Life Videos

The Relationship Between Arts Practice and Sacred Writing

The closing session of King’s Sacred Commissions in the Arts seminar featured Jess, a visual artist‑scholar, who examined how ceramics and miniature painting can serve as a form of visual exegesis for Hebrew Bible verses. Her talk framed the seminar’s final year as a moment to showcase practice‑based research that bridges theology, art, and academic inquiry. Jess demonstrated that rearranging the six letters of “Bereshit” on movable ceramic tiles creates anagrammatic possibilities—Barah, create, Shabbat—allowing viewers to experience the opening Genesis narrative physically. She extended this method to color, drawing on Rothko and Newman to question whether heaven and earth are best imagined as dark‑light binaries or as mutable hues, echoing rabbinic links between “shamayim” and dyes. Material choices such as cinnabar pigment were justified through volcanic imagery found in early rabbinic texts, turning the pigment itself into a theological metaphor. Specific examples included a Scrabble‑style tile set that visualizes spatial oppositions, a Yod‑shaped bird representing the divine name, and miniature tabernacle scenes where blue, white, and red pigments articulate heaven, cloud, and divine fire. Jess cited Gadamer’s notion of tradition‑bound creativity, arguing that her inherited Jewish artistic lineage fuels rather than restricts her interpretive work. The presentation underscores a growing acceptance of practice‑based PhDs in visual arts, challenging King’s historic limitation to music composition. By positioning visual commentary alongside traditional textual scholarship, Jess’s work suggests new interdisciplinary pathways for religious studies, art departments, and cultural institutions seeking to integrate embodied research methods.