In His Image (video transcript)

              IN HIS IMAGE: ROUGH TRANSCRIPT P a g e | 1
IN HIS IMAGE
a video documentary (TRANSCRIPT)
"In His Image" is a short film documenting the design selection, production and installation of the St. Ignatius “Examen” statues on the Egan Chapel plaza at Fairfield University in 2011. The video follows New York artists Joan Benefiel and Jeremy Leichman (Figuration LLC) as they develop, create, and deliver this unique piece of art. This document is a typed transcript of the "In His Image" video.
St. Ignatius of Loyola “Examen” statues in front of the Egan Chapel at Fairfield University.
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IN HIS IMAGE
SPEAKER: He’s very real, you know. He’s not a plastic saint. He’s not somebody that’s up on a shelf somewhere. He’s very real and very accessible.
JIM FITZPATRICK: There was always discussion about, “When are you going to do something about St. Ignatius?”, and really have a landmark statue. “Why not see if we could find someone young emergent artist who would be willing to do this. So let’s have a competition.”
Jeremy and Joan happened to be the first pair we had in and once we saw what they submitting, we just cancelled. That was it. We knew we wanted to go right with them. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that these two young artists were the people who we wanted to work with.
MARK REED: The statue is intended to be a place of learning, a place of thought, critical thought and self-awareness and reflection and prayer. It just seemed to work and it went from there.
JIM FITZPATRICK: No one has really captured the essence of the examined.
JEREMY LEICHMAN: This piece is obviously important because it represents something important about the school and so obviously the students and the reason why you would choose to come here, for instance and the reason why you would choose to come here is possibly to have more than just the education but also that the idea of self-reflection is a very important part of campus experience, it seems like. So I think that’s part of why we hit upon that idea of examining in the first place.
REV. JEFFREY VON ARX: The examination of conscience is very close to the center, in a certain sense of Ignatian spirituality. This notion that we reflect on our experience of life in a light of God’s love , care and concern for us. And out of that reflection we get a sense of the way in which God is moving our lives forward.
JEREMY LEICHMAN: For me, one of the most powerful things about it is this opposition, this dynamic opposition, that is not directly in line. Its slightly off and it works in these diagonals and there is a sort of aggressiveness to his stance, towards himself and I really think that part works very well. The idea that this is work, that it’s not passive but it’s active, active, to really reflect on one’s, one’s role. I’ve never done anything like this piece before. So, we’ve worked in a material similar to it but I don’t think that... this is definitely new for us.
The idea of getting into the work of examinations, rolling up your sleeves... it’s hard.
UNKNOWN VOICE: That theme represents really well what we try to do here at Fairfield
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MEGAN KIMMINS: I think most of what the people I know would probably start some sort of self-reflection based on the words.
JOAN BENEFIEL: It was nice to hear from the students the word was so powerful as well as the image. I didn’t really think about them as being separate things. They came together with the idea for this.
UNKNOWN VOICE: I find Ignatius a man of openness, invitation, a man of patience, but a man who takes everyone where they are.
UNKNOWN VOICE: I would understand why you took the cowl because probably that’s what the men wore when they would be going all over the place to keep warm. But because it does right away raise the Franciscan that I can see to change that.
JEREMY LEICHMAN: Almost everything that came up was something that we hadn’t really... Well, for instance, we learned that a cowl is maybe not appropriate. That people were interested in what the meaning of the hands behind the back, like I’m standing now, is. Whether that demonstrates...
JOAN BENEFIEL: And very opposite reactions to that...
JEREMY LEICHMAN: ... openness or not.
UNKNOWN VOICE: It is all about the human being with the human and they can figure it out all on their own.
JEREMY LEICHMAN: It’s very valuable to us to hear some kind of reaction to this because we haven’t heard any reaction up until now. Other than, “We like it.” So this has been great, it’s been very informative.
STUDENT #1: He would have to wearing you know, something black because it’s a priest.
STUDENT #2: His hands would be like this, like kind of prayerful but open.
STUDENT #3: Larger than life, not too much larger but probably seven feet tall.
STUDENT #4: Probably at a desk writing one of his very important, or one of his many important letters.
