With Hopwood Memorial Christian Church receiving a renovation this academic year, Professor Nicholas Blosser set out to create a piece of art that would fill a space of the wall in the main sanctuary.
Hopwood’s renovations had caused a window on the right side of the sanctuary to turn into a wall. This caused the sanctuary to seem uneven. Timothy Ross, Hopwood’s minister, sought to fill the empty space.
Blosser, Milligan’s assistant professor of art, went to Ross with an idea for clay reliefs as the replacement for the window. Ross liked the idea, so Blosser spent the next three months crafting the art pieces.
The art piece consists of eight, one-inch thick, clay reliefs. A relief is a sculptural technique where a sculptor carves into stone or clay to make an illusion. It creates raised images while keeping it on one piece of stone or clay.
These reliefs are then fired in a kiln and painted over with a dark oil paint with touch-ups with a rag. The raised images give them a sense of depth and accents given by the use of the rag gives everything a sense of texture.
Each one depicts a different story from the Bible. There are four from the Old Testament, which include Moses and the burning bush and Noah’s ark. There are also four from the New Testament, which include the birth of Jesus and Jesus feeding the 5,000.
What makes this artwork unique is Blosser’s approach to the stories they depict. Many of the stories are showcasing different aspects of each story that sometimes get forgotten. For example, the story of Noah is represented with the dove bringing the olive leaf back to the ark.
“Sculptures are not my thing,” Blosser said. “I like to think that this particular style is halfway between painting and sculpting.”