I John 1.1 - 2.2: God is Light

This is the message that we have heard...and proclaim to you: God is light. (I John 1:5) God is light. It's a metaphor used throughout scripture. Probably the most common application of the metaphor is in comparison to no-light or darkness. But it's important to remember what light is. 

Light is a spectrum. White light isn't white. It's the presence of the entire spectrum -- all colors of light. Darkness is the absence of all colors of light. [Paint and pigments are directly the opposite: white is the absence of all pigment; dark/black is the presence of all colored pigments.]

Peter Erskine uses sunlight as his artistic medium, asserting that all of life is solar-powered. Erskine uses this element in quite high tech ways. He uses laser-cut prisms and mirrors, connecting them to solar-tracking technologies and photo voltaic cells. The sun is the subject matter, the medium, and the power source of Erskine's art. 

Peter Erskine. Sun Painting. 2009. Lafayette Library, Lafayette, California.

Erskine's installation in the Lafayette County Library is a plexiglas skylight/shaft that is five feet square and ten feet high. Lined with laser-cut prisms and mirrors, the shaft creates an everchanging display of rainbow fragments. In just minutes, the turning of the earth and the changing clouds create completely new arrangements of colors. 

The sun. A constant presence that nevertheless presents ever-changing views. The source of light on earth. All the colors of the spectrum. God is light. 

For more images from the Lafayette Library's Sun Painting installation, click here. 

Genesis 9.8-17: Refraction and Dispersion

God's bow in the sky is practically inseparable from the story of Noah (Genesis 9:8-17, Lent 1B). On the walls of church nurseries it isn't unusual to find a child-friendly boat, charming animals, a benevolent Noah...and that rainbow. But what is decorative and colorful and familiar is also science. And that means theory and

discovery and history.

Dome of the Portinari Chapel. Basilica of Sant'Eustorgio. Milan, Italy. 1460-1468. 

The Dominican order began the rebuilding of the Basilica of Sant'Eustorgio in Milan, Italy, in the 13th century, and it served as the seat of the order in Milan. Between 1460 and 1468 the Portinari Chapel was added to the Basilica. Commissioned by banker Pigello Portinari, the chapel was designed by an unknown architect, though the style has some similarities to Brunelleschi's Pazzi Chapel.

One of the aspects of Portinari Chapel that differs wildly from Brunelleschi's earlier chapel is in the decoration of the dome. Both domes show the pattern of ribs dividing the dome and reaching up to an oculus in the center of the dome. But where the ribs of the earlier dome separate sections of undecorated plaster, the Portinari dome is filled with a rainbow-colored scale pattern: red on the outside, then yellow, then green, with blue next to the oculus. These are the four colors of the rainbow identified centuries earlier by Aristotle.

The presence of the rainbow in the dome is one of several indications that the Dominican order was interested in scientific exploration of the rainbow. Around 1310, Theodoric of Freiburg wrote De iride, a treatise on the rainbow, which is still considered correct in its explanation of how light passes through individual drops of water, refracting and dispersing, to create primary and secondary rainbows. Theodoric was a philosopher and scientist who was also a member of the Dominican order.

Though no Noah is present in the dome, the presence of the rainbow in a dome still carries the same idea as the Genesis account. A dome, after all, is nothing but an arc (like the shape of the rainbow) spun in a circle. Because the dome represents heaven, then God's bow is still displayed in the heavens, symbolizing the covenant God made and has kept with humanity since the days of Noah.

For thoughts on the gospel reading for Lent 1B (Mark 1:9-15), click here.

See a place where the rainbow connects to a moment in the life of Jesus on this week's Art&Faith Matters Facebook page.

Mark 1.9-15: Into the Wilderness

The gospel reading for Lent 1B comes from Mark's gospel (1:9-15). It is remarkably more succinct than other accounts of Jesus' wilderness experience. A mere six verses move us from Jesus' baptism with descending dove and voice from the heaven to forty days in the wilderness (with wild beasts and angels) to the arrest of John and Jesus' proclamation to Galilee of good news. Other gospels expand the details we associate with the forty days: temptations, stones and bread, the pinnacle of the temple, mountain heights. But not Mark's gospel. For Mark the forty days pass in a blink. The days are important - note that it is the Spirit who drives Jesus into the wilderness - but no details are included.

British artist Stanley Spencer sought to give some form to the forty days that Mark passed by in the blink of an eye. In the 1930s and 1940s Spencer set himself the project of creating forty paintings, one for each day Christ was in the wilderness. The series, called "Christ in the Wilderness", never came to full completion. Eighteen drawings were made and eight paintings completed. Each of the designs explores the solitary figure of Christ interacting with various elements of the wilderness - a hen, a scorpion, lilies, eagles. The painting titled "Driven by the spirit into the wilderness" was inspired by Mark 1:12.

"Driven by the spirit into the wilderness." 1942. Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth. http://www.artgallery.wa.gov.au/collections/documents/spencer_conv.pdf

In the painting Christ strides through a sparse landscape grasping tree trunks and branches as he pulls himself up a hill. Nothing overt in the paintings speaks of Christ's forty days in the wilderness, a choice that echoes Mark's lack of narrative detail. The figure of Jesus is not the slim figure commonly seen in paintings. The bulky figure and billowing garment are common to all the finished paintings in the series. Spencer envisioned the pictures hanging as a group on the ceiling of a church. In such a position Jesus' garments would be perceived as billowing clouds. Interesting that part of the earthy reality of a wilderness experience was designed to be perceived as something as ethereal as clouds.    

The series of paintings conflates various gospel texts with Jesus' forty days. Paintings are based on the "consider the lilies" passage as well as 'foxes have holes", "the power to tread on snakes and scorpions" and others. All of those sayings, of course, came after the forty days. And yet the forty days are a foundation for all the days of ministry that came after. Perhaps Spencer's paintings and their scriptural pairings may offer opportunities for our own study during the forty days of Lent.

The image at left is a Last Judgment (Giotto, Scrovegni Chapel, Padua). It helps link the themes of Lent with the Lent 1B Genesis reading about the covenant God made with Noah. See how it does that by clicking on the link to the Art&Faith Matters Facebook page.

For a blog essay on the Genesis reading for Lent 1B (Genesis 9:8-17), click here.