Making the Story Come Alive: Sculpting Mary as Prophet
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by Margaret Adams Parker
Margaret Adams Parker (BA, Wellesley College; MFA, American University) has taught as adjunct instructor at Virginia Theological Seminary since 1991. She is a printmaker and sculptor with an extensive record of exhibitions, commissions, and publications. Some of her woodcuts are owned by the Library of Congress. She has created images for several religious presses, as well as Amnesty International, and has received several prestigious fellowships. She was an Artist-in-Residence at Wesley Seminary’s Center for Art and Religion. Parker's sculpture, Mary as Prophet, has been given an Honor Award in the category of Religious Art: Visual Arts by Faith & Form magazine, and The Interfaith Forum on Religion, Art, and Architecture (IFRAA). |
“The story of Jesus…our commission is to tell it in a way that makes it come alive as a story in all its aliveness and to make those who hear it come alive and God knows to make ourselves come alive too.”1
—Frederick Buechner
Frederick Buechner’s words speak to the task we undertake as interpreters of scripture. Whether our medium is the text of a sermon, the reflections in a lecture or a paper, the words and melody of a hymn, the movements of a dance, or the image on a page, our commission, Buechner would argue, is to take the text seriously, to connect it to our lives, to make it, and ourselves, come alive.
Not only preachers (in any of these forms), but all those engaged in the creative act in any medium, will recognize Buechner’s aims. Artist Ben Shahn asserts that the painting “becomes a living thing,”2 describing the act of painting as “an intimately communicative affair between the painter and his painting, a conversation back and forth, the painting telling the painter even as it receives its shape and form.”3 Flannery O’Connor admonishes aspiring writers that it is fatal to begin writing knowing in advance what they are “going to find,” for the story will always be a greater surprise to the writer than it can ever be to the reader.4 Old Testament scholar Ellen Davis echoes this advice: she maintains that “the role of the preacher is to ‘step a little to one side’ and let the text have its say…,” to serve as “‘First Listener’ to the text” because the Bible is “essentially surprising in all its parts.”5
I have come to believe that this is the essential factor in creativity: the imperative to “listen” to the work, and the willingness to alter its direction—even radically. But even so, my recent experience in sculpting an image of the Visitation for Virginia Theological Seminary took me by surprise. Mary and Elizabeth did indeed, in Buechner’s wonderful phrase, come alive: as an initial pencil drawing on a plain sheet of office paper; as a 12”-high sketch in plaster; as 48”-high plaster figures; and as the final bronze cast. Sculpting the Visitation was a remarkable journey of discovery spanning eighteen months, an astonishing experience of having a text come to life in my hands.
But preaching comes in many forms: not only exegetical but sometimes political, sometimes moral, and sometimes from preachers who might not claim that title. Andres Serrano, for example, in his Piss Christ—a photograph of a crucifix submerged in his own urine—preaches a searing indictment of the pain inflicted by the church and his own identification with Christ’s suffering. And George Segal preaches his reservations about war in his sculpture, Abraham and Isaac, In Memory of May 4, 1970, Kent State, which he described as a reflection about fathers sending their sons to war. I am a different kind of preacher. My goal—in my teaching as well as my art—is to explore the text for its own sake. And while I would never claim the high theology of the Orthodox icon writer (for whom the image is the equivalent of scripture), I do aspire to be a sound interpreter of the text. Brevard Childs’ recommendations have provided important guidance: the biblical commentator should “lead the reader back to the biblical text,” “deal seriously with the profoundest dimension of the biblical text,” and never allow a “private agenda to overshadow the text itself.”6
The sculpture of the Visitation was commissioned to stand just outside the walls of Virginia Seminary’s 1881 chapel, which burned in 2010, within sight of the new Immanuel Chapel, consecrated in 2015. In this way, it would serve as a bridge between the old structure, still preserved as a sanctified space, and the new. Dean Ian Markham was enthusiastic about the possibility that the depiction of these two women, positioned so prominently on the campus, would proclaim the importance of women’s ministries in the church. He graciously allowed me complete freedom in my interpretation, giving me no directions except for his request that both Elizabeth and Mary be visibly pregnant.
