Stations of the Cross

The Stations of the Cross were commissioned by St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Lancaster, PA and were completed in the spring of 2005.

 

This commission gave me the opportunity to apply my own contemporary vision to an artistic form that dates back to the 13th century.

 

For both aesthetic and conceptual reasons, I felt it imperative to work with a variety of models—a total of eleven, culled from a wide range of ages and ethnicities. I wanted the narrative of Christ’s passion and death to be represented in a way that is tensioned between the “specific” and the “universal.” The mixture of models and the anonymity implied by the fragmented figures push the imagery toward representation of the human community in its universal aspect (often called in theological terms “the mystical body of Christ”).

 

The Stations were cast from life into Hydrocal FGR 95 and are 24" square. Two sets were made: one resides permanently at the parish. The other set has been exhibited at Allegheny College in Meadville, PA; the Narthex Gallery at Saint Peter's Lutheran/ Citicorp Center and the National Museum of Catholic Art and History in NYC, the Philadelphia Episcopal Cathedral, and Memorial Hall at the Basilica of the National Shrine of

the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC.

 

In 2015, in conjunction with Pope Francis's visit to Philadelphia, I participated in an exhibition at the Globe Dye Works, a defunct factory now used for art exhibitions. I showed the master "patterns," i.e. the assembled forms from which the fabricators made the molds and cast the positives for the commission. These patterns bear the scars of the production process: the discoloration of the lacquer sealants, cracks, chips and broken fingers.The patterns were positioned around the industrial machinery in a manner reminiscent of the Museo Centrale Montemartini, another former industrial space in Rome.

 

Listen to Peter Crimmins' review

of the Globe Dye Works

exhibition on WHYY