I had really expected that I was about done with the family curse series, a series exploring the fall of Adam and Eve in Genesis chapter three, through the lens of hoo doo curses and Great Depression images, playing on the idea that our struggles as individuals is somehow tied to a curse upon our family of origin, only it is a more ancient curse than we realize.

I have a few pieces in process that use the images of the family tree and family curse and ties it back to the tree of knowledge of good and evil that Adam and Eve partook of that brought sin in to the world.  I had hoped to finish finally with the cursed tree, where Christ became a curse for us and removed the curse of sin once and for all, but honestly those are hard images to imagine and execute.

Possibly as a stall, but also as it relates to the cursed roots of our family I am embarking on a series that explores the cursed fruit we see on our lives and the lives of those around us.  I have struggled between depicting the rest of Genesis after the fall and expulsion from the garden and the seven deadly sins, the resolution will reference both as this piece does.  The pride and rebellion of the Tower of Babel seems like a great parallel to pride in general working out in our own lives.

So here is the first piece of the next part of this series, trying to keep with Great Depression era images, I had to in this case reach back a bit further.  Pictured is the iceberg believed to have sunk the Titanic, the colossal of the White Star Line cruise ships. 

I enjoy that without being explained the image is abstract or looks at the Tower of Babel and Pride from a oblique angle, less literal and I like that, it’s joyful in a way I can’t describe.

We recently moved to the city and I have been stirred to reach out to people, to learn to love my neighbors, to get involved in the life of the city.  I have been inspired by Jeremy Begbie’s “Future Hope” lecture as it relates to art making as well as to engaging in “making all things new.”  

But my real longing, my real loyalty is to another city and this piece reflects that sometimes hopeful, sometimes impatient longing for that city.  There is hope, otherwise we would give up counting the days, but as the days stretch out we can be impatient, I know I am at times.  The Psalms ask several times “How long?”  How long would the enemies prevail against God’s people?  How long would God allow suffering?  How long until they saw their desires?  

The psalms validate that longing and that question as it is asked over and over again.  Faith is total, though it doesn’t have to always answer all of our questions.  We may not have immediate answers to dilemmas that face us but we are not without assurance and hope. And so at times we wait, we look and we long.

 (Mostly) found wood, old calendars, paint.  51″ x 51″