Providentially, I had been given the opportunity to think about the Visitation shortly before I began work on the sculpture. In preparing a homily for an Evensong service (which in the Anglican tradition always includes the Magnificat), I was struck by the radical nature of Mary’s words:
Not only preachers (in any of these forms), but all those engaged in the creative act in any medium, will recognize Buechner’s aims. Artist Ben Shahn asserts that the painting “becomes a living thing,”2 describing the act of painting as “an intimately communicative affair between the painter and his painting, a conversation back and forth, the painting telling the painter even as it receives its shape and form.”3 Flannery O’Connor admonishes aspiring writers that it is fatal to begin writing knowing in advance what they are “going to find,” for the story will always be a greater surprise to the writer than it can ever be to the reader.4 Old Testament scholar Ellen Davis echoes this advice: she maintains that “the role of the preacher is to ‘step a little to one side’ and let the text have its say…,” to serve as “‘First Listener’ to the text” because the Bible is “essentially surprising in all its parts.”5
I have come to believe that this is the essential factor in creativity: the imperative to “listen” to the work, and the willingness to alter its direction—even radically. But even so, my recent experience in sculpting an image of the Visitation for Virginia Theological Seminary took me by surprise. Mary and Elizabeth did indeed, in Buechner’s wonderful phrase, come alive: as an initial pencil drawing on a plain sheet of office paper; as a 12”-high sketch in plaster; as 48”-high plaster figures; and as the final bronze cast. Sculpting the Visitation was a remarkable journey of discovery spanning eighteen months, an astonishing experience of having a text come to life in my hands.
But preaching comes in many forms: not only exegetical but sometimes political, sometimes moral, and sometimes from preachers who might not claim that title. Andres Serrano, for example, in his Piss Christ—a photograph of a crucifix submerged in his own urine—preaches a searing indictment of the pain inflicted by the church and his own identification with Christ’s suffering. And George Segal preaches his reservations about war in his sculpture, Abraham and Isaac, In Memory of May 4, 1970, Kent State, which he described as a reflection about fathers sending their sons to war. I am a different kind of preacher. My goal—in my teaching as well as my art—is to explore the text for its own sake. And while I would never claim the high theology of the Orthodox icon writer (for whom the image is the equivalent of scripture), I do aspire to be a sound interpreter of the text. Brevard Childs’ recommendations have provided important guidance: the biblical commentator should “lead the reader back to the biblical text,” “deal seriously with the profoundest dimension of the biblical text,” and never allow a “private agenda to overshadow the text itself.”6
The sculpture of the Visitation was commissioned to stand just outside the walls of Virginia Seminary’s 1881 chapel, which burned in 2010, within sight of the new Immanuel Chapel, consecrated in 2015. In this way, it would serve as a bridge between the old structure, still preserved as a sanctified space, and the new. Dean Ian Markham was enthusiastic about the possibility that the depiction of these two women, positioned so prominently on the campus, would proclaim the importance of women’s ministries in the church. He graciously allowed me complete freedom in my interpretation, giving me no directions except for his request that both Elizabeth and Mary be visibly pregnant.
Providentially, I had been given the opportunity to think about the Visitation shortly before I began work on the sculpture. In preparing a homily for an Evensong service (which in the Anglican tradition always includes the Magnificat), I was struck by the radical nature of Mary’s words:
He has scattered the proud…
cast down the mighty…
lifted up the lowly…
filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty.
(Luke 1:51-53)
It seemed clear that Mary’s words should place her in the tradition of the Old Testament prophets (including Hannah, whose song is echoed in the Magnificat). Accordingly, I preached these words: “Mary’s words foretell an upending of power as radical as any proclaimed by the prophets who preceded her; call us to a repentance as radical as any preached by John the Baptist; announce a way of life as radical as that embodied by her own son. This Mary, bearer of the eternal Word, reminds us with her words of the revolutionary nature of the Incarnation; she calls us to consider how the entry of God into this world, in our very flesh, should shape our lives.”
