No Fuller on Earth

Raphael, Transfiguration, 1516-20

Matt Donovan on the Work of Kate Carr

In Raphael’s Transfiguration, above the bunched-up folds of monochrome robes, above all those gesticulating hands, above Mount Tabor rising up like a little dough-dented knoll just a few feet above the earth, a man has become light and hovers midair and—this is not how we know it to be—remains light forevermore.

Here is the story in brief: not long after ascending the mountain with three of his disciples, Jesus became like the sun. It was, scripture tells us, as if his very flesh turned to light. The spirits of Moses and Elijah appeared, and Peter pledged to build three tabernacles for prayer, and a cloud wafted forth, demanding we pay heed, and the disciples pitched forward in fear, transfixed.

Yet, as always, the light didn’t last, and soon enough they were all threading down the mountain’s switchbacking trail. Soon enough, too, they encountered a man within a crowd who begged Jesus to cure his ailing son, and then the talk turned from all that impossible light to the path of mortal flesh.

In one photograph—perhaps this was just before she was diagnosed?—Kate stands in the doorway of her studio. It’s one of those dazzling, sun-soaked New Mexico winter days, and behind her the sky is a searing, cloudless swatch of blue. Dressed in a black shirt, black jeans, and a nearly fluorescent fuchsia down vest, she’s flashing one of her beaming, all-in smiles even as she squints in the glare. Although she’s leaning against the door’s frame, one leg is angled forward, as if she were already in the act of stepping away from this snapshot’s pause, already pivoting back into her studio where she’ll begin once again stacking, cutting, aligning, sewing, making some soon-to-be-beautiful new thing.

Some quibble that the Transfiguration’s light falls short of the criteria for a miracle. Apparently mere radiance is not enough, especially when compared to Lazarus beginning to breathe once again or that water darkening into wine. Moreover, it’s been said that the moment of brilliance and change just didn’t last long enough.

For others, though, that brevity, that temporary suspension of the natural order, is one of the defining characteristics of the miraculous. How long, after all, could the blindsiding last before it became simply the way things run?

In one of Kate’s sculptures, white cloth has been coiled into a small wooden frame. It’s a compact piece—just a foot long, perhaps six inches high—and the fabric seems to both resist and embrace its box-like constraints: the cloth curves in crimped little waves, then doubles back on itself in dramatic whorls. It reminds me of stretched taffy...