Artwork Description:
Station number EIGHT is entitled, THE WOMEN OF JERUSALEM WEEP FOR CHRIST. This wall assemblage was executed in mixed media on stretched canvas. Christ encounters a group of weeping woman dressed in traditional Hebrew mourning garb and rocking their bodies back and forth. They also, according to Jewish tradition, probably used certain vocalizations used at funerals. In a cryptic statement, Christ stops to warn them, Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For the days are surely coming when they will say, BLESSED ARE THE BARREN ONES, THE WOMBS THAT NEVER BORE AND THE BREASTS THAT NEVER NURSED. Then they will say to the mountains, FALL ON US, and to the hills, COVER US. For if they do this when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry This message can be interpreted a number of ways. I juxtaposed images of Hebrew women from the time of Christ with those of women in concentration camps during WWII to demonstrate that the end times began on that first Good Friday and have existed right to this present day. I made this visual comparison to show the temporal extension of human cruelty throughout history. The style is quite raw and expressionistic in order to reflect this. My materials included acrylic polymers, acrylic paint, gloss acrylic gel, Kodak gloss paper, watercolor paper, colored pencils, British dry pastels, ground natural mother of pearl, mica, titanium dioxide, dried pigments, canvas, wood.