Astonishingly, I know of no visual representation that depicts Mary as prophet, although Mary’s prophetic role is mentioned in a number of hymn texts. (Hymn 268 in the Episcopal Church’s Hymnal 1982, paraphrases the Magnificat: “he has cast down all the mighty and the lowly are his choice.”) All the images that I know of the Visitation depict a tender and intimate moment between two women. There is an important truth in this reading. Mary’s situation is precarious, indeed: this young woman, pregnant before marriage, could have been condemned to death by stoning. It is surely a measure of her intimacy with Elizabeth that Mary seeks her out, goes to her “with haste” (Luke 1:39), and then remains with her “about three months” (Luke 1:56). The closeness between the two is underscored by the intimacy of Elizabeth’s exclamation, “the child in my womb leaped for joy” (Luke 1:41).
I chose instead to focus on the prophetic dimension of their meeting. The title would be Mary as Prophet – He has filled the hungry with good things. I imagined Mary seized by prophecy, with Elizabeth reaching out to support her. My practice in depicting a narrative is to work from a bodily rather than a visual sense, imagining how I might hold my body were I a participant in the story. Long years teaching Rembrandt’s works have taught me that the gesture of the body can convey a story as powerfully as the expression of the face. It seemed to me that Mary’s whole body would be tense. Focused on the prophecy, she would be unaware of her surroundings. Elizabeth would move forward, tenderly shielding Mary in her moment of vulnerability
But looking back at my initial drawing, I see my uncertainty. Mary’s shoulders are rounded, her head lowered. I replicated this gesture as I began to shape the 12” plaster sketch. As I hesitated, I discovered two images that helped me re-imagine Mary’s posture. Fritz Eichenberg’s wood engraving, Lamentations of Jeremiah, depicts the prophet in chains, shoulders thrown back, head lifted in a cry of grief. And Roy de Carava, the distinguished African American photographer, shows us Mahalia Jackson Singing. The singer, her head lifted and her face radiant, is an icon of joyous prophecy. After musing over these images I straightened Mary’s back and lifted her head. She would stand straight, a pillar of tension. By contrast, Elizabeth’s posture would be warm and yielding, bending toward Mary. To underscore Elizabeth’s movement toward Mary, I moved the figures further apart.
The next step was to create the full-scale model (48” high) to be used for casting the bronze. It would be a complex process: multiplying each dimension by four; replicating the angles of arms, legs, torsos, heads; calculating the distances between the figures. I would also encounter the inevitable complications that attend a change in scale, which is never a purely mathematical calculation. And I already saw changes I needed to make from the 12” figure. In that small version, Elizabeth’s right arm rested across her abdomen. This is a beautiful and very natural gesture in a pregnant woman, but her hand, held protectively against her womb, was barely visible. And Mary’s hands were close together and in confusing proximity to Elizabeth’s left hand.
To create the full-scale model, I built up plaster over a skeletal armature of pipes, wires, wire mesh, and plaster-permeated bandages. These materials are rigid once set in place, but I have developed a means of working that allows at least some degree of flexibility: I establish the basic gestures of feet, legs, and torso while the upper body, arms, and heads are still only roughly shaped and easily changed. So, while Elizabeth’s arm and hand were only bare wires, I was able to pose them in a number of ways, observing the visual impact of each gesture as well as the ways it helped convey the encounter between these two women. In the end, I pulled Elizabeth’s right elbow back. That hand would be relaxed against her side, in contrast with her left hand, stretched out to touch Mary. I resolved the visual confusion of Mary’s hands by the same method. After testing various options, I retained the tenseness of her clenched left hand but moved her right hand to lie across her abdomen, the gesture originally intended for Elizabeth. These decisions are only one instance of the way the figures “spoke” to me, inviting my response.
