In the Cross

Piet Mondrian, The Tree A, circa 1913

Tomorrow is Veterans Day, or Armistice Day, a day in which we remember the human souls behind world conflicts—those whom God created in love with bodies, hearts, and minds possibly broken or killed to bring resolution for the world. In turn we think of their families and friends and how wars said to have been won or dissipated long ago still show effects within our private realms.

Christians cannot think long of suffering and death apart from the cross of Jesus. In Roman-occupied ancient Palestine, the cross was a shameful way to die. The cross was reserved for criminals—those considered to be enemies of Rome. Crucifixion was death for losers, for those who did not have a chance to fight. Perhaps this has to do with why, when Pilate asked the crowd whether he should excuse Jesus or Barabbas from death, the crowd chose Barabbas—he was said to have murdered someone.

From a religious perspective, crucifixion at the hands of the enemy would appear as a death meant for someone from whom God had turned His face. Jesus, who always spoke that which gave utterance to the hearts of others, himself said what his disciples were surely thinking: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Today at Canterbury Cathedral, in Morning Prayer preparing for Armistice Day, in the garden where the orangery was lost to a bomb, in meditating on the meaning of the cross Dean Robert said “There is no hope of security except in eternity.” I feel this truth acutely as I pray for people today, some of whom are sick, some of whom are dying, while trying to not choke on the conflict in the air.

The cross, as a symbol, has been thought to mean many things. Grace to bear conflict with others and to accept cross-purposes within our own lives is one of them. The cross is two lines in opposition to each other. Some imagine the horizontal line as representing what is earthly and the vertical line symbolizing the heavenly.

In this way, the cross of Jesus, and the purpose of God in allowing it to be inflicted upon His Son and humanity, is available to all of us as a symbol which we might hold, imagine with, and make something from. It can help us face the fears of the world and lay them against what we trust God for—a line on which we can ascend and transcend.

That line might be one of thanksgiving you write in your journal, of one of a drawing that rejoices in the simple gift of the ability to make it, or words of encouragement for a friend. The cross might be imagined to be bearing this line into being, and then giving it away.

Piet Mondrian, Composition in Line, 1916-17

Join me for an Advent retreat with art on Zoom beginning on December 2. Click HERE for details or to register. Peace.

Matrix and Mother

The above painting is from the high altar in our Lady Chapel in which Mass is said daily. As our cathedral is Anglo-Catholic, and the Catholic Church dedicates October to the Rosary, it seems fitting to write about Mary before the month ends.

But this is a ruse because, as an artist and spiritual person, I find God in the gaps between things as much as I find what I am looking for in my objects of study. When I begin to write or make art about something or someone, I sooner or later realize that eyes in the back of my soul are studying something else.

As I write about Mary, Mother of Jesus, my gaze flies to the Trinity—the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—in which Jesus has his constant home. Here, by logic, I see Mary as the Mother of God. But logic is a clumsy tool for me, unlike a paintbrush I load with color. What I grasp as I write is the color that means Mary—blue. I want to show, however clearly, where blue meets God.

Cezanne is known as the the father of modern art. He is reported to have said, “Blue gives other color their vibration, so one must bring a certain amount of blue into a painting.” My painting teacher would say “Blue is the matrix of the universe,” thinking he was quoting Cezanne. (“Matrix” orginally meant “womb” and comes from the Latin word for mother.)

Through the appearance of blues that became available in the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries—Prussian, ultramarine, and phthalocyanine blues respectively—we see a matrix of blue become increasingly apparent in art. Liberated from costly pigment ground from lapis lazuli—the likely sapphire of the Bible—painters spread blue paint and opened the heavens for us.

Mont Sainte-Victoire, Paul Cézanne, 1902-04

The painter Wassily Kandinsky wrote: “The deeper the blue becomes, the more strongly it calls man towards the infinite, awakening in him a desire for the pure and, finally, for the supernatural... The brighter it becomes, the more it loses its sound, until it turns into silent stillness and becomes white.” A spiritual painter and writer, in writing about blue, did Kandinsky see Mary?

