Ss Peter & Paul, Kettering
Making the Cross |
Making the Cross
It was on Easter Sunday 2007 at 2pm that I was seized by the Fear.
I was stood alone in the middle of what for the past 97 years had been the central aisle of St.Michael’s church, the holy place whose community had welcomed my family with open arms. It looked like it had just been bombed. I looked down at the crowbar in my hands and began to realise what I had almost single-handedly just done to this sacred place. Clearly I was going to have to put something very special back….
In late July 2007 the opportunity came: most of the interior had been refurbished and the main thing missing was a permanent crucifix. People were starting to miss it, it was needed, I was volunteered.
Deciding on a direction
Hoping to give everyone what they wanted, I canvassed opinion: Clergy and parishioners all held strong opinions, and researching the internet threw up thousands more options. Following any existing idea would either cause offence to someone or breach copyright laws. I was clearly on my own and creating something entirely original.
Like any good teacher of design I followed my own advice and wrote a clear and concise Design Specification. This is the simple list of criteria that people wanted met:
Arms: should hang upwards, one slightly higher than the other, be parallel, raised in prayer, come down to embrace, go out straight like a gymnast.
There must be blood, lots, there should be no blood to scare children.
He should have a long curly beard, trimmed stubble, be clean shaven as in Ethiopian Icons.
He should look strongly Jewish/ Caucasian/ Aramain/Haggard/ Young/ Reborn/Emaciated/Strong like a labourer (carpenters didn’t have power tools then and he walked everywhere)
He must be portrayedAlive/ Dying/ giving up his spirit/full of grace/ ecstatic/ forsaken/bronzed/ deathly pale/ smiling down lovingly/ in agony/ reborn/
It must be made from Olivewood from the
It must be realistic/ abstract/ figurative/
The cross must be a copy of the elaborate Taize Cross, be a realistic T-shaped Roman Crucifix, be long, fat, square, narrow, bent like real wood, shaped like a dove(!).
Of course you know Jesus would have been nailed with his legs sideways.
There’s nothing wrong with the old one bring it back!
I realized that if I was going to cause offence I might as well do it on my own terms: I was on my own.
Any good crucifix needs a neatly bearded unkempt, white, tanned Caucasian Mediterranean British Jew nailed to a lump of wood in such a way that he expresses complete agony and total all-embracing, transformational love. The Christ figure should be shown in one go as suffering, teaching, bleeding profusely but not scaring the children away, dying, being dead, risen, transformed, full of the holy spirit, empty of life, having breathed his last, yet a vital living sign of God’s love for us all. The crucifixion is just another execution without the resurrection. For me I wanted the moment that the stone is rolled away to be linked to the moment of death: this crucifixion must therefore become a work that spans the three days, that allows people to reflect on and dramatically expresses elements of the passion.
Much simpler to just nail a bloke to a bit of wood. Anyone can nail a bloke to a bit of wood.
I am uncomfortable with giving people an image of what Christ looks like as a detailed anatomical image painted in full colour with streaming blood- I just don’t know what he looked like- I’m also slightly nervous about making an image that some people may find graven- I also know that abstract art doesn’t do it for me so it has to be a realistic figure, that isn’t realistic, detailed yet vague, an accurate recognisable ‘Jesus’ but not actually Jesus. Good.
Find a way to make it clear that this is Christ without offending anyone’s preconceptions or sensibilities.
Find a way to show the ‘transformational power of love’
Show the crucifix as being something that was a weapon of torture and death but has been transformed by Christ’s sacrifice to become life giving.
Find a way to link St. Michaels and All Angels to the Diocese of Peterborough
Create something majestic, but not pretentious, precious but on a St. Michael’s size budget, something deeply personal but universal, something that invokes emotion without mawkishness or sentimentality, something that transcends but is accessible, something that would be a focal point on the north side of the building and use natural light but would also be a beautiful focus for Oremus, something that will work with gold and flat colour in the same way as an Icon, but be rounded and three-dimensional. And most importantly for me be able to be read as a bloke nailed to cross and yet also represent the Trinity in the fullest way possible.
If possible I also wanted to bring some of the resurrection story in as well.
Crucifixion’s a doddle.
When our children were baptised we were given as a family a small, simple and eloquent olivewood cross that had a naïve Jesus shaped hole cut out of the centre. You can see through this one: hold it up and you can see the world through this viewfinder...
The ideas fermented. Slowly. After a few abortive sketches that looked like all the other crucifixes I’d ever seen but not half as good, I stopped drawing. For a couple of months I resorted to rolling the figures, shapes and colours over and over in my head. For this to work as a piece of art was not in itself enough. No matter what the end result or quality this could not be something that would be imposed on the people, trample on their sensibilities and ultimately be rejected only for the ‘old cross’ to be brought back. It would have to be a functional piece of folk art to be used by the community that it had been inspired by.
