chapel cross

Chapel Cross is a community weaving project created by members of L'Arche Antigonish and St Francis Xavier University students during the 2011-12 academic year. This Art Department studio weaving course was taught in conjunction with Service Learning at StFX.

More than 40 people brought this woven wall-hanging to life. Chapel Cross formed a part of the L'Arche Antigonish Easter Service in 2013. Kelly Farrell is shown surrounded by her drawings of the Stations of The Cross.

Students and the folks from L'Arche met each other early in the term and quickly formed partnerships.

The whole class was introduced to how the community art project would develop and saw pictures illustrating how the finished product might look.

The partners then chose favourite colours of cotton to use when weaving all the bands that would be interlaced to create Chapel Cross.

The students learned basic weaving patterns and combinations to come up with their own design using the colours that their partners had selected. The coloured patterns were a short-hand notation for the proper sequence of warps (the threads attached to the loom).

The long warps needed to be untangled and threaded onto the loom following the pattern; a bit daunting at first glance.

Once the students had prepared all the looms the folks from L'Arche came to the university studio for one hour each week to weave with their partners.

All of the coloured bands needed to create Chapel Cross were completed by the end of the school year - there were forty-six in total.

The students and the folks from L'Arche gathered in the university studio at the end of the year to weave the bands together to finally create Chapel Cross.

Here is a final look at Chapel Cross and a detail that shows the intricacies of the coloured patterns and the way each band was interlaced with the others to create the finished cloth. It is an object of great beauty with a strong message of faith and the power of a caring community.