Jaune, Rouge, Bleu, by Wassily Kandinsky, 1925

At a recent Zoom meeting, the Dean sat in front of a tapestry of Jesus and the Sacred Heart as I stood in front of my semi-abstract watercolor of Jesus on the sea, which is my backdrop to the chaos of the pandemic and also to hope. I was struck by how the colors both in the Dean’s tapestry and in my painting are almost the same—as if I and the tapestry-maker held the same palette of colors and their meanings.

The tapestry’s Jesus is made from browns—earth tones—and is surrounded by blue sky comprised of the blues I mention above. The Dean’s Jesus has white angels within the blue. In his sermon on Sunday, Dean Harding spoke of Jesus’ sacred heart on fire for us. The white surrounding the heart shows its constant, intense heat.

Christ on the Sea, Brynna Carpenter-Nardone

In my painting, even as a color, Jesus has taken on earthly flesh to be surrounded by water as he was in the womb of his mother, blue Mary. He emerges to still the storm and point to glimpses of the color the Church loves to end his advent with—white—which might be moonlight or the Spirit moving on the water.

At this moment in time with injustice and unrest, sickness and death, we more easily recognize our fear of chaos than we see that we also fear our own advent and becoming. Can we for a moment, through the art of contemplation, deliver ourselves to be sown with Christ as a seed for the future? Are we able to remember our home in the matrix of the universe?

 We are all meant to be mothers of God...for God is always needing to be born.

—Meister Eckhart

Cathedral Artists' Talks I

CATHEDRAL ARTS TALKS WITH ARTIST AND DESIGNER
Andy Jerabek

This story behind the new visual identity of The Cathedral of All Saints is told in the first of a series of interviews with artists influential in helping Cathedral Arts grow into its mission.

Cathedral Arts: What is a visual identity?

Andy: It is a visual system created by an organization used to communicate its message.

Cathedral Arts: Why, after 131 years without it, does the Cathedral need one now?

Andy: The Cathedral of All Saints began a new ministry this year, Cathedral Arts, which is charged with the Cathedral’s mission—Helping people fall in love with God—through the arts. Cathedral Arts will present programs and speakers, promote events and classes, partner with other organizations, and fundraise. Many of these will need visual materials—ads, programs, posters, appeals. It became evident that a consistent message was required—both so Cathedral Arts is easily recognized through its materials and so the people who produce the materials have visual guidelines to work with. Cathedral Arts is actually part of the “brand” of the Cathedral, so its visual identity should be informed by the Cathedral’s. And since the Cathedral had no formal visual identity, I started there.

Cathedral Arts: What was the process you went through?

Andy: I explored the Cathedral’s essence as distinct from the Anglo-Catholic form of worship, which has its own visual rules established over centuries that govern such things as Easter, Christmas, Pentecost, liturgical seasons, and other spiritual concepts. In creating a visual identity that is specific to the Cathedral, I had to acknowledge those established rules while focusing on the distinct elements of the Cathedral of All Saints itself. I interviewed the people in the Cathedral who had the greatest interest in its “brand,” asking, What is the Cathedral’s historical purpose? What is its current mission? Who is it trying to reach? What are the symbols that represent the Cathedral? I collected printed pieces from the Cathedral Archives from the early days to the present to discover what kinds of visual communications have been used. I took hundreds of photos of the Cathedral, from overall architectural elements to such small details as the cornerstone carving, windows, memorials, and sacred objects.

Cathedral Arts: What are the elements of the visual identity that you created?

Andy: A word-mark of the Cathedral’s entire name; a monogram of its initials; a font system; and a color palette.

Cathedral Arts: How will it be used?

Andy: It will inform the production of major visual materials associated with the Cathedral—signage, programs, brochures, posters, ads, etc.

So, in the future, when anyone sees something from The Cathedral of All Saints, they will recognize it without a second glance because their eye will have absorbed Andy’s designs based on the art of the Cathedral and its Christian history. See what was hidden in the Cathedral in plain sight revealed through Andy’s work on September 15, when The Cathedral of All Saints reveals its new visual identity.