Westley Olmsted (1934-2011)14 Stations of the Cross
1996
screen prints on Stonehenge paper 1 of 10
14 x 18 inches
Gift of the Wes and Gloria Olmsted, 2004
In the drawings of the Stations of the Cross, I tried to portray Jesus as a man, sentenced to death, bound, and on his way to Kafka’s penal colony.
Jesus was the object of a “hunt,” and mankind was the hunter/killer group deployed to end his ministry in the most cruel and violent manner that was then technically possible.
My mother, Frederica Hauck Olmsted, took me to innumerable (or at least it seemed so to a young boy) masses and novenas in Buffalo’s Catholic churches. I was attracted to the magical images in the churches. But, as I grew older, I could not understand why the act of nailing a living mad to a tree should produce so many images of blandness and passivity which are common to most Catholic churches.
I feel, rather, that we should scream out, as portrayed by Edvard Munch in his Scream, about the horror, pain, injustice and fear that are manifestations of Jesus’ penultimate ministry on Earth.
The trauma of the way of the cross is central to the Christian miracle of resurrection.
In Jesus’s suffering, all mankind can be seen. In his sacrifice, all of us who struggle for something better are also seen. I cannot but think that all of us, on our own personal Calvary have uttered the words “My God, My God, Why hast thou forsaken me?” We all share in Jesus’s terrible ordeal of the Fourteen Stations of the Cross.
But when will we share in our own resurrection?
When will we see God?
— Wes Olmsted, June 1996
