Archives for August 2013

Romans 8: 1-39. 8:19: “For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God.”

Previously, Clark Library displayed the Saint John’s Bible Creation image with its seven panels representing the beginning chaos and six days of the creation story. Here we see six panels, each echoing the days of creation. Chaos seems to be represented in the symbols, formulas and binary 0/1 strings of characters. In Volume 3 of The Art of the Saint John’s Bible, Susan Sink says

Thomas Ingmire references quantum physics, astronomy, and computer science in this illumination. He was fascinated by the way that quantum physics ‘reduces everything to one thing, pure energy.’ The digital world, too, by reducing everything to zeros and ones, unifies our perception. Ingmire began with an image from the Hubble telescope that shows a star in the shape of a cross. He added graphs, equation, and plot points that relate to the way scientists measure distances to individual  stars. (p. 81)

 

The Creation. Artists: Donald Jackson with contributions from Chris Tomlin.

You see seven panels, irregular and exploding from the dark primordial void, a state expressed at the bottom of the first day with the Hebrew words tohu wa bohu which translate to “formless and void.”

You see a lot of gold, and will see a lot of gold throughout the Saint John’s Bible. In the SJB, gold is symbolic of God’s intervention or presence in the world. Note that in the Creation, the presence of gold increases with each day, for example in day one you see one thin ribbon of gold.

Day 3 (“let the dry land appear”) is represented by satellite photos of the Ganges Delta. Images in the Saint John’s Bible are noteworthy for their use of contemporary technology, tying the Bible’s message to modern-day society.

Elements in one SJB illumination will appear in other illuminations. For example, the fish stamp used in Day 5 (“Let the earth bring forth living creatures of every kind”) was also used in the Loves and Fishes illumination for Mark 6:30-44 and 8:1-10. Woven into Day 6 (“Let us make humankind in our image”) is a fragment of Chris Tomlin’s coral snake, which will appear several more times.

Smudged into the surface is an image of a black bird, connecting heavens and earth. creature of all realms. The raven and other birds are messengers in the Bible, says Jackson. Birds brought messages to Noah, and a raven brought God’s message to St. Benedict.