A model of a Scandinavian sailing ship, suspended in the center above the sanctuary, points up the essentially Danish nature of the congregation and heightens the visual effectiveness if the cloud paintings, several of which were paid for out of gifts from New York collectors.
A number of donor to the project are Jewish, Gunderson said.  Part of their motivation for honoring the church through the project was gratitude on their parts for the role Danish Christians played in saving many of the nation’s Jews from death during the Holocaust.
Additional support for the product came from local donors and from Lee and Ione Andersen, who loaned money to the church in anticipation it would be paid for it through the “Cloud Fund.”  The final panel was installed in time for the church’s centennial last September.

Gunderson holds a bachelor’s degree form the Wisconsin-Whitewater, where she studied painting with Clayton Bailey and Max Taylor.  Later she entered graduate school at the University of Iowa, where she earned a master’s degree in painting and a master’s of fine arts in intermedia.