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05
Oct 2020
Ripon Cathedral artwork tells Bible stories in stitches
An embroidery art installation created using more than a million stitches can be seen at Ripon Cathedral.
Following this year's successful Wing and a Prayer display featuring 10,000-plus origami angels, the cathedral is now hosting Jacqui Parkinson’s Tree of Life exhibition.
For this exhibition, three large stitched panels will be displayed at the cathedral until November 1.
Each panel has, at its centre theme, a tree representing pivotal moments in the Bible.
The installation is complemented by the sculpture Open Heaven, which is a life-size figure of Christ hanging from a ladder, which represents Jesus reaching towards heaven.
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Jacqui enlisted the help of a body casting team to create the figure along with a young friend who was able to cope with the stress of enduring a complete body cast.
She explained: “The idea of a figure of Jesus on a ladder came to me, strangely, in a dream.
“It was outside my comfort zone to get this made. Luckily a young and thin friend of ours agreed to go through the ordeal of a whole body cast, and there he is in fibreglass for all to see!”
Jaqui also created the Threads through Revelation exhibition, which toured 13 British cathedrals between 2016 and 2018.
She said:
“After the enormous effort of 14 panels in Threads through Revelation, I decided to do a smaller project.
"It still took me 18 months and over a million stitches! The three panels of Tree of Life tell the stories of the Garden of Eden and Adam and Eve’s fall, in the first pages of the Bible, the crucifixion, and the promise of a new heaven and earth in the last pages of the Bible.”
The previous Wing and a Prayer Installation, which saw paper angels carrying prayers suspended over the cathedral's nave, captured the imagination of parishioners and the public while raising more than £130,000 in donations to be shared with Yorkshire Air Ambulance.
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