Alum Debra Tyler Displays Handmade Earth Scroll

Debra Tyler, a graduate of the Women’s Leadership Institute and the Master of Arts at Hartford Seminary, spent three years creating a handmade labyrinthine Earth Scroll, which adds planetary rituals to those of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

The scroll is now on display at 76 Sherman Street, also known as the Women’s Leadership Institute building. It will be open to the public again from 5-7 p.m. on Wednesday, May 8, before an event called The Spirit at 76: Meet the Founder of the Prayer Shawl Ministry. To register for that event, which runs from 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., click here.

It took Tyler three years to complete the scroll, which was her MA project. She used block printing and hand lettering throughout, detailing the year in religious and neo-pagan readings and rituals and the cycles of nature from the perspective of her home in Cornwall, CT, and from the perspective of Jerusalem. In the center of the scroll is a representation of the tides over the Earth’s crust and core.