Experience Collection

Written by Dillan Lewis in partnership with Lamb Fabricae

The word "HEVEL" is Hebrew and translates into vapor or breath, however it is commonly used in the biblical book of Ecclesiastes to portray worthlessness, futility and emptiness. The collection poses the question: in a world which is fading away, will you fixate on what is eternal or what is dwindling? At its core HEVEL is a portrayal of the gospel, the full arc of it, from creation to fall to redemption, told through objects and bodies and ancient materials. It centers the observer in a world of outlandish and bewildering visuals to stimulate the mind and push past its usual barriers. The magnum opus of the collection is a 15 minute video moving through a series of objects and scenes that together form a complete theological world. Lamb Fabricae takes an abhorrent and hard to digest approach to purposely repel the general public and that repulsion is the point.

The video opens on 3 pipes made of ivory, simultaneously unique but the same in essence, trinitarian. Above them sits a piece of mammoth ivory, the oldest sculptural form known to man, a play on the Venus of Hohle Fels. No figure is carved into it, only a circle drilled through the center. Together the pipes and the ivory above them tell a story of the trinity's role in creation and make the argument that God is the original and greatest Artist. The scene then immediately switches from God's first expressed creation to his most loved. Man. A figure covered in clay hunched over a fire, pointing to the early human tendency to behold creation and stand in awe of the original Artist's work. It also points directly to Adam, formed by God from the earth itself.

Next appears a tall black figure creating a demanding presence. The option of sin, present in the garden alongside mankind. That presence then leads to three white boxes containing a foot, a hand, and an ear, each with a segment covered in red ocher, the blood of Jesus setting the believer apart in their walk, their actions, and their consumption. This is the plan of Christ set in stone from the beginning, Revelation 13:8, God's design for reconciliation present even before the fall.

Afterwards a fabric of wool and a pillow. This carries the weight of a triple entendre: the rest of man in the garden, the temptation to slumber and drift from biblical commandments, or the wool covering God made for Adam and Eve after the fall. Any reading holds but following the story the wool covering is most probable.

The hip bone shown next points toward Jacob's wrestle with God, art versus the Artist. God touched Jacob's hip and left him limping for the rest of his life. That wound represents divine correction and judgment but also mercy. God weakens without destroying, leaving Jacob humbled, marked, and blessed. An image of the Christ to come.

A mound of salt on the floor titled "Salt of the Earth." Jesus came as the ultimate salt of the earth to preserve us, and we in turn preserve the world because we are being preserved, 1 John 4:19. The salt is meant to be taken. Given use. Left untouched it loses its purpose entirely.

On the wall is an extinct cave bear tooth titled "Life Given." This is Lamb's inversion of Duchamp's readymades, where ordinary mass produced objects were elevated to fine art simply by being renamed and recontextualized. Here instead of a man made object it is a pre-existed creature, extinct and forgotten, being given new life through title. The same thing God does when he changes us from servants to friends, from the old name to the new.

A woman covered in clay grinds red ocher in a mortar and pestle. Red ocher is the oldest known art form. Adam means man of red earth. Mankind attempting again to create for themselves.

Then a man covered in white paint, his body divided by lines of red in the pattern of the Kabbalah tree of life. Titled "Solomon's Folly," it is a satirical image of mankind's desire to reach God through its own wisdom and mysticism. Solomon was the wisest man alive and still fell. The red lines here are not the blood of Christ but a negative wisdom, the human attempt to map the divine rather than submit to it.

A sacred heart with fire on top leads to a burning crucifix. Jesus allowing himself to be sent to death, opening his heart, becoming the once for all sacrifice that ends the cycle of vain repetition and makes everything before it meaningful in retrospect.

A body under a white sheet with a toe tag. The Christ in the tomb or the human being without him. Both readings are true and that is the point. It is simultaneously our efforts and actions and the one action that opened the door to fullness and meaning.

A piece of whale bone titled "Hand of God," historically used to crush red ocher into dust to create art. Now it represents the hand of God crushing us into the image of Christ. A man and a woman then appear completely covered in red ocher, doubling as the blood of Christ, the oldest pigment of mankind now made sacred. Standing next to each other they are Adam and Eve restored, but also more than that. They are the high priest and priestess of God, man and woman divinely appointed together to a new and elevated connection to the heavenly places. The body of Christ as the latest and greatest art installation of God, causing all other art to pale in comparison. Footprints of blood on the floor point to Luke 10:39, staying at the feet of the savior, which as repelling as it is to the world remains one of the most transformative acts of the christian life.

