VISITORS RESPOND

The Stations of the Cross is tortured; hard to look at, hard to walk. Seeing your way, Lord, jars me to know your suffering and hints at what awaits me on this way. Yet seeing heaven and its inhabitants draws me on, and gives me courage and hope to press on. I need to see better in order to live better.

Stations of the Cross: These made the stations more real than in all the years that I have read the Gospels. The falling of Jesus seemed to impact me the most for some reason, especially #9 – Jesus falls a third time. His grasping of the cross, his exhausting look just cut into me. The painting brought another dimension of Jesus sacrifice for us; it was a very emotional and yet spiritual experience. Thank you!

Earthly Judgment, or The Committee: An embodiment of what goes on in our heads. And sometimes with the people who know us. A bit scary (the closeness is important), but also makes the possibility of rejecting judgments wherever they come from, boldly possible.

Earthly Judgment, or The Committee: I stood at each one and experienced being judged. Some I did not know how I was being judged, and that made me uncomfortable. Also, turning around, I saw how I was being judged no matter which way I went, as is the same in life. I felt it was a great way to prepare me for encountering Jesus’ trial – his Earthly judgment.

[From a member of the advisory board] I have witnessed how the large faces of the Earthly Judgment tabernacle have been a catalyst for visitors to recognize the sources of a crippling shame in the judgmental glances they experienced in childhood, and then to seek therapeutic counsel and to receive the healing regard of God’s love and compassion.

The Temple Curtain reminds me of the unseen spiritual realities on ordinary things like plain fabric. Like when Elijah says to his servant to see the invisible heavenly host.

Once I encounter the Temple Fragment, I’m drawn upward: The seraphim appear and disappear among the texture and colors. They are glimpses, fragments themselves of what we can only ‘see in a glass darkly.’

Gay, I can only imagine having the vision and talent to execute these paintings. One of these would be amazing, but a room full is out of my realm of imagining. Good Friday and the Stations of the Cross will be all the more poignant to me because of your paintings or should I say murals.

This display is truly amazing. I am overwhelmed by the emotion in each and every painting. The stories to go along with each one are very helpful when identifying with each scene. The more I look, the more I see. God has given you a gift that you have used tremendously. God Bless you! 

The Face of Christ. The Faces of the Church. A Heavenly Host that sings (breathes?) toward us. Looking for connectedness, relationship: The mark-making and color draws and draws us into these expressive moments. Worn and used like the kinds of icons we see in the churches of antiquity. We accept their being subjected by time and travel (like ourselves).

It was so exciting for me to be there on Friday night. I can’t begin to explain it to you. … The Lord shares a portion of Himself when we pray for others. Somehow we get glimpses of what He has done or is doing in another person’s life. It is so exciting to see the Lord’s hand, the prayer that was put on your heart, come into being.

The art breaks with the traditional images I always had of angels, women, Jesus, pain, and so on. 

… Passionate and physically raw: Full of Life – realistic, moving, emotional; Pleading – know me, understand me; Drawn – drawn into the moment, the event.

Driving home I wept with joy that the Lord would ask us to participate in something as marvelous as this work He has done through you (and so many others). May His glory be revealed to thousands through this work. May many new souls come into his kingdom of light.

Inspirational. I must see it again.