Taking a Break

I’m taking a break from the BIG PROJECT today and started knitting a prayer “shawl” for a friend who’s undergoing cancer treatment.  It’s actually more like a lap robe, ’cause I don’t think guys really do shawls.

It’s made with a simple k3 p3 pattern suggested in “Knitting Into the Mystery.”   The pattern is symbolic of the Trinity.  I’ve made a couple of prayer shawls before and they were very well received and loved by the people I gave them to.  Sadly, one of those succumbed to brain cancer a couple of years ago, but I know the shawl was well used while she was going through treatment.

I also put together a quick couple strands of prayer beads that my Relay for Life team is going to make for the annual event at the end of May.   I needed to see if I could actually make them and how long they would take to make so I would have some idea for the workshops we’ll be having soon to make them for the relay.    Actually, John did most of the one on the right.  We wanted to see how long it would take someone who’s never done beads before, and he did it in less than half an hour.  Not bad.

 

 

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Working in Layers

Last night I finished painting my canvases.  It’s really amazing to see how this creative process is working as I am forced to document and reflect upon it for my class.

I started with a “big picture” of what I wanted to accomplish and made it a little more particular with the thumbnail sketches.  But it is the actual execution of the work that is helping me to define the process and the meaning that is being built into the work as I go.

I began painting the canvases with the idea to use a gray scale to indicate growing darkness along the way to the cross.  I found that it was no easy thing to get the shading right and that it couldn’t be done by formula (at least I couldn’t figure one out), but had to be done by feel and intuition.  Just as a sunset doesn’t happen as gradually as we think but surprises us with significant changes in light at unexpected moments, so the growing darkness here required unexpected amounts of black to overcome the white base that I began with.

I wanted to convey some sense of emotions throughout the work and used the next layer to do that.  At the same time I also continued another layer of encroaching darkness by pulling shade back into each canvas from the one following it.  I used brush strokes and in some cases paint splatters to convey emotions such as confusion, betrayal, and anger.

 

The shading and brush strokes will underlay the successive layers as I begin to add media beyond the paint.  

I’m finding this very exciting and am impatient to finish, but the process of applying the different media requires me to do a lot of waiting and that is good for the reflection part.  It’s helping me not only to refine what I want to “say”, but also to plumb the depths of meaning in the journey to the cross.

It occurred to me last night, that although I had not thought about it when I decided to do this project, this is a perfect project to be working on during Lent.  I’m also getting some ideas not only on how the finished work could be used, but also on how I could adapt this process to use with a group of people in a Bible study or spiritual formation group.

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