Shakers because, as one 18th century witness wrote, they were given to “great shakings of the whole body, motions of the head, the arm, and the breast.”

In 1774, Ann Lee, later known as Mother Ann, had a vision telling her to lead her persecuted fellow Believers to the United States. With her husband and seven devotees, she crossed the Atlantic and eventually established a Shaker community in what is now Watervliet, N.Y

By 1821, there were 18 Shaker communities from Maine to Kentucky, although there were probably never more than 6,000 adherents. This was partly due to the fact that the community could not reproduce, it could only recruit--celibacy was one of the cornerstones of Shaker practice.

Morin, speaking by phone from New York, points out that around the time that the Shakers lost their founding members, a revival of sorts took hold.

In 1837, during a service in Watervliet, three girls became possessed--shaking, dancing and speaking in tongues--and later said they had visited heaven with Mother Ann. Soon, other “instruments” in Watervliet and elsewhere began to have visions too.

The period came to be called the Era of the Manifestations or Mother Ann’s Work (1837-1860). The visions were considered spiritual gifts and some took the form of dance or song--about 250 of 800 Shaker song manuscripts date to this period. Still others were recorded on paper, sometimes by the instrument, sometimes by another person in the community, resulting in the gift or spirit drawings that survive today.

The Hammer exhibition numbers 125 items, including gift drawings, song booklets, hymnals and related material. There are 20 lenders to the show, among them the Hancock Shaker Village in Pittsfield, Mass., the Shaker Museum and Library in Old Chatham, N.Y., the United Society of Shakers in New Gloucester, Maine, and the Western Reserve Historical Society in Cleveland, Ohio. The Shakers used what they had on hand to make these works--writing ink and watercolors, ledger paper and stationery. Some were small, a few inches square, and most were modest-size, but once in a while they could be larger. Emily Babcock’s “The Narrow Path to Zion” is drawn on eight sheets of paper, each about a foot wide.

Many pieces were unsigned--authorship would have been a sign of sinful pride. Still, we do know the identity of 16 artists, and in a religion that conceived of God as both feminine and masculine, it is not too surprising that 13 of these were women.

There is text on most of these gift drawings--in fact, some are mainly text with a few embellishments. The words echo sermons and biblical material: They give reassurance to the faithful, exhort them to stay on the true path, warn against straying and promise rewards in the next life.

In Polly Jane Reed’s “Map of the Holy City,” for example, heaven is shown as a highly planned circular city, accessed by the Gate of Charity, the Gate of Innocence, the Gate of Simplicity, the Gate of Patience and others--virtues extolled by the Shakers.

Occasionally, the text was unreadable--as in “De Mudder’s Song” from 1845 or “This be de roll de great Holy Mother did tell her recording Angel to write” circa 1840-43. Both contain sections of unknown script or language--the written equivalent of “speaking in tongues.” The pidgin English found on these works reflects the belief that the instruments were hearing messages from Native American or African American spirits.

The drawings’ visual imagery was borrowed freely from domestic crafts and products such as embroidery, quilting, printed textiles and wallpapers, as well as other popular iconography. Andrews points out some of the common meanings assigned to objects--apples stood for love; cherries, hope; pears, faith; roses, love or chastity; and chains, union and strength.

Hannah Cohoon’s “Bower of Mulberry Trees” from 1854, for example, depicts two mulberry trees growing into an archway--a symbol of unity. Beneath the arch, handwritten text in a fan shape begins with the date, then “Blessed Mother Ann came into meeting ... and I saw a beautiful great bower four square on the ground.” Beneath the bower and the text is a long, narrow table complete with a meal--a promise of bounty for the faithful.

Cohoon recorded her own vision, but some called on another hand to do it. Polly Jane Reed, who joined the Shakers as a child, often transcribed the visions of others. Nearly 50 works are attributed to her; 30 of them are in the exhibition. Reed had a penchant for cutouts, and several of her works use pink heart-shaped and green leaf-shaped pieces. Inscribed on both sides with carefully written text, the works are punctuated with daintily drawn birds, stars and crowns.

The front of one heart begins: “The Word of the Holy, Heavenly Father, To a Daughter of his Love. Come forth with rejoicing and with dances, O thou fair virgin, in Israel. Yea let thy spirit be merry within thee, for I have called thee to be a disciple of my glory crowned with my Everlasting Love.” On the verso, we see that the instrument was Sarah Ann Standish, whose vision occurred on April 15, 1844.

In “An Emblem of the Heavenly Sphere” from 1854, a pantheon of Shaker greats is arranged in 12 rows of four people each, with Jesus Christ in the second row, below Mother Ann. On either side of the heads are tiers of trees, some real, such as orange, peach, apple and lemon, and some metaphoric, including “Flower of Eden” and “The Celestial Plum.”

It may seem contradictory that the Shakers were producing drawings when the sect’s laws stated, “No maps, Charts, and no pictures or paintings, shall ever be hung up in your dwelling-rooms, shops or Office.” But as Morin points out, these works were viewed as extensions of faith. “We have to look at them as religious art,” Morin says. “They came out of ecstatic visions; they’re not just pretty drawings.”

Then Morin goes a step further, relating creativity to spirituality. “I do personally think that the creative act is a spiritual act,” she says. “The Shakers understood that.”

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“HEAVENLY VISIONS: SHAKER GIFT DRAWINGS AND GIFT SONGS,” UCLA Hammer Museum, 10899 Wilshire Blvd., L.A. Dates: Open Aug. 29-Oct. 21. Closed Mondays. Prices: $4.50 for adults; $3 for seniors; free for members, students. Phone: (310) 443-7000.