Monstrance
Artists John Robertson, Jack Potts, and Cody Nicholson
Medium life size, 3D-printed skull in bone white ABS, handmade mourning dove’s nest, plywood pedestal table designed after a candlestick in the perpetually lit Tomb of Christ, Church of Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem.
Size: 38" tall x 23 " diameter
Date: 2014
Verse John 20:29 Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
Description:
Our faith claims one exception to a biological finality: that all beings living two thousand years ago are now dead, now empty skulls. We have not seen and yet believe the claim passed through translations of handwritten copies of eyewitness accounts that one empty skull, one death, one end became a beginning, a life, an egg.
Additional Details:
A monstrance was an alter piece in the medieval Catholic church. It was a display for the consecrated communion wafer. Belief in the medieval church maintained that, once consecrated, the wafer became the real flesh of Christ (transubstantiation).
The height of the pedestal table is the same as the ark of the covenant (1.5 cubits), placing the skull at the same height as the mercy seat where the God manifested Himself to the high priest of Israel in the Old Testament tabernacle.
The idea behind this piece contains, to me, the same spirit as these words by T. S. Eliot:
Medium life size, 3D-printed skull in bone white ABS, handmade mourning dove’s nest, plywood pedestal table designed after a candlestick in the perpetually lit Tomb of Christ, Church of Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem.
Size: 38" tall x 23 " diameter
Date: 2014
Verse John 20:29 Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
Description:
Our faith claims one exception to a biological finality: that all beings living two thousand years ago are now dead, now empty skulls. We have not seen and yet believe the claim passed through translations of handwritten copies of eyewitness accounts that one empty skull, one death, one end became a beginning, a life, an egg.
Additional Details:
A monstrance was an alter piece in the medieval Catholic church. It was a display for the consecrated communion wafer. Belief in the medieval church maintained that, once consecrated, the wafer became the real flesh of Christ (transubstantiation).
The height of the pedestal table is the same as the ark of the covenant (1.5 cubits), placing the skull at the same height as the mercy seat where the God manifested Himself to the high priest of Israel in the Old Testament tabernacle.
The idea behind this piece contains, to me, the same spirit as these words by T. S. Eliot:
Birth or Death? There was a birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
- T. S. Eliot from Journey of the Magi, 1927
“At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
- T. S. Eliot from The Four Quartets (Burnt Norton). 1935
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
- T. S. Eliot from Journey of the Magi, 1927
“At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
- T. S. Eliot from The Four Quartets (Burnt Norton). 1935
