In September 2009 I was contacted by Fr. Simon Mackenzie, the incumbent of St. Matthew’s, Perry Beeches, Birmingham, on behalf of his Churchwarden, Mr. David Gadd, a retired ‘bus driver, and his wife, Mrs. Anne Gadd, who wished to commission a slate plaque in memory of dear friends and fellow parishioners: a mother and her downs syndrome son. Fr. Mackenzie’s brief was that I make a plaque that would commemorate these dear people and serve as a suitable marker for a new garden of ashes. Having visited the Church that was designed by the renowned Roman Catholic Modernist Architects Murray & Maguire in 1964. This was an opportunity that I had been waiting for for 8 years: a commission for a Church that gave scope to take an inch and go a mile, to carve a figure of a Resurrected, Saving Christ, which would humanise the austere facade of a building that, though lovely within, was off putting on the outside and suffering from concrete cancer.
The first design was for a Resurrected Christ, based on the Piero della Francesca image: a triumphant though exhausted Christ stepping up, out of the tomb. This design was well received by Priest and Congregation, but rejected by the Diocesan Advisory Committee as being too classical and derivative. We were also informed that the Delabole slate which was intended to be used was wrong because it was green and that it would not work because the designs’ emphasis was vertical , whereas the committee thought that the Church was a building of horizontal emphasis. These views undermined confidence in the DAC, as Delabole slate is a silver colour and the Church is essentially a hexagonal tower, higher than it is wide.
The Committee’s constructive suggestion was for something “modern and with wow-factor”". I then tried to contact the Committee through their secretary, but to no avail. It was apparent that to get a design for a Christian figurative (as opposed to abstract) image accepted for St. Matthew’s, I would have to work with them as if they were commissioning it themselves, with the proviso that they could not be contacted directly or personally; and also that they had a default setting of “NO”, as a result of a lack of confidence and a “not on my watch” mentality, aspects of a deep seated and all pervasive lack of confidence in our 21st century Christian English culture. This could be summed up by the parable of a Steward, or Conservator, who carefully buried his talents to avoid getting into trouble with his “hard master”, “who liked to reap where he had not sown”.
I tried to arrange to meet the Committee members to make a presentation and establish direct contact with them, as I have been able to do in other Diocese. But all communication was mediated by the Secretary.
I was informed of this fall at the first fence in Holy Week last year as I prepared to drive to Birmingham to give two talks to the congregation on the redemptive theology of the design. My talks were about a project that was not to be, but the audience was enthusiastic and it was said that there must be something wrong with a project that was immediately approved by a DAC. Fortified by this I returned to the drawing board: I dreamt of carving a very simple sculpture, simply an incised line, that would speak directly and freshly to passers-by of the Gospel message of Hope and Redemption, deep in multi-cultural, suburban Birmingham. This was a very painful time as I could not really relate to this all-powerful Committee that I could not meet or speak to personally and whose dictats I was only able to receive third hand. Negotiation in such circumstances was not going to be possible. Friends and fellow artists advised me to walk away and I was tempted to do so, but realised that the difficulty confronting Christian iconographers in the culture of the present day C of E was overwhelming and that was an essential part of the challenge: there was no awareness on behalf of the committee that this was essentially a religious project with a pastoral goal that was being taken on with a shoestring budget of £2500, with the slate costing £1,200.
I was inspired by the poem “When Jesus came to Birmingham”, in which Our Lord is depicted as coming again only to be allowed to suffer the cruellest of fates: to be utterly ignored, not even crucified. This struck a resounding bell deep within. Further research revealed that the Piero della Francesca image was, in itself, not only not derivative (in terms of Christian Iconography this is far from criticism) but actually unorthodox as showing an unimaginable event that was unwitnessed and impossible to describe. Before the Renaissance and the East-West split tof the Church that predated, and in some ways made it possible, it was only at his most abased and humble that Christ could truly be seen as triumphant: when He entered Hell to set the dammed souls free. I then investigated the predominantly Anglo-Saxon carvings that illustrate this event, chiefly that at Bristol Cathedral. Clearly a project to carve “Christ Harrowing Hell” would necessarily be fraught with difficulty and would particularly run foul of those who looked, not with the eyes of faith or disbelief, but with the eyes of museum custodians, in a way they would re-crucify that image and those who felt called to sponsor and create it. And this was indeed the case.