STUDENT #1: He would be looking down, he would definitely be looking down because all of those statues look down and be holding something like this.
STUDENT #4: I think it would be a nice bronze finish. Maybe look a little rustic. IN HIS IMAGE: ROUGH TRANSCRIPT P a g e | 4
STUDENT #1: Looking down, it would be straight down.
PATTY (MAILROOM): He’d be probably kneeling, with his arms folded... Praying.
STUDENT #1: Maybe a St. Ignatius statue with something symbolic to help people know what Ignatius stood for.
JOAN BENEFIEL: The most important thing for me to do in my work, I feel like is to do projects that really mean something to people.
JEREMY LEICHMAN: I think in the back of my mind it was always going to be some kind of figurative art. I’ve always been interested in spirituality and religion. One of the best classes I took, actually in high school was history of religions, which was just fascinating.
JOAN BENEFIEL: I feel like it’s something I’ve always been drawn to and always wanted to do since when I was a kid.
JEREMY LEICHMAN: It just seemed right, you know.
JOAN BENEFIEL: In the studio, we’ve already started the armature and the building up of the life-size figure. It’s a really important step because the armature really goes a long way in defining the gesture and the gesture is so crucial in telling the story and bringing the narrative into this.
JEREMY LEICHMAN: Imagine you’re like looking into a mirror and you’re like, really like leaning in there and you’re like, umm... you know, checking yourself out and that was pretty much how the pose came about. As you are going to see it is made of water clay, so the clay has to be kept wet, otherwise it starts to crack and fall off the armature.
JOAN BENEFIEL: Before we knew each other at all, had even a chance to become friends, we were sculpting together and working in a classroom setting and in the studio together so it was a good way to get to know each other and we’ve been working together in the studio ever since. We figured we might as well get married if we were going to work together all the time.
JEREMY LEICHMAN: There’s a very built Ignatius. If I put too much water on it it will start to crumble (chuckles). We actually didn’t really know anything about Fairfield at all but it seemed to me that the idea of looking into oneself made sense in a scholastic setting. So, that’s where the “Examen” came in and then were like, “Okay, so how do you represent somebody looking into themselves?” Then Joan was like, “... it would be better if you had two figures looking at each other.”
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As soon as we cast the two and put them together, it becomes so clear to me that like... the kind of tension that’s in this and the sort of magnetism between them. It really made sense, makes it a much more interesting piece I think.
Part of what we do is get the brays in, these wires, and they’ll get bent into whatever the shape of the fingers is. They’re long right now so there’s room to bend them. That, the portrait, and his costume, so to speak, are stuff that we felt we could see in Italy.
We got an autobiography of St. Ignatius. Umm I’ve purchased some clothes that are free of stains, which I think is a good thing you know. We’re pretty much set. It’s just packing and we’re out.
(From Venice)
JOAN BENEFIEL: It’s basically just a Jesuit site treasure hunt. The whole trip.
JEREMY LEICHMAN: Yeah … that’s pretty much what it was. It was like, “Here’s your map... Go find the Jesuits.”
We had our first breakthrough and this is Ignazio... this is Agnazio (?) … pretty amazing.
(From Florence)
We saw like amazing artwork.
JOAN BENEFIEL: Incredible sculpture.
JEREMY LEICHMAN: I’m going to try and zoom in on his hands. Look at those folds. Nice Toes.
(From Rome)
JOAN BENEFIEL: It was an incredible trip. We knew it would be good, but it was amazing!
JEREMY LEICHMAN: This is a plaster model of St. Ignatius, it was commissioned in the 1700’s... It belongs in St. Peter’s, the original.
JOAN BENEFIEL: Where he lived and where he wrote his letters and where he looked out the window and did his stargazing and where he died is all there in these rooms.
JEREMY LEICHMAN: I think that was the most directly insightful part... I guess that’s as close as it gets, right?
UNKNOWN VOICE (TOUR GUIDE?): Yes it is. And they put it at what they think his height was. IN HIS IMAGE: ROUGH TRANSCRIPT P a g e | 6
JEREMY LEICHMAN: Uh-oh... we’re going a little bigger than that (laughter).
