Jim Shores is a sculptor from Rome, Georgia. In this work, he combined safety-match crates, industrial tubing, and cast-off metal objects to create a snake-handling preacher. The snakes’ sinuous beauty recalls the cunning serpent of Genesis, while their slick surfaces contrast with the rough, patinated wood and dull metal of the preacher and his pulpit. The practice of snake-handling emerged in rural Appalachian churches early in the twentieth century and was inspired by a passage from the New Testament describing how God protects believers from a wide array of deadly things, including the handling of venomous snakes.