This Marxhausen piece hangs in the Teachers' Learning and Education Center at CUNE. When they saw me photographing this piece, several faculty and staff at TLEC began to reminisce about Marxy, and I gleaned some great information.
The back contained basic information such as the artist and title, Marxhausen gave it the simple title of "The Sower," and the listed media was glass and plexiglass.
He also used wood and possibly Formica, which is also used for counter-tops. Lynda Parde recalled Marxhausen also used Formica in a piece which he gave to her in 1973. From this information, I learned that Marxhausen was going through a "Formica phase" in the early 1970s.
It was clearly inspired by Christ's parable of the sower:
Then he told them many things in parables, saying: 'A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.' Matthew 13:3-8 (NIV)
This piece was photographed and included in a series of posters shared with LCMS teachers across the country, However the original is not just a flat, two-dimensional image, so one can appreciate it better by looking at it from more than one angle:
- Duncan