Is he cupping something in his hands, or are his hands folded like in prayer?

For some reason it was very calming watching him go round and round.

i looked to see what was in his hands and couldn’t see anything. his hands are in “cupping mode” for sure (as opposed to simply folded) but it’s unclear what, if anything, is inside. because this piece consists of found objects, it’s possible the figure is a found object whose gesture was premade, and was used because it resembled “prayer hands”, perhaps? or perhaps the cupping gesture was intended to be read as just that.

PS—relaxing, indeed.

Heather, you seem utterly unfamiliar with Saul and his “Road to Damascus experience.” Educated people should know who this is, even if it takes a little research (both before and after this chapter in Acts) to arrive at his better-known name.

Also, pardon me for starting out so contrary, but it’s disappointing that your description of Saul’s conversion experience willfully skips over the part that’s =far more important= than his being “‘struck blind’,” which “was no accident, apparently.” Saul and those traveling with him heard Jesus—who, having ascended (Acts ch. 1), was speaking from heaven, as it were. Jesus was not only chiding Saul but setting up a crucial encounter for him with a believer in Damascus.

(Relax, and thanks for your patience—I’m off your case now.) Saul’s trip to Damascus was not intended to be a pilgrimage. Quite the contrary—it was more of a “search and destroy” mission. The encounters with the risen Jesus and the believer in Damascus, though, set Saul off on quite a lifelong pilgrimage of a spiritual sort, not with any particular earthly city as its goal.

Sticking with Saul, the rock might symbolize the events of Acts 7:58-8:1, which Saul was involved in. The shell is a traditional symbol of the Apostle James; Jesus had named Simon “Peter,” after the word for “rock”; both these apostles wrote epistles found in the New Testament, as did this “Saul.” Otherwise, I’m not sure what the shell (and the pinecone) might have to do with Saul in particular.

There are a number of ways one could personalize one’s interpretation of those three objects, upon making the circling “pilgrim” oneself, as you started to do, Heather. Since I’m hundreds of miles away from the artwork, I can’t respond as fully as I’d like. From the pics, though, I’d say the pilgrim is always praying and mindful of God, even while he is attending to physical realities, represented by the three objects at the opposite “pole” of the artwork from the spiritual: mineral, animal, vegetable.

Various interpretations (besides explicitly biblical) can be given those particular items, when certain slants are given to the broad notion of “physical realities.” One scheme that comes to mind is that the three objects represent not just the physical world (in “opposition” to the spiritual) but the utterly biological world of a man, a woman, and reproduction of offspring.

Having fulfilled what was necessary with the physical world, though (not just through biology but any of the ways the world must be dealt with to make ends meet and so on), the pilgrim turns back to the Word of God. Again, he’s always praying if he can’t literally be reading the Word at the moment. (Haaa: “literally reading.”)

The time frame for this could be a daily cycle of work and free time, as you hypothesized, Heather. It could be the weekly cycle of work and Sabbath. It’s also a moment-by-moment phasing in and out between physical and spiritual needs or tendencies.

—Thanks for this page, Heather, and also, of course, to Marc Berghaus for creating “Pilgrim” in the first place. I don’t know about Wichita, but a Kansas trip is in the works for this summer (I found this page while researching the late Kansas artist Birger Sandzen). I hadn’t previously thought of the Kansas trip as a pilgrimage, particularly, but maybe I should keep my ears open.

Hi again, Heather. In my previous post I alluded to not going to Wichita. It must have seemed particularly irrelevant to anything. Problem was, I was sorta thinking I was still at the Wichita museum website I was at a couple URLs before yours!

Drifting down out of the writing clouds and back to the “physical realities” of surfing, I see that you’re in Topeka. Sorry about that. No, I’m not sorry you’re in Topeka—I like both Wichita and Topeka fine (even though neither is in my summer plans for Kansas). I’m sorry to have forgotten where I “was,” there for a while, “oblivious to the world around” me. . . . Well, I guess good art does that sometimes—lifts you up out of your everyday situation.

But how can you blame me for my temporary disorientation—this is pretty amazing to have such museum-quality webpages at a public library site, isn’t it? My kudos to you, Heather, and whoever else at the T&SCPL; and around town is backing your efforts and these gallery resources!

Have a great summer in =Topeka=!

Hi Peter!

First, thank you for elaborating on Saul’s story for me and our readers. I was raised Catholic, however it’s been quite some time since I’ve critically read or studied scripture, and AM “utterly unfamiliar” with the deeper meanings and metaphors embedded in Biblical narrative. When I blog for our community, my primary goal is to expose our permanent art collection and encourage patrons to find books and media in our circulating collection from which they might learn more about something they’ve read or seen.

I’m often confronted with unfamiliar subjects when blogging, and rely on general overview searching with Google, adding “site:edu” to my query which filters out all but the academic websites. I compare 4-5 articles, cross my fingers and publish. Were I writing a curatorial statement or academic paper, my research would absolutely parallel the effort.

Second, how exciting to hear you found us via a Birger Sandzén search! If you’re ever in the neighborhood, we could share our collection of his prints and paintings with you. An art gallery and museum collection in a public library context is not only virtually unprecidented, it’s revolutionary in my opinion. And we owe that forward-thinking to a man named Edward Wilder, who not only was the first man elected to an all-female library board in the late 19th century, but was adamant about the Topeka Library being “more than just books”. 125+ years later, we’re still throwing opening night parties, hosting programs, artist talks, films, performances and of course, exhibitions. Librarians from all over the country (and world) are amazed by what they find here. Art educators and students have a wonderful resource in us, and we are able to automatically reach a community most museums spend valuable time and money marketing to: children. They’re all over this place and many of them have never seen art in a formal setting. They wander in and we start talking. It’s awesome.

Other reasons to come to Topeka include visiting the Mulvane Art Museum at Washburn University, the Kansas State Historical Society, the state capitol building which houses John Steuart Curry’s John Brown mural, and the Monroe School /Brown v. Board of Education Historical Site.

Again, thank you for taking time to write a response and say hello.