Our Good Friday Art Piece

By His Blood  
3ft x 3ft aluminum sheet metal mounted on 4ft x 4ft hardwood finish plywood twice varnished.

painting is on the right, getting ready to be displayed

The purpose of the piece was to invite the congregation of Roosevelt Community Church to participate during Good Friday service. Prior to the service each attendee was given a note card that was to be filled out towards the end of the service and placed in a box. Member artists Laura Artusio, Faith Smeets and Bishop Ortega then took the note cards and transferred the words onto the panel. Using acrylic paint markers the artists covered the whole panel by overlapping a variety of fonts and sizes of handwriting. The piece was allowed to dry overnight and on the following day the artists covered the panel with crimson and cadmium red oil paint.

- Anthony Vasquez, anthonyvasquez.com

Art is able to evoke a wide range of emotions. Anything from shock and anger to admiration and enjoyment. I believe however that the most powerful function of art is to communicate truth. Truth about our world and our place in it.

As a Christian, the truth I believe is that our world is a messy place filled with people who have had messy things done to them and have done messy things to other people. Yet there is a God who through Jesus enters into our mess and through startling self-sacrifice heals all who come to him of all their mess.

The art piece we began on Good Friday illustrates this truth. At the end of our Good Friday service people dropped into a basket cards on which they had written down the things that have scarred their souls. Things like anger and impatience. Things like pride and jealousy. Things like abuse and addiction. All of these things were then written onto a canvas. It was a communal confession that powerfully displayed the collective ugliness of our sinful words, thoughts, actions.

Fortunately and amazingly, the story does not end there. Jesus in the most divine act that has ever occurred dies a bloody death, giving up his life in order to remove the stain from our lives and in so doing heal us of all our sins and sorrows. This is symbolized by the red paint that was applied to the canvas later that weekend. The paint covered the entire canvas, resulting in a stark mass of bright and dark red paint strokes. Indeed, enough strokes to cover even the darkest things on that canvas.

I hope this piece helps many in our city discover for themselves this true story about our world and apply to their own souls the words written by the ancient Jewish prophet Isaiah, “Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows…and with his wounds we are healed.”
 
- Vermon Pierre, Lead Pastor  Roosevelt Community Church

            Phase 1: The Sin                                                                  Phase 2: The Blood