C'est fini

Last week I was lying on my shop's dusty floor looking up at the completed altar top from below, trying to finalize a few design details. I was thinking about Woodrow - my favourite Mendel exhibit of the past few years. (1) I was also thinking a lot about my ancestors and all the struggles they must have had as pioneers on this harsh prairie landscape.

I mentioned in an earlier post some of the design criteria for the altar. While working to meet those goals I have also tried to include some symbolism in the finished design. I've mentioned already the grains I glued into the altar top. Besides trying to better tell the story of this wood's working life, the seeds are a direct allusion to the bread.

I wanted the legs to be reminiscent of elevators themselves; tall, bold and uninterrupted in their climb to our living skies. Each of the legs are made up of six boards which acted as braces in the elevator's grain storage bins. They would have been horizontally placed to do their duty and several of the boards have eroded to almost nothing after seventy-five years of grain tumbling down over them. I have also left all the existing nails in the leg boards as an obvious reference to the cross.

If the sculpted contours of the altar's top are reminiscent of the gentle rolling hills and valleys of Saskatchewan farm country, then the supporting boards which connect the top to the legs - with their integral cross elements, are a metaphor for how our pioneers relied on their faith to survive and make a living off this land.

The altar is done now and installed in the convention space. My drive down to the Paris of the Prairies through several epic thunderstorms was a wee bit stressful but everything survived unscathed and things are in place to begin worship. When I get some better pictures of the finished altar, I will post them...

(1) Graeme Patterson is one of my favourite artists, and his 2007 Mendel Art Gallery exhibit "Woodrow" was a brilliant exploration of the Saskatchewan small farm town experience. If you have a minute, some of his other work is also an absolute delight – I recommend the Pierrre & Gerrard vignettes!