Happy Easter

Through the inspiration of Gabriel Dawe the Art and Environment team at SS Peter and Paul Catholic Church of Saginaw, Michigan has created a thread art backdrop for the cross.

It was a great experience. Filled with LOTS OF PRAYERS, wonder, stress, awe, uncertainty, even a Baptism of one of the team falling in the font!

It took so many hours - probably about 70. There were over 800 nails to string three times each. Six boxes of ten spools each of Neon thread - orange, red, magenta, lime green, and yellow green. We purchased enough 3/4 by 1 1/2" wood to make three 12' x 7' frames.

Gabriel Dawe has unbelievable thread art twisting and turning without much structure, ours had to have frames. We knew we could not start and finish this work from 3:00 pm on Good Friday to Saturday evening Easter Vigil. We weren't even sure how to do this. So we built frames, pounded nails, and wove the thread through the nails. The biggest problem we had was the thread seemed to sag a few times after it was done. So we just kept tightening each piece at the nail head. Which caused another problem. The wood bowed. When we finally put it up on Good Friday, it looked bowed. We took them back down and nailed spacers at the top, middle and bottom to attach the three frames together which made them more even all around. Put them back up and then secured them to hooks on the back wall.

We are very pleased that the bowing actually looks as if we intended it to curve slightly around the cross. We added spotlights to the bottom, found a riser to elevate the cross, and then Erica did her magic placing the flowers.

Pat made me promise not to try something this big again. I'm going straight to you know where because I'm already trying to figure out how to have him let me take that promise back! Sometimes, my heart swells when I see something like Gabriel Dawe art. The moment I see it - I know we can use it to create an environment of worship and praise. I never know how we are going to do that - I leave that up to Pat and Bill, and they have always been able to figure it out.

Happy Easter everyone.