For Russians and other Orthodox Christians, this is Easter weekend.

Yet around here in the Pacific Northwest, there are no Orthodox churches for hundreds of miles. I spent my Paschal Saturday in the mountains and created this temporary Byzantine-style "mosaic" out of glacial-lake pebbles (segmented from and inspired by the famous Anastasis mosaic from the Hosios Loukas monastery in Greece--that mental art-history library in my head is dusty, but not forgotten!).

As is the case with my other projects in the same vein, this image, too, is meant to last long enough to be photographed--ultimately eroding with the elements. In fact, even during its brief existence, it never looked the same for more than a few minutes: the sun and the shadows it cast moved fast, as did the wind.

Of course, I sometimes forget that this is America, where certain people see images of Christ in their toast. Perhaps, I should've helped the elements clean up this particular outdoor experiment of mine rather than leaving it out in the wild!