Once the plaster has hardened, I carve and shape it with rasps and knives. It is the resistance of the hardened plaster, and the texture of the carved and rasped surfaces, that encourages me to persist in working in plaster, a more difficult medium than clay, which is more fluid and easily modeled. I can also continue to add plaster, so long as the underlying layers are kept moist.
At midpoint, I began to “clothe” Mary and Elizabeth, draping them with cloth dipped in plaster. The fall of the garments became an expressive factor, accentuating Elizabeth’s pregnancy, for instance, and also the rush of her movement forward, while Mary’s robes reinforced her rigid stance. And with each of these steps, the figures took on more expression, more life. It is moving to see the photographic record shot by B. Cayce Ramey (see page 22), particularly those instances where my gestures echo those of Mary and Elizabeth.
And finally, I came to the gesture of the heads. I wanted Mary’s gaze to be lifted, her attention focused inward, and Elizabeth’s head to bend toward Mary, looking up into her face. To check Elizabeth’s line of sight, I mounted a ladder and stood with my head next to hers. Then I moved to stand beside Mary’s head, confirming that angle as well. Up and down the ladder, back and forth between the figures. I spliced additional wire to lengthen a neck, then cut it away when it proved too long. In many ways, this stage was emblematic of my creative process, which is rarely simple or direct. I often need to shape a figure, see that it is not quite right, then embark on a series of changes. This is not an efficient system! But I have come to recognize it as my own.
The figures were vividly alive to me now, even without their faces. As I approached that final stage, I began to ponder how I might depict the features of Mary and Elizabeth. As with so many figures in scripture, we have no description of these women. Wonderfully, that has allowed artists and worshippers through the centuries to imagine them in a myriad number of ways. But what might my image be? In sculpting Reconciliation (on the Parable of the Prodigal Son) for Duke Divinity School, I had depicted the father and two brothers as contemporary figures; their poses, their generic American dress, and even their feet helped convey my understanding of the story. I could follow this lead. Or I might imagine Mary and Elizabeth as first-century Jews. Or as contemporary Middle-Eastern women.
In the end, I was shown the answer. Sitting in chapel among our beautiful African-American and African students and faculty, it came to me that my Mary and Elizabeth would be African. Mary would have the round face and cropped hair of a very young girl, Elizabeth the worn and sagging features of a very old woman. Afterwards, I thought about the reasons this was an apt choice: the long historical connections between Virginia Theological Seminary and Christians from across the African continent; the strong prophetic strain still vital in African-American preaching; the real (although often hidden) authority embodied by members of the Mothers Union in Africa and Church Mothers in America; my own interest in African and African-American art, and the number of African-Americans and Africans included in my work. But the depiction was neither choice nor decision. It was simply gift.
The final steps—casting and siting—drew others into the process. In bronze casting, the piece moves from plaster model, to latex-and-plaster mold, to wax model, to ceramic mold, to bronze, with a final patination and waxing. I depend upon the experience and skill of the foundry experts for this exacting work, although there are points at which I am invited to advise and supervise. And I also relied on the recommendations of others in the final siting of the sculpture. The figures were to be positioned against a wall of the historic chapel, but the precise location of the base and, more critically, the orientation of the sculpture on the base, was still undetermined. This decision was far more difficult than I had anticipated. I had intended that Elizabeth stand on the left and Mary on the right. Since our eyes “read” a narrative work in the same direction as a text (for English readers, left to right), our attention would move from Elizabeth to end on Mary, the prophet. But I had also come to love the other view, where our gaze moves from Mary to linger on Elizabeth’s compassionate and comforting presence. So a group of seminary faculty, staff, friends, and family joined me outside on a cold day while I rotated the figures on a turntable. Both views seemed significant, but in the end we returned to my original plan: Mary would stand in the more prominent position on the right, underscoring her significance and embodying the title, Mary as Prophet. We would also pull the base further away from the wall, allowing easier passage around the sculpture. And instead of positioning the figures parallel to that wall, we would angle them on the base, encouraging visitors to view the figures from all sides.
