Laura Blechle from South Telegraph Christian Church in St. Louis, MO brings us this rugged, aluminum screening cross. (Originally posted May 2012)
Inspired by Wrinkles in Time they created this backdrop using crumpled window screening backed by landscape fabric. Where there were seems, they hand-stitched the screening material with monofilament. Then they lit it from the bottom with color dashes plus a couple par 64s.
For their next sermon series, they added three homemade baptisteries. Inspired by Homemade Baptisms, they bought three water storage tanks from a local farm supply store and, using a simple jigsaw, cut off the tops. They added a submersible pump to each tank to create movement in the water and also to drain the tanks (fitted to receive a standard garden hose). Each tank was lit from the back with two par 64 lights.
Then came Easter and they wanted to add a cross to the stage. They added a stretch scrim to the front of the truss work and constructed a cross using more of the window screen. The cross was constructed of 1×12’s for the back and 1x4s turned on their sides to create a box. Then they crumpled their screening and stapled it inside the cross.
Do you think a lot of the effect would be lost without the black backing behind the aluminum screening? Looks great.
I didn’t want to take a chance of the light flowing through the screening, instead of staying on the screen. So, I played it safe and added the black backing. It wasn’t a lot of effort or cost. Thanks
Where can I buy that kind of mesh any chance you can leave a link?
Hey this is cool…how did you attach the landscape fabric to the screening?
Mark, just saw your question – we didn’t actually attach the screening to the landscape fabric. However, at the bottom we have both the screen and the fabric attached to a 2 x 4 in order to keep anything from shifting.
How wide are the columns of screen hanging down? Looks like maybe 4′ wide?
What lights are you using to light the columns ?