For more than 15 years, Golden artist Karen Brodie Archibald carried a vision of what her Stations of the Cross could become. Now, with all 14 textile works complete, local residents have an opportunity to see that vision brought to life.
The collection is on display for a few days at Trinity Lutheran Church in Golden, offering visitors a chance to appreciate up close the colour, stitching and intricate fabric work behind a project that began in 2009.
For Brodie, whose career creating fabric art for churches spans more than three decades, the series represents a substantial artistic undertaking and a deeply personal expression of faith. Its completion brings together years of reflection, design and persistence, followed by an intensive year of production.
The Stations of the Cross traditionally follow the events leading from Jesus’ condemnation to his crucifixion and burial. Brodie approached each station through a reflection and prayer contributed by one of 14 clergy from different Christian traditions and international backgrounds.
Those writings became the starting point for her designs, allowing the project to grow through the perspectives of others as well as her own. Before the full textile collection existed, the illustrated designs travelled to communities across southern British Columbia, giving audiences an early introduction to the work.
Moving from illustrations to finished fabric pieces was another undertaking altogether.
Brodie first created Station Nine, titled Shattered, in fabric for an exhibition in 2017. Production of the full series began in January 2025 and was completed that December. Individual pieces of fabric were cut by hand and machine-sewn in her home studio, with some stations requiring nearly 300 pieces.
Her online studio journal documents the demands behind that process, including the emotional weight of the subject matter and the technical challenge of translating her designs into textiles.
While working on Station Eleven in October 2025, Brodie described waking early to tackle the most artistically challenging work of her career.
Alongside her assistant, she worked through almost 300 fabric pieces, wrestling with colour, detail and the difficulty of realizing an image she had held in her imagination for years.
“But here I am. Showing up,” she wrote.
By December, that persistence had carried her through the final station. In a journal entry dated Dec. 23, 2025, she reflected on the project’s transformation from an idea into something tangible, and on the next step of allowing the completed artwork to find its place in the world.
The complete series premiered at Vancouver’s Il Centro Italian Cultural Centre in January 2026.
Although rooted in Christian tradition, the exhibition was presented as an opportunity for contemplation across spiritual backgrounds, inviting visitors to pause and consider questions of belief, suffering and shared humanity.
That openness is also part of Brodie’s intention. Her hope, expressed on her website, is for the artwork to speak to people wherever they find themselves on their spiritual journey.
For Golden residents, the temporary display offers a chance to spend time with the finished collection in the community where it was created. It also provides a closer look at the patient work behind the images: fabric selected, shapes cut and details stitched into place over months of sustained effort.
What began as an idea more than 15 years ago can now be seen as a complete collection with all 14 stations together before being on exhibit in Ottawa in February 2027.
The Stations of the Cross is on display at Trinity Lutheran Church in Golden this Friday, Saturday and Sunday, Nov. 13, 14 & 15.
More information about Brodie and the project is available at thestationsofthecross.ca.
