Tetelestai Cross Sculpture

 (Available for Purchase)

When I showed the first one to people they really stared and even brought others to see it.

Some told me they were “caught off guard” as tears welled up in their eyes.  One told me she had never seen it that way before in any other artwork.  My husband and I loved explaining what it meant.

The first one didn’t have frame or broken chain. I added them and a textured background to the piece when I decided to make a mold of it.  God gave me a brilliant wood worker to help me with the structures.  Thomas did it because he loved the work and charged me a very modest fee.

The original took 5 days to trace letters and etch them out of silvering of mirror with a drimmel tool and then hand paint red.  I put the nail scar of the original sculpture in the palm, which is where most people think it was.  Then decided to put it at top of the wrist, where researcher say it must have been.  This area was considered part of the hand.

Use real broken mirror but the size and shape of the pieces couldn’t be controlled and there was a lot of waste.   I researched a better way to etch the letters, including chemical etching.  Monte helped me find someone to do digital etching but it would only work with acrylic mirror. This solved the problem of getting the pieces cut to the right shape too. 

We tried several types of nails (including a rail road spike found at a flea market) until I found an authentic replica of a Roman nail of the type that would have been used for crucifixion.

Cross kept bending and they had to reinforce the casting. 

Silver mirror didn’t look good with the natural rust finish, ordered gold mirror.

Did not want to leave Jesus on the cross but instead show Him holding the nail in his nail scarred hand as if He was saying – This I did for you.  Then I made Tetelestai creating a unique font using the nail shape. 

This piece is NOT depressing but joyous for those who understand the meaning of TETELESTAI and Know that IT IS FINISHED!!!

From Here To Eternity (Tree of Life)

(Available for Purchase)

Monte and I both came up with the name for this piece.

In planning this piece I knew my mixed media would have to look good together; IE the organic looking tree sculpture would have to blend well with the shiny mirror that had my drawing etched on it.  Gold leafing the tree accomplished this.

I had to teach myself Photo Shop first so I could make a digital line drawing.

My computer at the time didn’t have enough memory for such a big graphic.

These two little obstacles resulted in more than a few tears and a lot of just hanging in there by shear grit until it was finished.

 I pondered about what type of architecture to use for the buildings.  Finally found an architect who was willing to help me even if he did think I was a bit crazy. He presented me a couple of sketches with different types of buildings beside a river.  I decided to use a mixture of ancient and contemporary styles and try to blend them together. Next I had to brush up on the perspective I had learned 20 years ago. 

One of my dilemmas was that I didn’t know how to show the tree(s) on both sides of river.  Another was that I needed a way to make the city look like it continued up to a great height.  

My main objective was that I wanted to show many ethnic groups all living in peace, joy and love. I wanted them to be doing things other than floating around on a cloud playing a harp as some people picture heaven.

 When I finally got the done with the drawing I thought I had copied it to the CD but managed to send it blank to the etcher.

The sculpture of the tree was taken from a previous one I had made minus the face which I decided looked a little too fantasy like or New Age.

When the etched drawing on mirror came back I had trouble lining up sculpture with drawing even though I had made a pattern.  The first one had small gaps and had to be scraped.

Swimming girl needed to line up exactly with the root of the tree sculpture and river must look like it went behind the 3D tree and spanned the whole city. 

Wanted to show Christ is the Tree and River of life.  Believing on His finished work on the cross is what takes us from Here to Eternity with Him.  That is what inspired me to cut out part of the background and place the three small crosses behind the tree.

The hand fountain in the drawing shows Christ is the Living Water as it pours forth on the head of the dancing Lamb. 

For Such a Time as This

(Fine Art Print of Queen Esther Available for purchase; For Such a Time as This with sculptured frame is still In Progress)

I re-painted details of the original painting several times until I finally was satisfied.  How could I include some sculpture with the painting?  The idea for the lattice work of the sculptured frame and the arch shape came to me as I was sitting in at a restaurant looking at the décor.  The actual carving of the lattice with a drimmel tool and router was tedious and took many days. Then columns were added with leafs I made with clay. Fortunately the finishing (painting process) of the sculptural frame went well the first attempt.

Later I decided to add a crown and earrings.  So I did this digitally after I finished the original oil painting and had the first giclee made. 

I was praying about how the viewer could see himself/herself in a (see thru) mirror then have the light come on behind the mirror so they could see Esther.  The message I wanted to convey that like Esther God wants to use them FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS.

Tried lighting the Giclee behind the mirror with several different types of light sources but could not get the lighting right.