Modelling
Making a man out of clay was the most straightforward part and took four evenings to get the bulk done. All I needed after laying the main skeletal forms and putting muscle over the top was a skinny model who would be willing to be suspended from the hands at regular intervals. Fortunately my son Edward, always keen to show his tinny ribs, helped out there. However by the time I had finished the initial shape he had influenced my vision so much that the legs and head were in the same proportions as a five year old. Trimming the big head and stretching the legs added the required 30 years.
Edward asked “Why is he all muscley?” I replied: “He was a carpenter’s son and likely to have ‘strong hands that were skilled at the plane and the lathe’!”
“But Dad, were Jesus’ hands kind hands?”
“Yes I suppose so… I’ll see if I can make that happen too.”
The clay figure took up the whole of the dining room table for a while, until my wife and I arrived at a compromise: Jesus could stay on the table during the day, except for mealtimes, but overnight would have to rest on the living room floor. This led to a number of visitors being rather perplexed at the sudden shouted warning “Look out for Jesus! Don’t tread on him!”
Being ill early in the week meant that someone was needed to help shoulder my burden. I took the man of clay over to Spalding to my father, David Twigg’s house on Thursday evening to use his workshops. We built the house together over twenty years ago and called it St. Joseph’s House, St. Joseph also being patron saint of craftsmen, especially carpenters. It was here that we made the wooden cross and cast the figure: Yes, at St. Joseph’s House, in the House of David, in the House of my Father (pick whichever you think most appropriate.)
After the cross had been built to receive the cast of the figure, (basically a hollow box with a lid more like a coffin) it was time to cast the mould in fibreglass. The clay figure was created to be what a mould maker would call ‘sacrificial’ because it had so many undercuts and deep straight walls that it would not come out in one piece but would have to be dug out in pieces and discarded. However it wasn’t until the first pungent layer of gel coat had gone on like embalming fluid and hardened with a fibreglass shroud wrapped tightly around the figure that I realised how many parallels with death and burial rituals were being re-enacted.
The fibreglass mummified the corpse, went hard and was cut down from the baseboard. I dug the clay out and revealed the impression of where the clay figure had been inside the shroud, the man was gone, the place where he had been buried was empty, I turned the mould to show my sister the 3D effect created by the absence of Jesus and it worked every bit as well as I thought it would. She was astonished!
I didn’t have any more time to dwell in the house of my father as I had to be back at school in the morning. I left Dad with the ‘simple’ task of cutting the hole in the front of the cross so that it would perfectly match the inside of the mould. This was another one-shot job and could have meant the sudden demise of the whole project if either the cross or the figure were damaged. He got up at dawn and spent the day pacing, sweating, chain smoking, ignoring my phone calls, keeping vigil, “weighing up form” and generally forsaking me. At about three in the afternoon he committed to sawing through the thin front surface, rending it in half from top to bottom so that we could see inside the place where, according to our plans, God was supposed to be seen. I was phoned at school at half three and told: “It is done.”
The pieces were brought over to my house Friday night where it rested until the morning awaiting its final coats of paint and assembly.
Saturday: On the third day it was assembled, and as Bishop John arrived, was lifted, ascended even, to it’s final resting place hanging from the roof of the church, to the excitement of Megan calling over to Dominic and Bishop John saying, “Look, Jesus is here!”
More Symbolism than you can shake a stick at (with or without a wetted sponge.)
The cross is transformed from weapon of torture to image of resurrection.
The ‘risen’ presence of Jesus changes depending on your point of view and how much effort you put into seeing it.
Sometimes the ‘risen’ image appears to you whether you want to see it or not, and can be quite a surprise.
The man made from clay has been sacrificed and no longer exists, yet the image that he created by embracing and burning has mark into the cross persists as a hollow. Like the empty tomb when the stone is rolled back there is nothing there but empty space, however, the image also persists in our perception of it as a solid three-dimensional presence that not only once went into the cross, was destroyed and then taken away, but now in resurrection, comes out to meet us, following us as we maintain our focus on it.
The empty space of the figure going forwards and inwards gives a space that seems to beckon us in, to spread our arms and follow, to literally fall into the mould of Christ, to share in Christ’s sacrifice from his point of view. Yet like an Iron Maiden the nails that come forward into the space where Christ’s body was also give us a sharp, visceral reminder that to do so is not something that should be taken lightly, is not an easy path to take and, one way or another, likely to be painful.
I like the way that your position and distance from this crucifix alters your perception of the various elements: Further away and in front the whole figure inverts itself and the risen Christ appears to come forwards from the surface to embrace you but as you walk closer to receive communion at the altar the nails appear, extending painfully towards you and cannot be focussed on without the image reverting back to a hollow. The image becomes elusive and is denied us in the same way that our own faith sometimes eludes us in times of hardship.
Office Address:
The Rectory
Church Walk
Kettering
NN16 0DJ