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Among Paul Nixon’s favorites is the cross sculpture with an outstretched Jesus figure that’s only a tiny fraction of the full design.

Carved above one side of the figure’s head is the rooster that crowed three times after the Apostle Peter’s denial of Christ. The bag of silver given to the Apostle Judas is engraved on the other side.

Beneath the figure is the image of a dove descending into Hell. The lancer’s mark on the figure’s body is to symbolize the Son of God’s last breath.

“There aren’t a lot of these anymore because they were buried with people,” said the Greensboro artist, originally from Dublin, Ireland .

So he’s recreating them — with the same weathered look.

Some of these original crosses — pocket-sized or as high as 13 feet, and with a broad range in style — once were found across his native Ireland.

Also used as public monuments, and later grave markers, they date back to at least the eighth century.

“Some have called them 'sermons in stone,’” said Geoffrey Wainwright, a Christian theology professor at Duke Divinity School. “Such crosses are found not only in Ireland but also — perhaps in lesser surviving numbers — throughout the British Isles.”

Much later, during the 15th to 17th centuries, large stone crosses were erected in similar positions in Brittany (France), which were known as “calvaries,” Wainwright said.

These carvings usually show Mary the Mother of the Lord and John the Beloved Disciple standing on either side of the crucified Christ, he said.

In his research Nixon found one in Ireland attached to a 5,500-year-old tomb, believed to be 1,000 years older than the oldest identified pyramid in Egypt.

For Nixon, the stories they tell give an unspoken insight into his heritage and faith.

“It’s the evolution of an ancient people, moving from a pagan history to a Christian world,” Nixon said. “The Irish were not great writers. Everything was memorized. They carved elaborate scenes on stones to tell their stories.”

While reading about the history of his native country, he decided to replicate one of the crosses to see how it would come out.

“You tend to explore and connect with your own roots, especially when you’ve been away,” Nixon said.

Nixon, a partner in the Marshall Art Gallery at The Village at North Elm , is probably best known for several public sculptures, including a fully equipped firefighter holding a young boy and standing with a young girl at the fire station off North Church Street.

He molds the cross sculptures in clay and casts them in fine, high-quality cement that’s a higher grade than plaster. Then he coats them in bronze, giving them a worn look by using a sheen that darkens and produces a shadowy effect. While the mold is still workable, he uses an X-Acto knife for detailing.

Nixon sells them for $35 to $95, and he’s sending up to 20 percent of his earnings on them to a Catholic church in Nicaragua, the sister church of Greensboro’s Our Lady of Grace, which he attends.

“I’ve fallen on good luck while I’ve been here,” Nixon said.

Other variations includes a cross made up of sticklike figures connected by outstretched hands.

Also popular are the Celtic crosses, which are unique to Ireland, Scotland and Wales. These merge the cross with a circle that’s been deciphered as their symbol of God’s unending love or life itself, among other things. Some say St. Peter of the Catholic Church merged the pagan symbol of the circle with the cross to get the attention of pagans as he went about to convert them.

Nixon sees the symbols in greater context than the individual stories they tell.

“They are a lasting tribute to the time when things were very difficult for Catholics,” Nixon said of the early centuries, during which laws were imposed under British rules to discriminate against Catholics and dissenters of the Church of England.

“It was a cruel history, but it was what molded the people and their faith.”

One of his replicated crosses was originally designed to be hidden up a sleeve.

“To be a Catholic in Ireland was totally outlawed,” he said. “Anyone harboring a priest was tortured. They took everything away from them, but they could not control their faith.”

The work has made him proud, too, of the role Irish Catholics played in later reviving Christianity in Europe.

Contact Nancy McLaughlin at 373-7049 or nancy.mclaughlin@news-record.com