Monthly Statement:
March 2006

OBJECT # 25
DATE SENT: March 31, 2006
SENT TO: Winifred McNeill
SENT VIA: US Postal Service

DESCRIPTION OF OBJECT(S): Five (5) plastic, glow in the dark, crucified Jesus figures. Each figure is a different size.

(Figure 1): 1 1/8” length (head to feet), 1 1/8 extended arm span. Yellow, cream colored. Extreme ends of feet have been broken off. Features are distinguishable with magnifying glass; spinal column is deeply crevassed; dirt is embedded in face and on arms, legs are fused together.

(Figure 2): 2 5/8” length (head to feet), 2 1/8” extended arm span. Glow-in-the-dark, light green color. Feet are positioned on platform, which has a small hole in it. Both of Jesus’ hands meld into approximated shapes, each with a small hole as well. The left hand of Jesus is dirty. Facial and body features are well defined, articulation of eyes, mouth, hair, etc is clear, as are ribs and cloth covering groin. Legs are fused at knees and calves. The back of the figure is hollow, i.e., Jesus figure is a façade.

(Figure 3): 3” length (head to feet), 2” extended arm span (Jesus’ left arm is broken off just below shoulder). Yellow, cream colored. Feet are positioned on small platform and the head of a spike is visible on top of Jesus’ feet and extends through to back of platform. Face and body detailing are not extensive, though facial features, navel, and nipples are visible. Left nipple is discolored with dirt. Plastic hair has excessive extrusions and a slit is visible under Jesus’ beard. Jesus’ back has an elongated oval cutout. Dirt visible on left knee. Calves to bottom of feet are fused together.

(Figure 4): 4 1/8” length (head to feet), 2 3/4” extended arm span (Jesus’ left hand is broken off at wrist). Glow-in-the-dark, light green color. Small hole in right hand, in the meaty part of the palm. Feet are resting on a triangular shaped platform, which has a small hole in it. Left inner arm below elbow, left breast area, right breast area extending to stomach and continuing to just below waist are all dis-colored. It is a dark stain that may be a burn mark. Features are well articulated and textured, depicting ribs, muscles, and facial hair. Jesus’ back is carved out, but the rest of the body is solid, save platform footrest.

(Figure 5): 5” length (head to feet – including footrest platform). 3 3/4” extended arm span. Fingers on Jesus’ left hand are folded, so two fingers point outward. Fingers on right hand are fully extended. Two small holes are in the palm of each hand. Glow-in-the-dark, light green color. Details of facial features, muscles, bones, ribs, are clearly distinguishable. Dirt stains hands, left leg, right knee, cloth, and back of head. Feet are fused together. Back has a deep groove running from shoulders to top of legs.

ORIGIN AND APPROXIMATE DATE OF POSSESSION OF OBJECT: Purchased by me at a gift shop in Vatican City, just outside the piazza of St. Peter’s Cathedral in the summer of 1992, during my summer teaching job in Rome at John Cabot University.

MOST RECENT LOCATION OF OBJECT:
In a small cardboard box (4.5x5x9) on third shelf from top of a green shelving unit in the north east corner of my studio. Box had previously contained candles that were purchased for a photographic project.

RELATION OF OBJECT TO RECIPIENT: Winifred lived in Rome for many years before I first met her while she was working at the Jersey City Museum in the education department. She also taught a life drawing class there on Saturday mornings, in which I had enrolled. I was not adept at drawing and despite the fact that the class was supposed to be an opportunity to sketch with limited instruction, Winifred tried her best to help me. We later shared a studio space and then became colleagues when she was hired as the Art Education Coordinator and Professor at Jersey City State College, where we still work together. But one of the more important aspects of our relationship to me over the years has been our shared experience of being raised Catholic and a strong connection to Rome, where I also spent a fair amount of time through the 1990’s when I was teaching there during the summer. We lapse into Italian occasionally as we are talking and share a love of the place. And we often lament our interaction with Catholicism as children, and recoil at the incredible dogma and perversion of many of its concepts. These aspects of the religion have informed Winifred’s art as it has mine, and it probably has caused both of us (as it has many) an inordinate amount of anxiety, guilt, and trauma. The trade off has been – for me at least – a strong desire to rebel against all structure and a deep suspicion of all organizations, particularly those that portray themselves as spiritual. The fact that Winifred and I have chosen at times to make art about this subject is not unique, of course, but it is of a tradition that goes back to picture making’s initial utterances. While not necessarily inspirational, both our artwork reacts to the ‘mystery of faith’, though surely it would not be chosen to be part of any church or cathedral I could think of. The mystery I think of is more along the lines of how anyone could give their life over to such absurdity. However, churches, cathedrals, and all manner of religious paraphernalia have always been places and things I’ve gravitated toward. I bought these figures for their sarcastic value, enjoying the glow-in-the-dark material, the figure, floating, and removed from the cross, and the tiny holes where one could nail Jesus up. I imagined one of them on my own wall, especially as a child, and know it would be discomforting to watch the green glow as I tossed in my bed, an eight year old unable to sleep. I thought I might use them for one of my own art projects, but they have languished in the cardboard box, unused, un-prayed to, gathering dust. When I bought them, I also thought of Winifred, and somehow felt she might put them to good use in her own work, or as models for a drawing perhaps. I remember being in the store and feeling somewhat sacrilegious, since my intentions for using the figures were surely a venial sin, at least. Recently I saw some of Winifred’s pieces that are incorporating Catechism answers and human figures, and thought now is the time for these to go to her, she can use them. They may, similarly, sit in her studio, gathering the dust of millennia, like so many other crucified pieces of wood and metal and plastic. Or perhaps it will remind her of Rome, the city that is both a reality and a fantasy, a working place of real people that is noisy and crowded, contrasted with the idyllic notion of novels and paintings and films. The figures will, I hope, remind her of the full life she lived in Rome and the curious relationship the city and the country of Italy have with Catholicism and the questionable affect it has had on those places - and her and me and the rest of the world - for the last two millennia.

RESPONSE OF RECIPIENT:

DATE OF RESPONSE:

Process: My plan is to de-accumulate objects I now own during the course of the exhibition year. I will photograph the selected object then send the object with a letter to a person who has some relationship to the object or whom I think might be interested in the object. The letter will discuss the project and tell the receiver they can keep the object, destroy it, give it away, recycle it or anything else they choose. I will ask them to document it in the place they now have it and send their image and/or written description back to me of what they did with it and where it is. I plan on de-accumulating an average of one object per week. The new images/descriptions will be placed in a plastic folder and exhibited along with a photograph of the object as it was in my possession.