CHAPEL HILL - Paris Alexander perched nine feet off the ground on a portable scaffolding set up in front of the front entrance to the Chapel of the Cross Episcopal church and used a small hammer to tap firmly but gently at the solid stone above the doorway.

It seemed an incongruously delicate touch to use on such an imposing stone structure. But as he tapped, the bas-relief image in front of him took on ever more finely detailed form - slowly.

"It's a lot of work," said Alexander, a Raleigh-based sculptor commissioned by the church on East Franklin Street to turn the rough stone face of the recessed tympanum over the doorway into a work of religious art. "But I enjoy it, and I think it's coming along."

Many modern relief stone sculptures are done by drilling thousands of holes into the surface to quickly remove large amounts of material, Alexander said.

"Most of the work you see is done that way," he said. "The National Cathedral, for example. I don't do it that way, though. I use only a hammer and chisel."

It's a painstaking process. Alexander began work in July and only recently finished the piece. The church will dedicate the carving at the 11:15 a.m. service next Sunday.

"It's beautiful to behold," said the Rev. Stephen Elkins-Williams, Chapel of the Cross' rector. "It's been a laborious work of love. It's amazing to think that was just a piece of rock, and now it's a cohesive and inspiring work of art."

The church commissioned Alexander to do the carving, which was funded by a private donation. The tympanum had always seemed to want a design, Elkins-Williams said, and the recent replacement of the old wooden doors in the doorway made the time right.

"Those doors were nice, but they were kind of fortress-like," Elkins-Williams said. "Not quite the image we want to portray. So we've put in beautiful new glass doors.

"Two of our parishioners, David and Victoria Neunert, said, 'Why not have a carving done overhead?' The space did look like it was meant for that when it built way back in 1925."

David Neunert took the lead in organizing the effort. This year is Elkins-Williams' 25 anniversary as rector, and Neunert said that anniversary was an appropriate time to pursue the project.

"'The time has come,' the walrus said," Neunert said, quoting Lewis Carroll. "We put a committee together, and I started looking for a sculptor."

Alexander had done some work on a stone Celtic cross on the lawn in front of the church. He took on the project and began working with the church on the design, which is known as a Christus Pantokrator, depicting a seated Christ with one hand raised in blessing.

Such images are common over church doors throughout Europe, Elkins-Williams said.

Alexander first had to plane, chip by chip, the rough, rugged stone down to a relatively flat surface. Then he affixed a drawing of the design onto the stone and began to carve away the recessed areas to create the illustion of a three-dimensional figure.

"You have to really watch your depth," he said. "I try not to carve too deeply at first. You want to keep the shadows and textures.

"I've really enjoyed this project. My wife and I got married right over there in the Coker Arboretum, and we bring our daughter over here to play in the quad. So this place means a lot to me."

Congregants and passersby often stopped to watch as he worked.

"It's been fascinating to watch it develop," Neunert said. "I've loved watching this beautiful image unfold out of what was just rough stone. It's inspiring."

And, as it turns out, the carving will serve one happy unintended consequence.

"We're going to renovate our building and do some new construction, which means we've had to go through the town approval process for a zoning variance," Elkins-Williams said. "And part of the requirement for that is that we provide some public art. Well, this is public art. That's not why we did it, but it counts."