Carve Your Tree and Accept Your Cross

This piece is a contemplation of the Christian notion of following in Christ's footsteps by adopting a sense of responsibility for one's actions in the world. It is an attempt to reconcile acceptance of impending death with a desire to do good works in the world. The viewer is invited to consider what their own Cross is, and to carve their tree to build it. In Christianity, there is an idea that the tree from which Eve ate the apple in the Garden of Eden was the same tree that Christ's cross was built from. The Bible, therefore, can be read as the story of the psychological advancement of man from the primordial human in the Garden of Eden through to the example of Christ praying before the Cross in the Garden of Gethsemane.