 Amos' Basket of Summer Fruit© 2002 Ginger Henry Geyer glazed porcelain with white gold 11 pieces, 11 ½" x 15 ½" x 12" Adaptation of Caravaggio’s The Supper at Emmaus "This is what the Lord God showed me—a basket of summer fruit. He said, "Amos, what do you see?" And I said, "A basket of summer fruit." Then the Lord God said to me, "The end has come upon my people Israel; I will never again pass them by." (Amos 8:1-2) A pretty fruit basket might reside on a nice dining room table. There it speaks of tradition and abundance and thanksgiving. This one is a porcelain rendition of a rural fruit market basket, the well-used cheap kind that holds Fredericksburg peaches or Arkansas tomatoes. This one is full of a variety of fruit, but the fruit is canned. Why? Amos, one of the harsher prophets, was shown several omens that were warnings to his decadent culture. Some Hebrew scholars say that the phrase for basket for summer fruit is a rhyming pun on a word meaning "the end." God used an image of fecundity to warn of disaster. So here the fruit has met its dead end—boiled, sealed, and stuck on the shelf. Have you ever tried canned grapes? That and eight other fruit cans represent the fruits of the Spirit (see Galatians 5:22-23). The obvious has been omitted—there is no spiritual can opener here.  There is a sign jammed into the basket. On it is the Supper at Emmaus, which shows a lovely basket of fruit on the edge of the table. The basket is about to tip off, making us rush into the picture to prevent fruit basket turnover. The basket is Caravaggio's hook to make us enter into the scene, and it is what made me select this painting. So then I must ask, what does the Emmaus story have to do with Amos' vision and with the fruits of the Spirit? In that post-resurrection story, it was not the fruit but the bread that convinced the disciples that their mysterious host was the risen Christ. In the high firing of the porcelain, the bottom of the basket shattered. Rather than remaking the piece, I listened to this flaw. The only possible repair would have to be some new element nestled into the bottom of the basket, glazed onto all those shards. A pair of worn work gloves presented itself. They remind me of what migrant workers, like fruit pickers, might wear. Later an Old Testament professor told me that what upset Amos was Israel’s bad treatment of the poor. The back of the sign now says, "Food Drive". Under all those cans, the gloves are placed palms up, as if receiving the Eucharist. It's that Emmaus thing again: they are holding fruit, but it's not just about our fruits: it's about the bread. I guess the sculpture is being sacramental. As Bill Moyers might say, it is being "helped by hidden hands." |