S. Brent Rodriguez-Plate is a writer, editor, public speaker and part-time professor at Hamilton College. Follow on Twitter: @splate1
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Artists ‘Reinvent’ Holy Writings Using Sacred Books as Medium
Detail from Meg Hitchcock's "Throne: The Book of Revelation." 2012. Permission by Meg Hitchcock. Image via RNS.
In 2015, Montreal-based artist Guy Laramée placed a large-format Bible from the 19th century upright with the spine open. Then, using a power grinder, he carved a landscape into the pages and painted along the curvatures, evoking the space of a cave whittled into a sheer mountainside.
It is a beautiful summoning of desert spaces, conjuring the place of the biblical prophets. It is, however, an unusual treatment of the Good Book.
And it is one that would never find its way to the $500 million Museum of the Bible, opening Nov. 17 in Washington, D.C. That museum is dedicated to the preservation and presentation of the sacred text through the ages.