"Creation" by Marcus Bickler.

The artist is a Coral Springs native who presented this suite of ceramic sculptures to Temple Beth Orr in celebration of the spiritual home the Congregation furnished to him and his family during his formative years.

The pieces depict the six days of Creation, as described in Genesis 1. In the first panel, darkness is separated from light; in the second, sky is separated from sea; and in the third the dry land appears, sprouting vegetation. The fourth panel depicts the sun, moon, and stars populating the sky, while the fifth shows animal life emerging in the sea and taking to the sky. The sixth panel represents human beings as the epitome of land animals (using the artist's older brother and his fiancee as models!).

The small vertical elements running throughout, which the artist calls "flutes," are a unifying theme in all the pieces. Besides maintaining a flow of energy throughout the suite, they also echo the slender Hebrew letter vav, meaning "and then," which prefaces all the verbs in the Hebrew original of the Creation narrative. The conjunction is a reminder that Creation is evolutionary, an ongoing process in which something else is always coming up next.

The seventh panel celebrates the Shabbat, God's day of relinquishment upon the successful completion of the works of Creation. The central figure is a Tree of Life which, although as yet having only a few slender branches, is deeply rooted in God's purpose-- even as the Friday night hymn L'chah Dodi describes Shabbat: "last thing to be made, but first to be planned."