“Chlora’s Crèche germinated in a previous piece (like much art), and then linked up with a bizarre Christmas Eve worship service at which our family had to go through a metal detector only seconds before receiving communion (that’s what you get when you end up at the same service as a President-elect).  Ideas for the crèche began with Aaron, who took the heat for the golden calf.  One idea fed the next: the calf made of gold and jewels lead to materialism, and that took me back to Dallas and to sumptuary laws and Girolamo Savonarola in Florence...and on to his influence on Botticelli, whose Mystical Nativity got painted on the crèche.  Then I realized that the ox and ass are absent from the gospels but got lifted from Isaiah and now appear in every rococo crèche at Dillard’s.  Chlora gets hold of a nativity set and spray-paints the cow gold. At least it wasn’t barbequed like the fatted calf.
     Before I started this piece, I was rambling to a friend about my ideas. It was September, and I told her I was scouring Goodwills for a tacky cardboard crèche from the 1950s.  I wanted a model from my own childhood, the classic type with straw or moss on the roof and brightly painted plaster figures.  My friend looked stunned. “I have one in my car,” she said. Out in the parking lot she opened the trunk.  The only thing in it was a 1950s nativity set, minus all the figures except a pink Baby Jesus in a scotch-taped manger.  She had kept it in her trunk for months after cleaning out her mother’s home and didn’t have the heart to ditch it.  This sign gave me the impetus to get started.
     Sometimes a piece continues to unfold for me months after is finished—a reminder that the call is ongoing.  I knew the crèche was more than a jab at holiday consumerism, but I was surprised when it suggested to me later that the golden calf is an agent of grace: the little calf wears her gold uncomfortably; she is scalded by idolatry, yet she kneels humbly at the scene.  Why would Christ call our idolatry to the manger rather than the cross?  How does the incarnation transform the graven image?  I’m uncertain, but the personal meaning was clear:  Don’t confuse the call with the caller, or the gift with the giver. The second commandment jerked me back to the first commandment.  The yearning to make meaningful art is not wrong, but it can override the yearning for God.”