Katya Roberts preparing ‘Hverfjall’ for exhibit. Photos by Alexandra Boncek.
When a Ukrainian Covenanter took a deep dive Into Ecclesiastes, something new emerged.
Katya Roberts had never heard of Mission Friends until her husband’s job, a pink house, and a Minnesota hot dish brought her to a Covenant church in New England.
Roberts is an artist, and in March 2020, she installed an exhibit in a castle in Rochester, Minnesota. The exhibit, “This Side of the Sun,” included charcoal drawings, video, sound, and sculpture that evoked stark places in the natural world, such as the Icelandic Highlands. She says she wants her work to inspire awe, a sense of one’s own smallness, or, as C.S. Lewis wrote, the “numinous”—the suspicion inside all of us that something exists that is greater than ourselves.
“Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever” (Ecclesiastes 1:4).
As a Christian artist working in secular spaces, Roberts creates subtle pieces rather than explicitly religious ones. She tries to find universal points of connection. But beneath the surface is a wellspring of spirituality.
“I’m paying attention to God and the natural world,” she says. “I’m drawn to the ways nature shows us large gestures from God, how God has shaped and sculpted the earth. I love a big God with his big gestures.”
“This Side of the Sun” was the result of a months-long wrestling. “The Holy Spirit led me to camp out in Ecclesiastes, which felt like kind of a downer Scripture to hang out in,” Roberts says. “I didn’t totally understand it at the time.”
The exhibit explored themes of uncertainty, time, and the monotony of life. But two weeks after opening, the coronavirus pandemic hit and the exhibit had to close. Suddenly the Ecclesiastes theme of uncertainty became a reality for the whole world.
All of Roberts’s pieces, which had been lovingly and painstakingly created to be seen and interacted with, were packed up and put into storage.
“Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless. What do people gain from all their labors at which they toil under the sun?” (Ecclesiastes 1:2-3).
Soon after the show closed, Roberts’s husband, Kris, a radiation oncologist, took a job in New Hampshire. The couple went online and bought a pink house with an art studio in the community of Bedford. They didn’t know a soul, but they moved halfway across the country with their two young children.
It wasn’t long before they heard a knock at the door.
New neighbor Tommi Hall was a kindred Minnesota transplant and a Covenanter. She introduced herself, brought a casserole, and invited them to church. It was still during the pandemic, so she sent them the link to online services at Bethany Covenant Church.
When the Robertses listened to sermons online by Bethany Covenant’s pastor, Chris Ek, they were drawn to the way he actually addressed things going on in the world, things people were living through.
So when services started back in person, the Roberts family showed up. Initially, they were a bit skeptical because everyone was so friendly and eager. They had never heard of the Covenant denomination before, but they found a home among people who want to do life together.
In the winter of 2022, the pastoral team began a series on the book of Ecclesiastes. They had no idea about Roberts’s exhibit based on the same text. By that point, her artwork had been sitting in storage for a year and a half. After the series was announced, she hesitantly realized she might have something to contribute.
“My work doesn’t look like friendly art that you would put above your fireplace,” Roberts says. “It’s less about art that matches your couch and more about art that sparks conversation. If it looks a little scary or striking or disquieting, I’m okay with that. But it could also be uncomfortable for people.”
She prayed about it and decided to offer her work to display at church. The congregation had some experience with artists already. They decided to move forward.
It wasn’t long, however, before the world was turned upside down again. In February of 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine.
Roberts was born in Ukraine and lived there until she was 12 years old. She has family there.
“I was plunged into grief not knowing how long the country would survive,” she said. “My kids saw their mom in a puddle. I thought, Forget the show. I can’t do creative work right now. I’m a mess. But I talked to a friend who said, ‘The timing of this is something you can’t make up. That’s what you’re given to work with.’”
So she moved forward with the exhibition.
Katya Roberts sitting in front of
First Passage
As she was processing her shock and grief, Roberts heard from people about how meaningful her work felt in light of the war. Somehow the themes of the exhibit spoke both to the pandemic and to the invasion.
“The same thing comes back around again and again in human history,” Roberts said. “War, plague…” It all echoed Ecclesiastes 1:9: “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”
She created three additional pieces that were specific to Ukraine, which played with the idea of reconciling the irreconcilable. “There is so much about war that makes no sense,” Roberts said. “Despite all the things that make no sense, God is sovereign.”
Now as she reflects on the season she spent in Ecclesiastes, she is able to recognize God’s provision. “The year leading up to that exhibit, I was in the Word so much,” she said. “Sometimes five or six hours a day. I didn’t know why, but I was so happy to do it. God was saying, ‘I just want you to lean into me.’”
She sees now how God was preparing her somehow for what would come. “I’m really grateful that God has sustained my faith throughout the last year. I can easily see how that faith could be shaken if not destroyed.”
Last year, during Holy Week, Bethany Covenant Church opened Roberts’s exhibit to their community. Guests were able to view her art, hear readings from another Ukrainian woman’s war diary, ask questions, and share stories. Many Ukrainian neighbors attended, and one woman shared about growing up in Mariupol, which had just been bombed. At the event, one photograph on display was of a theatre, and this woman recognized the theatre as well as the aid workers depicted, which brought the reality of the destruction so much closer.
The evening brought together believers and non-believers to weep and grieve together.
Roberts says she hopes to be part of rebuilding in Ukraine someday when it’s safe to return. In the meantime, she prays. “My prayer for Ukraine is that it will emerge as a strong beacon of light in that region,” she says. “In war, humanity can become lost. Pray that people of faith will hold onto their faith and minister to people around them. Pray not just for protection and peace, but for generations to come to speak of Christ’s love to their neighbors.”
