The Immaculate Conception. 2007. Oil on canvas. 60” x 60.”
ICONS
What makes an icon? Why are they powerful? Which triggers, ancient and/or modern, enable this? How does one reinvent an icon?
MARYS
Father Fabian Grifone, O.F.M., may his memory forever be blessed, was the pastor at Most Precious Blood parish in Little Italy from 1993 till 2014. In 2005, he commissioned me to create two panels for their ceiling: “The Immaculate Conception” and “The Assumption of Mary.” Father Fabian retired in 2014 and the church lacked the funds to install the paintings. If you ever had the pleasure of meeting him, you’d agree, angels walk among us.
LIBERTY INSTALLATION
On September 11th, 2001, I lived on the 5th and top floor of 83 Warren Street three blocks North of the Towers. I was home and had just gotten up. The first plane came directly over my apartment, literally sounding like a missile. I drew the shade, looked up, saw the gash in the building, then said aloud: “A terrorist just flew their charter plane into the Tower.”
This painting (and studies) represent my reaction to that event; and the conviction that “love conquers all.”
The painting’s a prop for a proposal I plan to make to the National Parks Service, who manages the Statue of Liberty. Idea: Lady Liberty wearing a hajib, to demonstrate that the U.S. welcomes and promotes freedom for all people—regardless of race, ethnicity, religious beliefs or combined-household income. Then film my presentation and its rejection. Use that for an art show.
ARIEL
Our white, Ford Falcon had just broken down. My friends and I stood, under a dark starry night, behind the car in the emergency lane in the middle of nowhere. Texas? I couldn’t tell. We were arguing about what to do when I noticed dark presences hovering directly behind the three of them. The second I noticed, the presences, as if they were casting a spell, all said simultaneously: “the name we do not say” (so as not to give him power); and came around us.
They held out pictures and hieroglyphs in books and writings on paper. We were transfixed, as they drew us off the road into a nearby cluster of scrub oaks. Suddenly, I regained my composure and started to shout: Don’t listen to them! Don’t listen to them! Don’t listen to them!
Next thing I knew I stood behind a giant boulder on the side of a vegetation-less valley, looking down on a dirt road. Ranks and ranks of people were marching towards what appeared to be a very dark enemy fortress. I saw my friends, and started. The light from my eyes alerted one of the dark angels, who suddenly flew at me, shrieking from above. I stood up, my arms spread out, palms pointing at him, and shouted: Ariel! The word bounced off the rocky walls, echoed through the blasted-out valley and pushed back the angel. After an in-suck of air, he came at me again, now more ferociously than before. I met his energy and this time, shouted with all my might: ARIEL!
I woke up, quivering, and cold. My wife grabbed my arm, Are you all right? Now awake, I realized I had shouted in real life as well as in the dream. Yes, I said, breathing heavily. Our friends, who were visiting from London, stirred in their beds, then went back to sleep.
“Ariel, meaning “lion of G-d,” is one of the seven princes who rules the waters and is “Earth’s great Lord.*” Jewish mystics used Ariel as a poetic name for Jerusalem.” *The Hierarchy of the Blessed Angels; From “A Dictionary of Angels, including the fallen angels” by Gustave Davidson.
