StaggShire

I was very grateful for the chance to blog about this because there were a lot of things during our tour I didn’t get to say.

Putting the tour aside for a moment, I really liked the scripture (Moses 6:63) at the beginning of the pamphlet, which talked about how all things, both temporal and spiritual, are made to bear record of Heavenly Father. I’ve always been a big fan of looking to nature and to natural processes and seeing how nothing but God could have a played a role in their creation. I own the series Planet Earth and it’s just incredible to learn about all the stuff that goes on in nature and all of the beautiful beautiful sights. I don’t understand how there could be such beauty in the world on accident, not to mention how everything works out and how most of nature is so dependent on light, just how we as humanity should be dependent on the light of Christ.

At the beginning of the tour there was a sculpture called “God steadying the Ark”. Even though we didn’t talk about hat sculpture, I had my eye on and it was one of my favorites. I loved the style of the piece and I just loved the tender expression on God’s face and how he cuddled the ark in his arms. The Daily Bread painting was interesting. I liked learning about what the different colors represented. I wanted to ask if there was any specific reason geraniums were used, but then I figured it was because they are a pretty humble flower. In the pamphlet it doesn’t say anything about a geranium being a humble flower but it does say something about fragrance, which I thought was weird because geraniums smell disgusting. I also wondered what the significance was of the woman looking so masculine; her hair was short and she didn’t really have any curves.

The painting by Man of Sorrows by Christopher Young I thought was really beautiful. I was surprised because the wood on the cross actually looked like beautiful wood, and Jesus looked in peak condition,. This surprised me just because a lot of the other paintings of his bare chest show him to be very bony and skeletal oftentimes. I know other members of the class treated his muscles with skepticism, but it is in the Word of Wisdom that we should exercise, and Jesus was a carpenter, so I don’t see why it is unreasonable for him to have a great physique, but I do understand that maybe he wasn’t quite so “modelesque” in real life. Also, before the lady mentioned that a violinist thought that he looked like he was holding an instrument, I thought, “Wow, he looks like he’s holding the cross like a violin,” but I didn’t say it because I don’t actually play the violin and didn’t want someone to think “Uh, actually no it’s not”. But then she said that and I was like, “Sweet”.

My other favorite painting was the one with the red and white fabrics on the chairs. I thought a lot of really good comments were made about it. I liked how it was hard to tell exactly where the floor was and how the lower chair was tipped over. It was beautiful how the white fabric was just illuminated and how the red was reflected in the white fabric. It was just a really cool painting.