For my final project, I was originally going to use Strand Bookstore as my inspiration, but mid-conception I changed it entirely and reimagined it based on St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
I found the gothic and intricate architecture beautiful and captivating to look at, and as a famous and sometimes controversial church, I wanted to explore some conceptual aspects as well that have to do with divinity and power. Divine, mythological, and biblical imagery and allusion is something I enjoy incorporating into my art, film, and writing, so it felt like a perfect fit.
I was very inspired by William-Adolphe Bougereau’s paintings lately as well, and I knew I wanted to incorporate one of them into my collage. In my original idea, for strand, I wanted to incorporate something similar, taking a painted group of people and replacing their heads with those of classic figures in a mass of stories, showing the overwhelming feeling of being flooded with choices when there. For the church, I wanted to focus on the overwhelming feeling of humanity you get when you walk in, despite everything being so religious and pristine– the feeling of connection was something that transcended mere religion, and that’s what I wanted to illustrate. Instead of masses of human bodies as a base, I focused on groups of divine beings whose heads I could similarly replace with universal figures. I went through several of his paintings featuring masses of bodies before settling on the one I chose, Mary.
I liked the symmetricality of this painting, as from the moment I saw it I had the idea that it could be arranged perfectly to fit with the altarpiece of the church, the windows behind framing her head like a halo. From that point, I had a clear image in my head and made a crude sketch before arranging the piece.
All I needed was a place to put my idea down so I didn’t forget anything, and that sufficed. From there, I picked out a clear, high-res image of the altarpiece as the base of my collage.
I wanted the bottom to fade out into white so I could draw the altarpiece at the bottom, the gradient representing the rise and fall of one’s own feeling in the church. I then superimposed the painting over and added it to the gradient, using my digital background to make an extremely clean blend.
I also decided I wanted to do some digital manipulation of the piece before I got to collaging, and digitally painted over Mary’s face and removed the baby Jesus’s head, restoring the image underneath. I also played with the colors of both images to create a palette that was both cohesive and bright enough to overwhelm.
Initially, I wanted to digitally collage different heads in pieces over each of the angels, but when I attempted to do this it didn’t work nearly as well as I had hoped with all of the colors already in the piece. Instead, I decided to change my idea slightly and draw blind contour drawings over the faces of the angels with the same pen I’d use to draw the altar, both for a cohesive look and to convey an idea that arose while I was making the piece: “Kill your Gods.” This concept is not nearly as anti-religious as it sounds; it’s merely the idea of looking at your idols, human or otherwise, for what they are, and realizing that they aren’t true gods, just people that you can learn from and emulate. I felt this idea fit my project perfectly and ended up being the title, and conveying it visually ended up being the central goal of this piece, which I feel I succeeded with. I planned to draw over the divine angels with all different, but all human faces to show this. I printed the piece, the largest physical work I’d ever made, and drew the altar and faces in with black ink. To drive the point of putting yourself on the same level of those you idolize, and the relationship between who we consider divine and ourselves, I finished the piece by replacing Mary’s already-blurred face with a mirror, so when the viewer looks at the piece, it is distinctly them in this introspective place, and can truly be anyone.
The Final Piece.
Detail of the pen work.
