Art exhibit features crosses by artist Joel Nickel
During the season of Lent the artwork of Joel Nickel will be on display in the Chapel. All the work revolves around the form and meaning of the cross of Christ, and includes paintings, wall sculptures, processional crosses, and pectoral crosses. The small, wearable pectoral crosses use a variety of materials, but primarily are cloisonne enamel (glass on metal). Joel Nickel studied at the Chicago Academy of Fine Art and at the Oregon School of Arts and Crafts (now OCAC) in the metals studio. He is also the pastor of Calvary Lutheran Church in Stayton, Oregon. He has consistently applied his interest in the visual arts to his work in theology, and his theological insights have found their way into his liturgical designs, painting and sculpture, a merger of verbal and visual communication.
The New Testament speaks about the cross of Christ with a focused realism and engages our very being, confronting us with the paradox of the cross that should help us ponder the existential question of the spiritual: "Were you there when they crucified my Lord?" The cross is the place both of death and the victory over death, the place of shame and yet the place of glory. We see the stark pain and loneliness of Jesus, and yet see that "when he is lifted up he draws all people to himself." The cross transforms normal expectations: "it is the weakness of God that is stronger than human strength and the foolishness of God that is wiser than human wisdom." This artist would add to Paul's assertion that "the ugliness of God is more beautiful than human beauty." The artistic challenge of the cross is to point to such engaging paradoxes while attempting to overcome the banal treatment of the cross as mere personal decoration and social cliché. |
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