CREATING A CELTIC CROSS
FOR THE FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH OF SALEM, OREGON
At the beginning, I did not want to create a bronze cross. When Greg Nelson first asked me
to consider a commission to build a suspended Celtic Cross for the First Presbyterian Church, I
politely refused. I considered such a project to be too creatively restrictive and narrow, with no room
for imaginative play. The forms and relationships of the cross, I figured, were all predetermined, and
I believed the job the Church wanted me to do was simply to copy the past.
I was wrong.
The day after meeting with Greg, I left for San Francisco to listen to opera. While on the
train, a read a book on the history of the Celtic Cross and found myself drawn to the mathematical
beauty of the Celtic design. The design itself evolved between the 6th and 9th centuries in the British
Isles, where evidence indicates that hundreds of crosses (mostly since destroyed) were using the
same basic format. Yet, in spite of the similarity of this format, there is a remarkable range of
differences in geometry and design of each cross. Hundreds of anonymous sculptors had been asked
to use a basic plan, but each had found his own way of executing structures that delight the eye and
raise the spirit, no matter when they were made. Was this not art making in its highest sense?
When I returned to Salem, I accepted the commission and couldn't wait to begin.
The Drawing: Establishing the right relationship of the cross' contour was absolutely crucial from the start. The drawing needed to be simple, clear, and exact in scale to the Church's sanctuary.
After the drawing had been approved, I articulated to myself three major goals: The cross had
to be awesome (as the kids say), historical, and as weightless as possible while keeping the cross
completely bronze.
I estimated the final weight to be about 150 pounds, and was asked by the architects not to
exceed 200 pounds. It became clear that by using only the metal already presented from the front
of the cross and not adding more metal to the back, but redesigning the back to look finished, I could
reduce the final weight to 120 pounds.
Casting the Contour: I believed the greatest structural integrity came from the cross' circle and not at the arms the way most crosses are suspended. I decided this section needed to be cast in
bronze and with added thickness. I made wax patterns and plaster molds, and the circle and outer
frame were poured with bronze in a nearby foundry.
My excitement was now rising because the contour of the cross was real and it looked
beautiful! But, because there is a law somewhere that says that nothing in life should be allowed to
move along beautifully and smoothly, a major setback lay just ahead: I was diagnosed with a heart
problem and needed immediate surgery to have six bypasses. Work stopped, and all was kept in a
holding pattern for about four months until I was allowed to resume lifting heavy objects. The
Church graciously understood and waited.
During my recovery from surgery, the new organ pipes were installed in the sanctuary. Their
presence completely upset the projected look of the cross. Bright silver streaks of the pipes slashed
downward with intervening brown wooden bands across the sanctuary, making heavy visual
competition for an antiqued cross which would now seem out of place. Perhaps introducing bright
color would help. Blue patina? Red patina? Nothing seemed to work, and each try moved the
project closer to that of a Coney Island carnival. Fortunately, a photograph given to me by Greg
Nelson of one of the Church's red paraments showing a cross with a double contour similar to what
I had already created saved the day. I used black on this rope-like outline which heightened the
essential beauty of the Celtic design and solved the problem of the look of the cross in front of the
organ pipes.
As I continued reading about Celtic Crosses, I noticed that they all shared the common
feature of interlocking ornamentation. This was clearly missing from the cross in its present state.
Did the First Presbyterian Church wish to exclude this element and reduce the cross to a more
streamlined structure? This is an important issue, because it is not seen historically as mere
decoration, but is important symbolically. "Just as there are no blank spaces in the cosmos, structure
is present at every point, with each small part simultaneously reflecting the essential structure of the
whole. Thus, all is inseparable," (Nigel Pennick) and reads like a contemporary scientific world
view. The Church immediately gave me permission to hammer an interlocking knotwork into the
bronze of the cross, and it helped to give it a more "Celtic" character. I also dropped the center ball
deeper, adding a richer quality to the work and departing slightly from other Celtic crosses.
Finally, I signed my name in an inconspicuous place (on the flat plane at the top) because I
am proud of the work I have done and consider the cross to be a work of art. Yet, I know full well
that I have no real right to do this since it is the product of hundreds of sculptors from a tradition
already 2,700 years old who have shaped and reshaped this structure toward a resolution of opposites
- male and female, life and death, intuition and reason, the circle and the straight, attuning it into a
work that has become a symphonic whole.
Respectfully submitted,
Robert Hess, Sculptor
June 2002
Special thanks to Greg and Linda Nelson for their unrelenting enthusiasm in helping make this project possible, and to the Loucks family whose memorial fund financed the project.
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Preparing the chancel to receive the new cross. |