My next design was partly influenced by the Pop artist Roy Lichtenstein. Having spent eight years in the realm of abstraction, carving letters, albeit with an “incarnational” perspective: that is to say that seeing letters purely as aspects of words and all words as echoes of “The Word Incarnate”, I could now carve the human figure of Christ, The Word Incarnate Himself, making The Image Of God The Son as close as possible to a hieroglyph: making the Icon of Humanity as simple and as close as possible to the calligraphic flourish of an inked brush and then incising the line as one would a letter. The idea was to show Christ as a vulnerable God, who could have compassion on the dammed; who could be talked to directly and who would “come whether you are ready or not”; a God who could break through into the stupour of a drug addict or a drugged-up psychiatric patient. This image would then be gilded and placed 10′ up on St. Matthew’s façade. He would be bracing himself with an alpenstock-like Cross and leaning, dangerously, with maximum intensity of gaze, right hand extended, with stigmata , to lift us, the onlookers and passers-by, out of our own self-created Hell.
It was also rejected. I am still not clear as to why, though I gathered that the committee were concerned that the studies that I had sent them were not centered. Again the DACs decision was delivered third hand. Again it proved impossible to talk directly and personally, or meet, or e-mail or telephone any of the decision makers. All was done through the Secretary. I wept and so did Mrs. Gadd but we refused to give in.
Eventually I was told “Had I thought of doing some letters?” and “Contact the Architect”, Mr. Robert Maguire. I did so in a state of acute desperation only to be met with his, by contrast, overwhelming approval and, for the first time, some constructive criticism. It seemed that there was nothing wrong with the design, quite the opposite, but quite a lot could be done to improve the Committee, not just in terms of its make up and procedures but, more importantly, in terms of its confused philosophy of conservation and its lack of a Christian ethos or sense of mission. With the architect’s kindest possible supporting letter and his plea that this project might be allowed to go ahead (attached) the design was grudgingly accepted with the comment that it “could be better”.
Then I was asked how my design could possibly be carved as I intended it to be, as an incised line and inquiries were made as to whether the work on my website really was in fact mine: to win the day I had to carve the Icon, to prove to the DAC that I could actually carve the Icon. So a £2000 pound job taken on and dreamt up out of a sense of vocation became a 2 year project that £25000 would barely cover in terms of time and effort.
It is clear that in this way most exciting projects are ultimately stonewalled out of existence, there is a censorship by default, and that this is a mark of the lack of confidence of the “guardians”, not just in their role or competence, but in the role and vocation of Christian Art altogether. Christian art today is not fresh and vital, but a timid, apologetic and backward looking movement that has run out of force and direction. This project succeeded where others have failed because we were aware that the biggest hurdle to its realisation was the DAC itself. The question is: Who do the DAC really represent? Not the average Christian or the Mission of the Gospel. A further and timeless question is “Who guards the guardians?” The answer to that is: Me and You, and if we wish to see the flower of Faith bloom again in this land we must enlist, as did Christianity in the great eras of the past, Art to communicate our message when our words can not be heard. And in doing this we will find that our most implacable opponent is right in the heart of the very organisation which has been entrusted with the message of Salvation: with the Diocesan Advisory Committee, as presently constituted, to help the Church, the forces of Secularism can hardly fail. But we have shown that if one can persevere beyond reason, it is possible to wrest success from those who are seemingly hell bent on failure, experts on concrete ramps for disabled access, lavatories in Church towers and what colour hymn books ought to be: masters of detail can give us Churches with audio loops, disabled access and tower lavatories, but with no congregation or message ,the raison d’etre is entirely lost. We need a great sense of urgency to remind ourselves or our reason for being before it is too late.