With the sculpture permanently in place, the figures have now “come alive” in another way. A work of art intersects with the lives and experiences of the viewer or listener or reader, and, wonderfully, this has been true of the Visitation. Visitors pause, touching Elizabeth’s hands, and Mary’s face; students rest on a bench nearby to spend time with the figures; a friend who has only seen the sculpture online observes that Elizabeth seems in some way to participate in Mary’s prophetic awareness. But what I had not anticipated was how powerful this image would be for women of color. An African friend lingered for long moments, simply holding her hand against Mary’s head. A colleague has thanked me for “Mary’s hair.” A recent graduate told me how moving it is to see a Mary “like me.” She expects that future generations will see these women differently. This, too, has been a gift to me, an indication that viewers see them as “alive.”
I am confident, moreover, that these viewers and I are not alone in our experiences of seeing a work come alive, beginning to speak to the figures depicted, coming even to love them. Rembrandt captures the intimate relation of artist to work in his small etching of The Goldsmith, where the sculptor’s arm protectively embraces the figures he is shaping. Donatello is reported to have demanded of his sculpture of the Prophet (Habakkuk), “Speak!” And I have this testimony from my dear friend and colleague, Kate Sonderegger, Professor of Systematic Theology at Virginia Theological Seminary, in whose backyard workshop I built the full-scale model. “What a gift it was, each day, to take the quick steps from my kitchen door across the yard, now with fallen leaves, now fresh with snow or early spring rain, to see this sculpture—this living pair!—in their birth in this small winter studio. I came to see the breath of life in them, and each day Peggy helped me see afresh the great revolution of God made flesh, God in Mary’s flesh.”
NOTES
Astonishingly, I know of no visual representation that depicts Mary as prophet, although Mary’s prophetic role is mentioned in a number of hymn texts. (Hymn 268 in the Episcopal Church’s Hymnal 1982, paraphrases the Magnificat: “he has cast down all the mighty and the lowly are his choice.”) All the images that I know of the Visitation depict a tender and intimate moment between two women. There is an important truth in this reading. Mary’s situation is precarious, indeed: this young woman, pregnant before marriage, could have been condemned to death by stoning. It is surely a measure of her intimacy with Elizabeth that Mary seeks her out, goes to her “with haste” (Luke 1:39), and then remains with her “about three months” (Luke 1:56). The closeness between the two is underscored by the intimacy of Elizabeth’s exclamation, “the child in my womb leaped for joy” (Luke 1:41).
I chose instead to focus on the prophetic dimension of their meeting. The title would be Mary as Prophet – He has filled the hungry with good things. I imagined Mary seized by prophecy, with Elizabeth reaching out to support her. My practice in depicting a narrative is to work from a bodily rather than a visual sense, imagining how I might hold my body were I a participant in the story. Long years teaching Rembrandt’s works have taught me that the gesture of the body can convey a story as powerfully as the expression of the face. It seemed to me that Mary’s whole body would be tense. Focused on the prophecy, she would be unaware of her surroundings. Elizabeth would move forward, tenderly shielding Mary in her moment of vulnerability
But looking back at my initial drawing, I see my uncertainty. Mary’s shoulders are rounded, her head lowered. I replicated this gesture as I began to shape the 12” plaster sketch. As I hesitated, I discovered two images that helped me re-imagine Mary’s posture. Fritz Eichenberg’s wood engraving, Lamentations of Jeremiah, depicts the prophet in chains, shoulders thrown back, head lifted in a cry of grief. And Roy de Carava, the distinguished African American photographer, shows us Mahalia Jackson Singing. The singer, her head lifted and her face radiant, is an icon of joyous prophecy. After musing over these images I straightened Mary’s back and lifted her head. She would stand straight, a pillar of tension. By contrast, Elizabeth’s posture would be warm and yielding, bending toward Mary. To underscore Elizabeth’s movement toward Mary, I moved the figures further apart.
