SCHOFIELD, Wis.
The church wanted to present to the viewer the mission of the church, and so Townsend set to work developing a half dozen sketches to show the church board. They finally settled on one that Ellsworths wife aptly named Alpha - Omega.
After three years and more than 3,000 hours of painstaking labor, Townsend has completed the project and it is now on display at the church.
The huge high relief carving is made of a special polymer material. Weighing more than 500 pounds, it took twelve men to lift into place outside the sanctuary at the new church addition.
While Townsend, who will soon be 73 years old, never had any official art lessons, he has been an inventor and engineer for most his life, and took up doing relief carving as a hobby.
As a devout Christian, the Alpha-Omega project was a special one for him. In the piece, he says, youll find people in a wide variety of different apparel, representing people from many periods of history and from many walks of life. There is a general theme here -- regardless of who you are or where you come from, the blood of Jesus is for everyone.
In the carving, the Lord is seen in His traditional robes, in contrast to the people nearest to Him in contemporary attire. Youll notice t ...
