A friend said there was an art exhibition in the Cathedral, which she had been told was good. Knowing nothing about it, we arranged to go together. We walked to the Cathedral and started with coffee in the Cathedral refectory.
The exhibition was called “Threads Through Creation” and turned out to be 12 very large panels made with appliqué and machine embroidery by one woman, Jacqui Parkinson. There are supposed to be eight million stitches – and I believe it! – and they took three years to make. The panels depict Creation as described in the first 3 chapters of Genesis.
This was the third panel and represents sky and land and rivers and rain. Note the snow flakes on the right. There are themes that run trough the panels and one is the spirals which represent God, as does gold. There are gold raindrops, but these are not clear from the picture.
I saw more of the themes and links between panels when I went a second time, with a different friend. We also saw the 3 panels I had missed the first time – day 7 when God rested; Satan being driven out of heaven; and the trees in the garden – the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
In the panel above each fish and bird was sewn on individually and we had fun identifying and noting the different sea creatures and birds.
Each panel was very detailed and appeared scientifically correct. For day 4 all the planets were in order and the stars appeared to be in the correct patterns and rotating round the pole star. My friend, a nurse, said that in a later panel all the bones of the hand and foot were there and correct, too.
This was probably my favourite panel and we really did have fun looking at all the creatures and seeing what we could find. The chameleon was well camouflaged!
We decided the patterns down the right side were probably different animal skin patterns.
The panels we missed first time came after this one.
The snake was the same as first appeared on the fall of Satan from heaven and the “apples” Adam and Eve have taken a bite from are the same as those on the panel with the trees on – the tree of knowledge of good and evil. We noted the sewn fig leaves too!
The tree of life (as shown before) is at the top, they now wear the garments of skin (Genesis 3:21) and the animals are arranged by climate! More fun spotting these, including the birds from panel 5. The snake “crawls on his belly” at the feet of Adam and Eve but the lamb (Jesus) is between Adam’s legs and the dove (Holy Spirit) hovers above him. The skeleton on the right shows this has brought death – but the (mythical) phoenix above gives more hope.
There was so much to see – I think if I went back then there would be even more things to notice.
So? Definitely worth a visit – or two!