NARRATOR:
Hello, you’ve reached the Seattle Art Museum. To hear from artist Jeffry Mitchell, stay on the line.

JEFFRY MITCHELL (ARTIST):
Jesus in a Crowd is super clown-like. t's ridiculous. A friend of mine helped me knit the sweater on her knitting machine. And thinking about how a mother knits a child a sweater with a real intention of love, I wanted that to be a component of it.

I like making things that have the earnestness of a Valentine. So maybe the craft is juvenile, but the intent is charmingly powerful. Like the things that people do to express their care, devotion, love.

And it's comical in … in some ways, but I don't mean it to be merely comical. His sort of hollow, oval eyes and mouth are not unlike a sort of Greek mask of tragedy, that kind of hollow horror. So he's holding out his arms. He's showing his pierced hands. I want it to evoke a sense of real sympathy in a way. The focus is on a kind of helplessness.