The next step was to create the full-scale model (48” high) to be used for casting the bronze. It would be a complex process: multiplying each dimension by four; replicating the angles of arms, legs, torsos, heads; calculating the distances between the figures. I would also encounter the inevitable complications that attend a change in scale, which is never a purely mathematical calculation. And I already saw changes I needed to make from the 12” figure. In that small version, Elizabeth’s right arm rested across her abdomen. This is a beautiful and very natural gesture in a pregnant woman, but her hand, held protectively against her womb, was barely visible. And Mary’s hands were close together and in confusing proximity to Elizabeth’s left hand.
To create the full-scale model, I built up plaster over a skeletal armature of pipes, wires, wire mesh, and plaster-permeated bandages. These materials are rigid once set in place, but I have developed a means of working that allows at least some degree of flexibility: I establish the basic gestures of feet, legs, and torso while the upper body, arms, and heads are still only roughly shaped and easily changed. So, while Elizabeth’s arm and hand were only bare wires, I was able to pose them in a number of ways, observing the visual impact of each gesture as well as the ways it helped convey the encounter between these two women. In the end, I pulled Elizabeth’s right elbow back. That hand would be relaxed against her side, in contrast with her left hand, stretched out to touch Mary. I resolved the visual confusion of Mary’s hands by the same method. After testing various options, I retained the tenseness of her clenched left hand but moved her right hand to lie across her abdomen, the gesture originally intended for Elizabeth. These decisions are only one instance of the way the figures “spoke” to me, inviting my response.
Once the plaster has hardened, I carve and shape it with rasps and knives. It is the resistance of the hardened plaster, and the texture of the carved and rasped surfaces, that encourages me to persist in working in plaster, a more difficult medium than clay, which is more fluid and easily modeled. I can also continue to add plaster, so long as the underlying layers are kept moist.
At midpoint, I began to “clothe” Mary and Elizabeth, draping them with cloth dipped in plaster. The fall of the garments became an expressive factor, accentuating Elizabeth’s pregnancy, for instance, and also the rush of her movement forward, while Mary’s robes reinforced her rigid stance. And with each of these steps, the figures took on more expression, more life. It is moving to see the photographic record shot by B. Cayce Ramey (see page 22), particularly those instances where my gestures echo those of Mary and Elizabeth.
And finally, I came to the gesture of the heads. I wanted Mary’s gaze to be lifted, her attention focused inward, and Elizabeth’s head to bend toward Mary, looking up into her face. To check Elizabeth’s line of sight, I mounted a ladder and stood with my head next to hers. Then I moved to stand beside Mary’s head, confirming that angle as well. Up and down the ladder, back and forth between the figures. I spliced additional wire to lengthen a neck, then cut it away when it proved too long. In many ways, this stage was emblematic of my creative process, which is rarely simple or direct. I often need to shape a figure, see that it is not quite right, then embark on a series of changes. This is not an efficient system! But I have come to recognize it as my own.
The figures were vividly alive to me now, even without their faces. As I approached that final stage, I began to ponder how I might depict the features of Mary and Elizabeth. As with so many figures in scripture, we have no description of these women. Wonderfully, that has allowed artists and worshippers through the centuries to imagine them in a myriad number of ways. But what might my image be? In sculpting Reconciliation (on the Parable of the Prodigal Son) for Duke Divinity School, I had depicted the father and two brothers as contemporary figures; their poses, their generic American dress, and even their feet helped convey my understanding of the story. I could follow this lead. Or I might imagine Mary and Elizabeth as first-century Jews. Or as contemporary Middle-Eastern women.
In the end, I was shown the answer. Sitting in chapel among our beautiful African-American and African students and faculty, it came to me that my Mary and Elizabeth would be African. Mary would have the round face and cropped hair of a very young girl, Elizabeth the worn and sagging features of a very old woman. Afterwards, I thought about the reasons this was an apt choice: the long historical connections between Virginia Theological Seminary and Christians from across the African continent; the strong prophetic strain still vital in African-American preaching; the real (although often hidden) authority embodied by members of the Mothers Union in Africa and Church Mothers in America; my own interest in African and African-American art, and the number of African-Americans and Africans included in my work. But the depiction was neither choice nor decision. It was simply gift.
