What's Happening

January 17, 2023, Adrian, Michigan – The art gallery at INAI: A Space Apart, adjacent to Weber Retreat and Conference Center, opens a new exhibit, Carole Harris: Textile Artist. The exhibit is open from Friday, February 3, 2023, through Sunday, May 21, 2023. The Artist’s Reception is from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. Sunday, April 23, 2023. All guests are screened for COVID-19 and are required to wear masks.

Carole Harris, a Detroit-based fiber artist, has extended the boundaries of traditional quilting through inclusion of other forms of stitchery, irregular shapes, textures, materials, and objects. Captivated by the interplay of hue, pattern, and texture, she often draws inspiration from the color, energy, and rhythms of ethnographic textiles that she collects, as well as the music, changing rhymes, and history of her environment. 

In 2015, Carole was awarded a Kresge Foundation Visual Arts Fellowship. Her work has been exhibited extensively. In 2018, she was one of two veteran artists honored with an exhibition in the Detroit Institute of Arts. Her work was also included in The Sum of Many Parts: 25 Quiltmakers in 21st Century America, which toured China in 2012. She was a guest lecturer for that exhibit.

INAI (pronounced in-EYE, meaning “within” in Japanese) is a contemplative space and art gallery that resonates with the Adrian Dominican Sisters’ Vision: to seek truth, make peace, and reverence life. It houses an art gallery, a quiet space for personal reflection and meditation, and an art room. INAI: A Space Apart is open from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. daily, or by appointment. Call 517-266-4090 or 517-266-4000.

Weber Center is on the campus of the Adrian Dominican Sisters’ Motherhouse, Adrian, Michigan. Traveling east on Siena Heights Drive, pass the Adrian Rea Literacy Center and turn left just before the solar panel-covered parking lot. Follow the signs to Weber Center. For information, call the Weber Center at 517-266-4000.

January 13, 2023, Rome – Pope Benedict XVI was an “accomplished pianist and scholar” who set a precedent for future popes in his surprising decision to retire from the papacy and leave it to another to lead the Catholic Church.

Sister Durstyne Farnan, OP

That’s how Sister Durstyne Farnan, OP, Dominican Representative to the UN, remembered Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. She was among a group of Catholic Sisters who reflected on his contributions to the Church shortly after he died on December 31, 2022.

Sister Durstyne was quoted in a January 5, 2023, Global Sisters Report article saying she believes that Pope Benedict will be remembered “as a shy scholar who led the church for eight years,” and as a “student of the Word [who] desired to know Jesus intimately.” She noted his three-volume work on Jesus, which he wrote while in retirement.

Like many others, Sister Durstyne pointed to the importance of his decision to retire. “It paves the way for any pope in the future to do likewise,” she said. “Perhaps this is one of the additional gifts Benedict leaves the Church today.”

Read more of Sister Durstyne’s comments and the reflections of other Sisters in the Global Sisters Report article by Chris Herlinger and Dan Stockman.