Folks at church are creating objects to serve as stations of the cross for the prayer path that leads to the back of the property. Paul, one of our particularly artistic people brought a couple of pieces already and they hang in the hallway of the main building.
I chose to work on "The Condemnation by the Sanhedrim" (Matt 26:59-66; Mark 14:55-64; Luke 22:66-71). The church leaders try to find some reasonably credible charge against Jesus. He makes no reply to any of the charges brought. When questioned directly about his identity he declares Himself the Son of God and impugns the justice and authority of the court. They don't for a moment consider his claim true but seize on it as heresy worthy of death.
I imagined my piece depicting Jesus as a white shaft out front of a wall where all the accusations had been hurled and had not stuck. Further I wanted to show that the accusations had missed the point and have the shaft continue up far past the wall to something larger and greater. Well outside my budget and ability I imagined a bathtub ten feet in the air whose drainpipe extended down in front of the small wall and further down into the ground.
It was as I considered this separation and unity of Jesus divinity and his participation in passionate humanity that I got my own understanding of what Paul had brought. His pieces are instruments painted all white with shafts interrupted and held together by dioramas. One is a guitar and one is a shovel. In each case the "working" part of the instrument -- the soundbox and the spade -- is above the separation. I do not presume to know what the artist intended, but this is a way of looking at it that makes sense to me.
Posted to Interior Life at March 11, 2008 11:00 AM