A saddle covered in fabric with feet poking out, and two chairs strung with fabric. Even after deep observation these objects resist interpretation, and perhaps that is the point. Not everything in a vapor of a life will yield meaning. Some things simply exist and fade.

Next is a table titled "The Table of Contents," representing the objects God intended for the purpose of art and creation. A man covered in circles then appears to be cleansing himself of them, representing the washing away of sin that Christ made possible. Two organs sit side by side, one dark and one light, titled "Theosis." The renewal of the interior life after accepting Christ, the corroded giving way to the living. Another image of Christ restoring his creation to its original Edenic state.

A woman with a wig titled "3 Braids," pointing to Ecclesiastes 4:12, a threefold cord is not easily broken. This is the believer made one with Christ. Scripture says the hair of a woman is her glory, and this woman's glory has the trinity woven into it, declaring that her glory is not her own but surrendered to the only place where it holds any eternal weight.

A woman covered entirely in gold. The believer seated with Christ in heavenly places, made righteous not through effort or proof but through him alone. Beside that a stack of corroded metal plates titled "Judgement," the decay of the heart and mind without Christ, and the inevitable corrosion of human creative effort left to itself.

A clay woman on the ground with branches rising from her hair like antlers. The counterimage to the earlier clay woman grinding at the mortar and pestle. Instead of creating art herself she has become it, submitting her will to God and returning to what nature was in the beginning, before the impulse to make replaced the willingness to be made.

Two lines of gray ash or dust on the floor, the vain lives lived before Christ, stopping at the center of the room at the turning point into meaning. A woman not covered in clay, detached from her original purpose, kneels before a preserved whale eardrum titled "El Shama," meaning the God who hears. Even in her detachment she is drawn toward him and he hears her. The untethered still find their way to his ear.

What appears to be an IV needle on the wall, positioned where the mammoth ivory stood at the opening. Jesus no longer just an ancient being but an active sustenance, something administered daily. Three lamb brains sit beside each other at different stages of development, beautiful in their progression, but carrying a deeper claim. The image pays homage to the theory that Michelangelo embedded the anatomy of the human brain into the Sistine Chapel ceiling, art imitating art imitating art across centuries. It is also a quiet declaration that if a new renaissance in art and fashion is coming it will be birthed through Lamb Fabricae, through Christ Workshop, which is what the name means.

A reflective metal sheet with an organ displayed on top of it as if it were a sculpture, because it is. The anatomy of man as the pinnacle of artistry on this earth. The internal life presented as the exhibition, pointing to 1 Samuel 16:7, that what is inside will be examined more carefully than what is shown.

A clay figure on one knee carrying a black box on his back titled "The Ark" or "The Coffin." The ark of the covenant carried the glory of God through the wilderness. Now we carry our crosses, our coffins, to carry that same glory forward. It also presents the weight of a life being carried toward its own ending, the futility and the faithfulness in the same posture. The ark also calls back to Bezalel, the first person in all of Scripture recorded as being filled with the Holy Spirit, and what he was filled to do was build. To create. By the law of first mention this establishes something significant: the Spirit's first recorded act in a human being was to make an artist. Creativity is not peripheral to the life of faith. It is where the Spirit showed up first.

Two women fully veiled and a third adorned in bridal fabric, only the bottom half of her face visible. The friends of the bride and the bride herself, the finished work of Christ. To be fully sanctified and set apart for the sole reason you were made. This is the complete opposite of hevel. It is something that will not fade. An eternal weight of glory.

The next figure, alien-like, minimal clothing, shaved head, bears 3 slits of mammoth ivory on the center of her chest, keeping the trinity close to her heart. The christian who has become a stranger to this earth after sanctification and simultaneously the image of being born again into Christ. Unrecognizable to the world and to themselves.

Then the final image. A man completely naked and bare, sitting on the coffin and ark from earlier, smoking from the same ivory pipe seen at the very beginning. The ivory completing its circle, the God symbol present at the start and the end. From dust we came and to dust we shall return, but more than that, we came from God and we return into his hand. This is comforting to the hearer to know that the Lord remembers we are but dust, and that we will be shown mercy. The smoke rising is the most direct reference to the name of the collection, hevel, showing how ephemeral a life truly is. His nakedness points back to the Edenic state, the return to unity with God where life recovers its meaning. He is resting on the glory of the Lord, having arrived at the only thing that was ever worth arriving at. To love the Lord our God.