This creche resulted from a trip to the thrift store by myself and my nephew Blake, who, around ten at the time, kept shaking his head at me as I pulled random things off the toy shelf.  I lucked out finding the barn, and all the other pieces just seemed to fit.  My favorites are the roly-poly rabbit as Baby Jesus, the horribly colored ceramic of a lounging Santa as one of the three wise men, and Shamu as a barnyard animal.

Having just been to the National Gallery of Art to see their Romare Bearden show, I decided to try a collage creche.  Taking pictures of people significant in my sister's life, I arranged them as bystanders around the central scene of her as the baby and my parents as Mary and Joseph.  The central panel of the background has a slice of each house she lived in growing up, while the left hand side shows scenes from Kenilworth and the right hand side is my father's family farm in Lancaster County.

For more or larger pictures of these artworks, go to "Gallery" under the Main Menu then click on "Creches," or just click here.