Wednesday, January 30, 2013

New Bead: Agony in the Garden


The Agony in the Garden is one of my favorite mysteries of the rosary.   The inner struggle between doing what's right vs. doing what's easy is pretty easy for me to relate to- every day.  Who doesn't struggle with that?  I feel closer to Jesus when I know he's been there- and decided to choose love- for me.

I'll admit, making this bead, based on the famous Betende Hände (Praying Hands) by Albrecht Dürer, was a bit out of my league. I don't have any formal art training besides pottery in high school where I mainly fooled around...and got out of serious subject matter like calculus (I know, I'm a shining example to my children and a product of public school).  But this bead has some serious shading going on and I was lost at many points, wishing I had training in painting and drawing.


I did my best with these fingers first:

but when it came time to do the rest of the hands, I drew a blank. It took me a good week and half to decide I needed to just jump in and do something- anything. After all, the bead would be a tenth of the size of the original by the end- no one will be able to see my mistakes!

The whole bead took all of January to complete, so don't think I'm super mom! I worked on it a little at a time when I would get an hour or 30 minutes here or there.  It was a nice repose from all my mothering duties.

By the end, the bead got too big (my husband says, "That's what you always say." but this time, it was really true) and it made things a little complicated as far as finding enough clay to fill it in and reducing the mammoth.   I need to be a little more accurate in scaling my beads.  Thankfully, it reduced all right.

 I added the moon and stars to the symbol to tell the story a bit (since the Agony was at night) and the three drops of blood to be a reminder of the of the blood that was sweat.  The hands of course, are for those intense moments of prayer and to remind us to take time to pray- especially when it's hard and we'd rather be sleeping like the apostles!

One cool thing- I think some of the beads look as if the hands are holding the moon and the stars or that the hands are creating the moon and the stars.  It reminds me of Psalm 8, "When I look at the heavens, the works of your fingers, the moon and stars which you have established, what is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him little less than the angels, crowned him glory and honor...Oh Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!"

8 comments:

Lena said...

amazing work!

Unknown said...

Hello there! I stumbled upon your blog from 'The Simple Things' blog, and I love your beads!
This may be a silly question but.. how do you reduce them in size? They seem to start so big?
Its super fascinating to me! I'd have to shop around your site and see what else you make!
blessings to you and your newest edition!

Jamie Jo said...

Oh, my gosh, that's a beautiful one!

(they all are)

Just One Handful said...

WOW!
What a gift! You are so talented! I love it!

melody said...

This is so beautiful! I also never told you how much my daughter loves her First Communion rosary. She loves to examine each bead and read the pamphlet. It is a real treasure to her, especially after I brought her to your site to show her how you make each bead! So glad to see you still creating beautiful things :)

Julie Cragon said...

"He's got the whole world in His Hands" I cannot get that song out of my head now. This is beautiful.

Katie said...

It is beautiful!!

noreen said...

It does look like He's holding the stars and the moon. Turned out beautiful! How are you doing with your new baby?