Plus I saw that the ancient look of the lattice frame didn’t look right with a new looking mirror.  So I researched antique techniques for mirror.  But this wasn’t regular glass mirror this was see-thru acrylic mirror.  I tried dozens of times using different chemicals, paints, brushes, sponges and different combos of these.  Tried scrubbing off silvering then painting it from behind. Again and again my attempts at the lighting and antiquing techniques failed.  I was ready to just offer the giclee with the sculptured frame – no mirror.  You know I was praying about this problem often. Then I asked my art printer about what I was trying to do and he suggested printing the painting on a surface that could be backlit.  I had a test sample made and found out it would work.

Now I would just scrap the mirror that was wasted in attempts to antique and try one last time.  At least now I was sure the Lord was directing me to use the mirror over the painting since this was the reason I needed to light up the painting behind the mirror in the first place.  I found a “crackle” stamp after much searching which could make the antiquing so much easier and I designed a stencil to make it faster to place the paint being stamped on. 

Aw yes, but I didn’t just want the light to go on and off behind Esther, I wanted it to DIM on and off.  This required another special circuit board.  The Lord had already provided a local person to put these circuit boards together which seemed very unlikely.  It would be a big problem if parts for this circuit could not be found in the USA.  We ordered parts

From a USA company.  The lights needed to last a long time so customers wouldn’t need to replace or 6-10 years.  So we got the much more expensive LED light tubes and decided to make it a plug (offering an option to use a battery pack) in so there would be not need to replace batteries.

Installed new lights with timer/dimmer; smelled electrical burning - Also the lights needed much more depth to allow for proper diffusion. Wow - way to much trouble.  Regroup.  Now Esther and other fine art prints of Bible character could use the sculpted frame.  Also I will use regular mirror in sculptured frame with custom verse and mini storage behind for entry way etc.  The custom verse could be something like:    The Wilsons    As for Me and My House We Will Serve the Lord.

The Lord is not a God of waste.  I will use the idea and knowledge gained from all the trial and error.  I believe the artworks on backlit boards could make a great wall collage or mural with lighting timer/dimmer incorporating verses and probably mirror.  This would be a project for a large public area perhaps outdoors. 

I Will Never Leave You

(In Progress)

Everyone has experienced rejection.  Those that we are supposed to love us the most can hurt us the most.  All the women I shared this piece with got watery eyes. 

Became so heavy that the underlying structure kept sagging and her bottom dropped again and again.

Really hard to cut the head and hair out of the chest and back in order to make an exchangeable piece for a second woman with different ethnic look.  The first head fell and got smashed.  The hand got destroyed when Monte thought I wanted him to pull out the wire when I just wanted him to cut off part of it. 

I had the vanity mirror frame redesigned AFTER the mold had already been made. 

Then I didn’t like the look of her stool and the way her sheet draped so that was completely redone using a metal container for the base of her stool. I wanted this piece to look contemporary not like a like a classical Greek statue.

There had to be room for the lighting, batteries and timer and a way to easily change them and turn them on or off.  Getting this piece to be able to hang on the wall or sit on a table was tricky.  All these things required tests and changes to be made.

The man had to be walking out a door that was proportionally right for his size.

It took a lot of thought to figure out how to block the light so it would only shine on one side of the background at a time.  Thus the angled letters and the door open to just touch the back of the mirror. 

I bought two timers because I had two lights, only to find out that I couldn’t synchronize the lights and a special circuit board had to be built from parts bought from Radio Shack.

Still we were trying to keep cost down.

The finishing (painting of the sculpture) is often a lot of trial and error as in this case.

I KnewYou

(Available for purchase)

My original concept was to make a pregnant woman resting while the Lord’s hand reached through her and the infant held on to His finger. This idea was inspired by that famous photo of the surgeon with the fetus holding his finger. 

Lord what verse should I use?  As it often happens I got the answer with in a few days of my first asking Him; within about an hour after I asked again.  This time it was in huge letters on a sign beside the road.  “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.”

Wanting to simplify the sculpture to emphasize the message I decided to just make the Lords hand holding the fetus.  His other hand with the finger extended like (Michelangelo’s creation of Adam) toward the child. I didn’t think two arms jutting out of a base looked very good so I decided to connect them at the elbow making a pleasing sculpture even if not a normal position.

 I ordered a turntable and had the letters for the verse laser cut so I could mount them around the base on top of the turntable.

In looking for pictures of fetus’s I found one inside a sphere.  Yes, that’s it!  So I checked the price for having a casting of my infant embedded in a clear acrylic womb/sphere. The price was way out of my ballpark; for sure that wasn’t going to work.  Next, I tried sculpting a clay sphere with the child’s form emerging like the illustration of Leonardo Da Vinci’s my son Jason had emailed me.  It didn’t turn out the way I wanted.

Then Monte found a company that made all types and sizes of hollow balls in plastic and one had a hole where I could insert my baby.  The hole would be concealed in the palm. Yes!