CROSSES

WOOD | STONE | CROSSES | FIGURATIVE | OTHER

Crosses

I began making crosses because I had been struck by two things. Crosses are ubiquitous in our culture. They are on the fronts of churches and around people’s necks. Yet, their ability to signify anything specific has faded to the point of invisibility. Who really “sees” those crosses? The essayist and novelist Walker Percy wrote about a similar erosion in Christian words, saying “The old words, God, sin, grace, redemption now tend to be either exhausted, worn smooth a poker chips and signifying as little, or else are heard as the almost random noise of radio and TV preachers.” He believed the Christian writer must be cunning and devious, because he is working with a “vocabulary which must be either discarded or somehow miraculously rejuvenated.”

My early crosses were made with the idea that they might be appropriate for churches. As time went on, I determined it was better to just concentrate on the imagery than to imagine an audience. Most recent crosses have been made for individuals. There are multiple versions of the salt lick cross, and of the broken tablet cross. Though formally these crosses are related, each cross differs in its size, shape, and composition. You can see pictures of cows licking the salt blocks by going to the “Sculpture” tab and then clicking on “other substances.”

Second City Church

Lenten Cross

2016

76.75″x42.25″x9″ (maximum relief)

blown glass, paper ash, wood, paint and stain.

The cross was made during the Lenten season. Church members wrote lists of personal sins in response to a Lenten sermon series on the Seven Deadly Sins. They shredded their lists and brought them to a glass studio, where they personally placed the paper bits into the blown glass forms used to make the cross image. The hot glass reduced the shredded paper to ash, which was then sealed into the glass. The cross now hangs in the church in Harrisburg, PA.

Click HERE for a YouTube video about the Lenten Cross.