Thursday 30 March 2023

A true Catholic artist

                           

                                     The artist with the Padre Pio sculpture
One of the most popular, realistic and devout artists is Timothy Schmalz, a 54 year old sculptor from Ontario, Canada. I’ve been following his career for over 2 decades, and recently he came up with two fascinating projects. The first one shows Padre Pio of Pietrelcina encircled with Jesus’ mother, Mary, sculpted in a ribbon. “It's the ribbon for breast cancer, and many people around the world have that ribbon as a symbol of all cancer,” Schmalz said, adding that people frequently pray to Padre Pio when they have a family member suffering from cancer. But the ribbon doubles as something else: a fish — an ancient symbol of Christianity — facing upward toward the sky. Inside the outline of the ribbon (or fish), Mary is depicted looking down on Padre Pio in a way that Schmalz likens to a pietà. Padre Pio’s gloved hands reach out, inviting passersby to touch them.

Timothy Schmalz with one of the stations in Orlando, FL

His second project, once finished, will be a life-size set of the 14 Stations of the Cross — scenes depicting Christ’s journey from being condemned to death to his burial — placed right next to Disney World. The faithful will be able to encounter the 12-foot-tall, 11-feet-wide sculptures at the Basilica of Our Lady, Queen of the Universe, in Orlando, Florida. His new Stations of the Cross, he hopes, will serve as a tool for evangelization and conversion for the roughly 50 million people who visit Disney each year. “I hope to rival Universal Studios, Walt Disney and every other feature in Orlando by creating what has never been done before, and that is one of the biggest, most complex Stations of the Cross,” Schmalz said.

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