The final steps—casting and siting—drew others into the process. In bronze casting, the piece moves from plaster model, to latex-and-plaster mold, to wax model, to ceramic mold, to bronze, with a final patination and waxing. I depend upon the experience and skill of the foundry experts for this exacting work, although there are points at which I am invited to advise and supervise. And I also relied on the recommendations of others in the final siting of the sculpture. The figures were to be positioned against a wall of the historic chapel, but the precise location of the base and, more critically, the orientation of the sculpture on the base, was still undetermined. This decision was far more difficult than I had anticipated. I had intended that Elizabeth stand on the left and Mary on the right. Since our eyes “read” a narrative work in the same direction as a text (for English readers, left to right), our attention would move from Elizabeth to end on Mary, the prophet. But I had also come to love the other view, where our gaze moves from Mary to linger on Elizabeth’s compassionate and comforting presence. So a group of seminary faculty, staff, friends, and family joined me outside on a cold day while I rotated the figures on a turntable. Both views seemed significant, but in the end we returned to my original plan: Mary would stand in the more prominent position on the right, underscoring her significance and embodying the title, Mary as Prophet. We would also pull the base further away from the wall, allowing easier passage around the sculpture. And instead of positioning the figures parallel to that wall, we would angle them on the base, encouraging visitors to view the figures from all sides.
With the sculpture permanently in place, the figures have now “come alive” in another way. A work of art intersects with the lives and experiences of the viewer or listener or reader, and, wonderfully, this has been true of the Visitation. Visitors pause, touching Elizabeth’s hands, and Mary’s face; students rest on a bench nearby to spend time with the figures; a friend who has only seen the sculpture online observes that Elizabeth seems in some way to participate in Mary’s prophetic awareness. But what I had not anticipated was how powerful this image would be for women of color. An African friend lingered for long moments, simply holding her hand against Mary’s head. A colleague has thanked me for “Mary’s hair.” A recent graduate told me how moving it is to see a Mary “like me.” She expects that future generations will see these women differently. This, too, has been a gift to me, an indication that viewers see them as “alive.”
I am confident, moreover, that these viewers and I are not alone in our experiences of seeing a work come alive, beginning to speak to the figures depicted, coming even to love them. Rembrandt captures the intimate relation of artist to work in his small etching of The Goldsmith, where the sculptor’s arm protectively embraces the figures he is shaping. Donatello is reported to have demanded of his sculpture of the Prophet (Habakkuk), “Speak!” And I have this testimony from my dear friend and colleague, Kate Sonderegger, Professor of Systematic Theology at Virginia Theological Seminary, in whose backyard workshop I built the full-scale model. “What a gift it was, each day, to take the quick steps from my kitchen door across the yard, now with fallen leaves, now fresh with snow or early spring rain, to see this sculpture—this living pair!—in their birth in this small winter studio. I came to see the breath of life in them, and each day Peggy helped me see afresh the great revolution of God made flesh, God in Mary’s flesh.”
NOTES
- “The Two Stories,” in Frederick Buechner, A Room Called Remember (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1984), 51.
- “Interview,” in Ben Shahn, The Shape of Content (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985), 43.
- “The Biography of a Painting,” in Shape of Content, 49.
- “The Nature and Aim of Fiction,” in Sally and Robert Fitzgerald, eds., Mystery and Manners (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1969), 83.
- “The Art of Astonishing: Old Testament Preaching,” in Ellen F. Davis, Wondrous Depth, Preaching the Old Testament (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2005), 4.
- “The Genre of Biblical Commentary as Problem and Challenge,” Brevard Childs in Mordechai Cogan, Barry L. Eichler, and Jeffrey H. Tigay, eds., Tehillah le-Moshe: Biblical and Judaic Studies in Honor of Moshe Greenberg(Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1997), 192.