A Good Friday art reflection

Artist Eric Tai created an interactive art piece for use at a Good Friday church service. Here he shares his process and how he was inspired to create this special piece.

My work emerges from a deep belief that human existence is not separate from nature, but an extension of it—entangled, responsive, and cyclical. We do not stand outside the world; we live within it, through it, and are shaped by it as much as we attempt to shape it. Creation, in this context, is not a singular act, but an ongoing process of becoming—one that is inherently bound to decay.

To create is to allow something to be lost. There is a sacrificial element that lives at the heart of making: the need to let go, to unmake, to break down what is known in order to uncover what lies ahead. This surrender is not a failure, but a necessary part of the rhythm of building and dismantling or bloom and decay.

Sometimes, something beautiful survives this process. Sometimes it doesn’t. But the process continues, relentlessly and honestly. I am drawn to the moments where beauty reveals itself not in the final form, but in the process / transformation—the raw, chaotic, and often destructive spaces where something new begins to take root.

In this piece we are collectively participating in this cycle of destructive creation where we can not control the outcome and instead participate in the conversation between creation and erosion, between intention and accident. By stepping into this act, we seek to mirror the living world: wild, impermanent, and endlessly reimagining itself.

On Good Friday, this cycle takes on sacred meaning. In the crucifixion of Christ, we witness the ultimate act of sacrificial creation—a divine surrender that embraces destruction for the sake of renewal.

The cross becomes both an end and a beginning, where death births life and suffering holds the promise of redemption. In this light, the creative act mirrors the gospel itself: beauty rising from brokenness, grace from grief. Through this lens, the artist’s surrender becomes a quiet echo of the greater surrender that made salvation possible—not by avoiding destruction, but by passing through it.