This came back from the framers on Saturday. The photo shows some of the flash from the camera but otherwise the image gives a good idea of the finished work.
Over Holy Week I'll say a little of how this tapestry evolved; not an explanation of what it 'means', but perhaps some personal reflections on the passage that inspired it, and how exegeting text and working tapestry can be a symbiotic process of lectio divina. I started with an empty canvas and no pre-planning other than daily reading of the text before picking up the needle again. Once I started I visited the thread shop regularly to browse and choose, with the passage in my head – I now know it by heart. Over several months, this was the result.
Do I understand the Colossian hymn better? Or do I sense its mystery with more humility? Does the text control the thread, or the thread interpret the text? I started the project asking the question, 'What colour is Christology?'. I finished it in one sense none the wiser, but in a deeper sense coming to see that Christology may best be represented by all colours woven together in the harmonies and tones of reconciling love.
In which case the patterns and shapes, colours and tones of Christology have infinite subtleties, unthinkable contrasts, creative clashes, juxtapositions of image and colour that expand our widest fields of aesthetics, but which in the end become a visual representation of the One for whom all things were made, and in whom all things hold together. More later.
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