Easter Door

Easter Door, 2013 

Kate Norris 

Black construction paper, black permanent marker, paper cement, 

         acrylic gel medium, acrylic paint, palm branches, acrylic house 

         paint, oil paint on wood 

84” x 30” 

INSPIRATION  

It was Easter and I wanted to explore the theme of redemption.  However, to explore how God made all things right out of a big mess, I had to start with the big mess.  I had to begin with problems… or The Problem.  I started on Palm Sunday, which is a key day where Christians re-enact one symptom of The Problem: hypocrisy. 

I also wanted to figure out how to let people confess as a community but keep it anonymous.  I wanted to pour out my heart to God with others yet not in front of others.   

I wondered, would making an art piece together distract from or enhance the worship service?  In this stage of the process, there was no one actor; everyone was involved.  

INVITATION 

This collaborative door project began on Palm Sunday 2013 in the living room of our Pittsburgh home during the weekly gathering of our church plant.  Palm Sunday is when Christians celebrate Jesus entering Jerusalem on a donkey, claiming to be the Messiah—the savior of the Jews.  The people waved palm branches in praise to him.  Seven days later the same people shouted, “Crucify him,” and they did.  Christians re-enact that day by waving palm branches under the crushing irony that the one we rightly praise is also the one we killed.   

During that Palm Sunday, Sean and I handed everyone black paper and a black marker.  We wrote our burdens with black ink on black paper.  Then each participant came to the front of the space and glued their anonymous confessions to the door.  I had our two-year-old daughter at the time.  She got into the glue, into the paper.  It was a mess as I glued my confession to the door and managed her curious hands.  Yet that was the point. 

The white door covered in black strips of paper stood at the front of the service until Communion.  

At the point in the service when we celebrate Communion (the meal Jesus gave us to remember his body, broken for us, and his blood, shed for us), we got the door.  Sean and a helper lifted the door and laid it down on a support as a table.  It was a visual picture of our hypocrisy in black and white.  Sean served Communion on the door that day - on top of the problem, of the black mess.  It was why Jesus came.  

PAINTING PROCESS: Explosive Joy 

I took the door back to my basement studio.  Many layers of paint later I incorporated the palm branches into the shape of the cross.   

I took the door outside and hurled pint-sized cupfuls of white paint on it.  It was exciting and scary.  I worried I was ruining the project, but that gave way to energy and focus.  I became struck by the explosive joy of God in redeeming sinners.  I covered all of the confessions in paint except one: Quinn, age five at the time.  His confession was a drawing.  Around his drawing he wrote, “Inside the emtey toom.”  

I asked Sean’s opinion on the door so far.  He stood on our deck and looked down onto the door lying face up in our back yard.  He hesitated. 

“It looks like bird poop,” he finally said.  After all that work I was very frustrated.  That was not the look I wanted for redemption!  (… though I’m sure bird poop was one of the humiliating realities of the crucified.)  I wanted to be done but I was not yet.

A few weeks later I tackled the door project again.  This time I defined the shapes laying blue on top of orange.  I searched until I found the explosive shape.  Or perhaps it found me. 

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