Writes of Passage

 Writes of Passage

By Tom Wachunas

   “…All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.”  - 2 Timothy 3:16

   Once again, these words (among others) from John 1:1 have found their way into my most recent work (tentatively titled Writes of Passage), in both English and Greek (the language of the New Testament): In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God / Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος.

   In these troubling weeks of late, I’m feeling increasingly battered by media images of urban crowds on the march, waving their makeshift signs, many written on chunks of corrugated cardboard. These are indeed armies, brandishing their words like so many swords raised high. Torrid words, urgent words, pleading words.

   In seeking refuge from this societal tsunami, I continue to savor reading. I’m not talking about numbly scrolling through the digital treatises, the diatribes and tantrums and acrimonious memes that saturate social media these days. I’m talking about the transfixing experience of actually reading words, line after line of text, in real books. More specifically, the Bible, a.k.a. The Word of God.

   Books. Tactile accumulations of 2D planes imprinted with symbolic marks -  codified histories, or analogs, of the writer’s intentions, perceptions, discoveries, memories, life experiences past and/or present. Rites of passage through time.

   Writes of Passage is a mixed-media collage on wood panel, measuring 27”(h) x 18” (w). It’s an episodic, meditative flow of consciousness that evolved over about three weeks, comprised of several drawing sessions that were for me…prayers. Early in the composing process, for reasons I can’t fully explain (other than a divine prompting?), I felt compelled to look into a book I hadn’t examined in many years - the Time-Life Library of Art boxed volume on Michelangelo.

   The book was a Christmas gift from 1966, some 15 years before the restoration of the Sistine Chapel ceiling frescoes began. Interestingly, the three- page centerfold photograph of the entire ceiling shows the monumental masterpiece in a very murky condition. All of what we now accept as the bright truth of Michelangelo’s spectacular colors had by that time faded into a remarkably muted state after being obscured by centuries of built-up candle smoke, bacterial growths, and botched cosmetic attempts at preservation. Suddenly my treasured old book, ironically enough a “Time-Life” document, now seemed itself to be a metaphor - an artifact showing the corruptibility of even the greatest of human creative endeavors.

   My appropriation of four of Michelangelo’s Sibyls – female prophets from the Classical world who were thought to prophesy the coming of Christ – presents the figures in varying, layered states of clarity. Ultimately, the incorporation of Biblical texts is intended as a meditation on the persistence and immutability of Scripture - God’s Word – and also a prayerful consideration of these words spoken by Jesus Christ, written in in the book of Matthew 24:35: Heaven and Earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.