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Magrath
Sculpture |
Assumption of the Virgin
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The Assumption of the Virgin is a work designed for Assumption Village in St John's Oregon, and was commissioned for this project by Rev Michael Maslowsky in the summer of 2001 and installed the following spring. This piece grew out of my desire to depict a very different sort of Virgin and Assumption than that of historical tradition, a scene usually of deathbed sorrow and angels in ascension with a pious Virgin wafting heavenward in a cloud. Initially I had intended the portrait to assume a spiraling upward motion, depicting a Mary young again and vigorous in spiritual rebirth, arms outstretched to embrace gods love, dropping the weight her age as the weariness and sorrow of her life. Then September 11th happened. In the aftermath of that tragedy it seemed impossible to depict something so light and Pollyannaish. Mary settled into her years, her shoulder dropped, her hips and breasts sagged, her face, though still handsome, was lined with the years of hard life in the desert. She was full of the weight of the world and the sorrow of her life, and yet wise beyond all men and charged with faith. |
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She steps forward from one world
to the next, one foot on the edge of a precipice, proudly and without a hint
of doubt, absolutely confident in gods grace that will keep her from falling
into oblivion. To me she becomes the embodiment of absolute, rock solid faith
in the face of a hard life and times that call faith into deepest question.
As for the base at the entrance of the Village, Traditional imagery has the Virgin
standing atop a crescent moon. The symbolism goes back millennia, linking
Mary with the earliest stirrings of religious feeling in humanity and the
first known forms of the divine feminine. It was my intent to link this moon
symbol with a more modern sense of our nearest planetary partner, thus
bringing the symbolism into a more contemporary form
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Assumption Bozetto,
Ltd Ed Bronze 20 “