Study for The Tree of Life, 1988

Collaged fabrics, 11 ¾ × 7 in. (30 × 17.8 cm)

This small work was made as a maquette for a very large fabric work that used to hang at the top of this elevator shaft, facing the south end of Regent College’s soaring skylit atrium. Created in 1988, the large banner was commissioned to coincide with the completion and opening of this building, and it hung in the atrium for more than thirty-five years, until 2024, when it was removed due to extensive sun damage. 

The cornerstone ceremony for this building included references to Regent College as a transplanted tree that now had a fertile place to grow and flourish. This idea provided the starting point for the banner’s theme, but it quickly expanded to include a rich biblical theology of tree imagery. Generally serving as a symbol of God’s life-giving presence, the Tree of Life appears at the beginning and end of the biblical canon, each time with a river of living water flowing from or through it, dispersing life throughout creation (Gen 2:9-10; Rev 22:1-17; cf. John 4:13-14). Related tree and fruit-bearing imagery appears frequently in the Scriptures, depicting life in the Holy Spirit and various dynamics of faithfulness or unfaithfulness in human hearts and societies. A person (or college) who delights in the wisdom and righteousness of the LORD is compared to a tree planted by a river, bearing fruit even in times of drought (e.g., Psa 1:3; Prov 11:30; Jer 17:8). Runions’ banner was both a proclamation of and call to this life. When the banner was removed, this elevator shaft was painted a verdant green and this maquette placed here to reaffirm this proclamation and call at the center of Regent College.