Jacob Sackin
Environmental Science Fiction & Art

The Cathedral Series (2012)

The Cathedral Series consists of six drawings inspired by a trip around Western Europe in the summer of 2012.

The Cathedral is a medicine wheel and zodiac clock. Each sign of the zodiac is represented both inside the cathedral clock and somewhere else in the drawing. Try and find your astrological symbol. The Cathedral is also a medicine wheel as the drawing represents the cycle of life, of the year and of a single day. The right side of the drawing represents the east, spring, sunrise, birth and the start of new projects and journeys. South is summer, high noon, adolescence, or being in the middle of a project. The west is the fall, sunset, adulthood or being at the cusp of finishing something. North, or midnight, is death, winter, or the completion of a task. It can also be seen as the beginning of a new day or life, since midnight is not the end of the day and winter is not the end of the seasons, but just a moment in the cycle.

Think about what part of the cycle of your life, this year, a single day, or some project or quest you are involved in, and look at that place on the drawing for guidance or meditation. Over 100 images from buildings, markets and statues around Western Europe are found in the drawing. This drawing took 120 hours to complete. The original is 6 ft X 4 ft.

Arms

In The Suburbs, which house would you like to live in? Don’t forget to consider what is in the backyard of each house. Why did you choose the one that you did? What is it about the color, architecture and things in the backyard that attracted you to it? See which house your friends and family choose. What does it say about this world that everyone lives in their own private cathedral?

In The Race, construction workers try to build a cathedral as tall as a redwood tree. Buildings often mimic nature. Columns have lines running down them to mimic the trunks first used in ancient architecture. The light coming through stained glass windows is very similar to the light shining down through the forest canopy. Maybe cathedrals themselves were built to mimic the beauty of the natural world that people had destroyed.

The similarities between rocket ships and cathedrals are unmistakable. Not only do they look similarly, but both are made to connect to something beyond the physical Earth. Whether it is God or the moon, Moonscape and Liftoff illustrate the power of the cathedral as a vessel for great voyages. What planet or moon are the cathedrals on and in what time period?

Many animals resolve conflict through touch. Yet throughout time, people continually create borders, build walls, go to war, and divide ourselves by skin color, religion or political beliefs. In Arms, it is the buildings themselves that make what is often the first step in resolving conflict.