Crosses' theme is Jesus' love for all

For painter and sculptor James Quentin Young, the battered and forgotten trump brand-new glossiness every time.

His conviction that Jesus cares deeply for the rejected of the world is espoused in his exhibition of "Found Object Crosses" in the Visions Gallery, located at the Diocesan Pastoral Center in Albany.

The show, which also includes Stations of the Cross by members of the Christians in the Visual Arts Printmakers Project, runs until April 29.

Rough-hewn

Mr. Young's crosses are fashioned from rugged pieces of weathered wood and scraps of jagged, industrial metal. Crooked nails have been gleaned from junkyards, while accent pieces -- a tiny golden fish, copper pebbles, shabbily-painted odds and ends -- were picked up at flea markets and antique shops.

The wood is roughly painted in places, and mixed with old chair-legs, dowels, screws and dented bolts.

"People say [about the discarded items], 'That's junk, I don't need it, I'll throw it away,'" Mr. Young explained. "But Christ took in the rejected. Christ says, 'Yes, you do need it.' [The exhibition] is about Christ's love for the discarded and rejected people of society. The wood and metal items I use represent these rejected people."

Discovering the lost

When he was an adolescent in his hometown of St. Paul, Minnesota, Mr. Young watched a man with a donkey and cart, trolling junkyards in the poorer parts of the city for decent salvage.

"I realized then that those things were still valuable," he explained.

After getting a degree in art education, he followed his love of art to Mexico, where he pursued a master of fine arts degree. There, he was first introduced to the "anguish" of the Cross, he said.

Mr. Young had been raised in a Protestant tradition that did not adorn crosses. Mexican Catholics, however, fashioned life-like crucifixes of stone, paint, metal and wood, with rust, decay and history combining to show a deep sense of faith and devotion.

Sense of time

The artist watched Mexicans walk for miles to reach the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and he was impressed with the sense of history that suffused the city, citing the "old, old wood, from colonial times, in the doors, and the metal."

In America, he noted, "the cross has been cleaned up in churches with silver, bronze, brass, and gold. But Christ did suffer."

He finds inspiration for his pieces from trips to Arizona and Mexico with his wife; from friends, who keep an eagle-eye out for pieces he can use; and even from things that float up from the bottom of a lake near his home in Minnesota.

A message lies in the crosses he creates, he said: "Don't discard things. Christ cared about the rejected. The people who were fine -- He wasn't concerned as much [about them]. It was the people who had the big troubles that He came for."

(In the "Widow's Two Pennies Cross," the artist echoes the parable by using metal discs to serve as the generous widow's coins. "It's Time For Jesus" uses a sliver of red metal and rusty copper discs to imitate the base and hands of a clock. "Nails Removed" showcases three rusted, ancient nails to signify the nails used at the Crucifixion, and a former showcase for a set of thrown-out carpet samples, now long-gone, forms another cross. Mr. Young, who lives in Minnesota, is retired after nearly 40 years as a public-school art teacher.)

(3/24/05)