James Quentin Younger created his first cross within the early Seventies from L-shaped motor elements. Over the subsequent 50 years till his dying in 2022, the assemblage artist from Minnesota made lots of extra from damaged tail lights, paint can lids, furnishings legs, artificial pearls, and a number of different discovered objects. His mission: to reclaim Christianity’s most sacred signal from a secular tradition that had turned it into gaudy costume jewellery and a flaming image of racial hatred.
Younger believed there have been good theological grounds for recycling the trash of shopper society as cruciform artwork. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:17 that “in Christ . . . previous issues are handed away, behold all issues turn out to be new.” Younger rescued undesirable and damaged objects from waste bins and remodeled them into sacred imagery. A stone a builder rejected would possibly actually turn out to be the compositional cornerstone of an assemblage piece.
In Black Forest Cross, Younger pays homage to folks artisans of religion who create rustic roadside shrines. He underscores the significance of holy writ in Scroll Cross, supporting a cruciform atop crimson sign lights that resemble rolled manuscripts. Within the minimalist piece From His Facet, weathered wooden, dripping glue, and a damaged crimson disc evoke Christ’s wounds on the cross. As Younger identified, for the reason that crucifixion passed off within the historic equal of the city dump, the Romans would doubtless have used discarded wooden to nail collectively the cross on which Christ died.
