Artika Gallery 4

MURAL PROJECT

This is a 2' x 6' preliminary canvas I did prior to the actual 10' x 45' mural for the sequicentennial (that means 150th) celebration at St. Ignatius High School. The mural project took a full year to complete and was dedicated at the Day on the Boulevard celebration on June 4th, 2005 in San Francisco.

My heartfelt thanks to Dan and Robin McCarthy and Jeff and Donna Rodriguez for their unwavering support in the creating of this mural. I am especially indebted to them for the magis that they they were so willing to contribute without hesitation.

There was so much glare from the overheads that I only
used a high gloss anti graffiti coating on the bottom
half of both walls. I applied 3 coats of satin polymer
finish to the sky, which cut the glare down considerably.

As the mural progressed my compassion got the better of me. When comparing to the original six foot painting, you can see that Marie Bucheur got much younger and her son, Father James Bouchard S.J., grew some hair. In real life Marie was raised Comanche from age seven, after her French parents were burned at the stake on the Kansas prairie. At fifteen she was a stunning beauty when she married Kistalwa, chief of the Kansas Lenni-Lenape tribe. The only thing she remembered from her life as a white were the religious stories about the Great Father that her mother had told to her as a child. These she passed down to James, who would then pass them on tho the other children of the tribe. In time he followed that motherly inspiration and adopted the white man's medicine. He was known as Father James Bouchard, the Eloquent Indian who was sent to Saint Ignatius High School and evangelized the west coast from Canada to Mexico in the late 1800's with a fury (see The Eloquent Indian by McGloin).

When the students first discovered that there was a message in the mural, the hunt was on. My question to them is "what is Marie Becheur pointing at?" The final destination can be found with a bit of navigation. There are many mysteries along the way. In the five upper blocks of the mural can be found an even deeper riddle that may direct you to a very specific time and place. To date, it remains a mystery (except to me, of course).

AN AFTERTHOUGHT

The pillar designs were not part of the original plan, but what better way to illustrate the theme of Spiritus Magis. St. Ignatius Loyola's passion for the spirit of the greater good (spiritus magis) has benefitted San Francisco through his Society for 150 years. I felt there were far too many personal stories at S.I. to illustrate on one mural and instead chose to capture the spirit behind them (for the greater good, of course).