DIVINE TRANSFUSION
I was raised Catholic. Both parents were observant, and my maternal Grandmother actually worked as a cook/housekeeper for the priests. She was REALLY committed. My entire family was baptized in, made our First Communions in, were married, buried in & attended Mass each Sunday in the same church, St. Joseph’s Catholic Church of Fremont, Ohio. When I was a teenager, Vatican II brought sweeping changes to Catholicism (no more Latin mass, contemporary music etc.) and they remodelled the interior to make it more contemporary. But I remember the old church. The 3 altars – the big main one in the center, one for Mary on the left side, and one for Joseph on the right. The stained glass windows and Gothic arches I found to be breathtakingly beautiful, and Jesus still hung on a life-size cross on a pillar up front. After Vatican II they took him down and put up some contemporary thing showing the resurrected Christ instead. My grandmother was a traditionalist however, and held onto all of her statues. Mary always stood in the window on wash-day to stave off the rain so clothes could dry on the clothesline. Grandma would enlist me to help her gather them up annually and clean them. The Sacred Heart of Jesus image was always compelling yet mysterious to me. What did it mean? I found an old photo of the original church interior from the 60’s online, and used it to collage and create this backdrop. I haven’t attended Catholic church in 40 years, yet when challenged to find some visual imagery to symbolize the process of renewal, refreshing, or being re-energized & restored by recognizing that we are ALREADY covered by the blood of Jesus, I turned to the old Catholic images with a twist. A blood transfusion from the foot of the cross directly into the heart. A re-charge of the Holy Spirit straight from the hand of Jesus. The vials on the bottom representing communion – one with blood, the other with crackers labeled “Drink Me” and “Eat Me” — (borrowed from Alice in Wonderland). It’s all good.