The figure that you guys actually had on film before we left is not anywhere present at all... Completely trashed it, because we saw a lot of art that had... we just, we looked at the gesture and the strength of that figure before and we just felt that after we came back we just saw so much that we had to incorporate a better stance, a more active gesture, something that makes him feel like he is about to move or is in the middle of moving... A receptiveness I guess is what this gesture is about, is being receptive and open and moving toward something and so it felt important that the hands be out of the picture or behind the back. But then what do you do with the gesture of this, how much pressure do you want there to seem? I mean you definitely want to indicate some pressure, some hold and then also a sense of relaxation and receptiveness in the hand itself, you know.
On the trip we did see, we saw the shoes of Ignatius, which was kind of powerful, completely inspirational and totally poetic just it wasn’t going to work sculpturally. Not as powerful as the anatomy of toes where you get to read some pressure. It’s a little more lifelike, it just really ended up looking like house slippers. We definitely picked up a lot about the costume. We saw the robes that he wears, you know. What were translating his black robe... Got an idea for the collars. The collar is essentially the halo, right? I mean that’s this thing that catches light around you, you know, around the head. So it has a practical reason for being there and a sort of metaphorical reason too. If you look at the robe itself, well I mean its not on anybody, nobody is moving under it so you have to... all that stuff you have to make up in the sculpture, you have to make up the movement.
The sort of winginess that you see in here, I think that is very much representative of God or a heavenly wind or what is keeping those sleeves up other than the grace? Because nothing physically is keeping them up, he’s not actually holding them up and you know, what is this wind that’s confronting him from both sides, you know. There’s two of these things.
The drapery, or the costume, or the folds adds a whole other level of energy and of idea and transcendence in the piece. One big difference I’m just noticing right now is we straightened the head to make that relationship a little easier. I think his head is cocked over on either side in this one.
Really the jackpot of what we saw was his death mask. That’s like...
JOAN BENEFIEL: (We’re not guessing what he looks like anymore)
JEREMY LEICHMAN: Yeah, we’re aware of how, you know, what happens basically when you do a death mask is there’s no blood pressure anymore and the plaster weighs and so some of the features feel like there a little saggy but you know, but you got a distinct nose, distinct brow, the ears the size of them and you know an idea for the proportions of the cheekbone and all that kind of thing.
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To back that up, images of him with the collars, with the robes, you know, it was great to have that. I … we didn’t know it was going to be there at all so it was... we understood immediately why we went to Italy...
JOAN BENEFIEL: It was a shock (laughter)
JEREMY LEICHMAN: ... and why we saw that.
We cast multiple heads, multiple arms, multiple sets, right. And worked those you know, as you can when they’re down from all angles. You can turn it like this, have it your hand and do all kinds of work to it, that you can’t do when its up there. Then we dip them in wax actually, to give you a little better skin-like texture I guess. I think what we learned about him was that he was constantly questioning himself, you know. Constantly questioning whether you know, it was just vainglory to try and to do all the things that he was doing. And once you read his autobiography, … that his confessor had a great deal to do with the fact that he even became what he did become because every time something important would come up, he would be like, “I don’t want to do this,” and his confessor managed to do this. All of that stuff, it talks about his attitude, you know. And so I think all of that kind of comes through.
REV. GERALD BLASZCZAK: His capacity to receive new data and his capacity to reflect on that data and to see them... and to see this data as somehow coming from God, allowed him to make changes of course. Not in a, you know, an irresponsible or flip way, but in a very courageous way.
REV. RICHARD RYSCAVAGE: He seemed to have that genuine quality of leadership that you know, gets people excited about doing things and letting them be free to do whatever, you know, they think. He thinks we ought to be in China you know, go to China. If he thinks you ought to open a school in Germany, we open a school in Germany, you know. It was that kind of free spirit I think in terms of the apostolate that it must have captured the minds and hearts of people of that time
REV. PAUL FITZGERALD: To see him as he truly was, is to see that what he was able to give the Church, what he was able to give me and give every Jesuit and everyone who does the exercises, is radically impressive.
MARK REED: There is going to be this statue of St. Ignatius on campus that, barring some catastrophe, is going to be sitting here seventy-five to a hundred years from now, at least. Maybe it will get moved at some point in the future but its not going anywhere.
JIM FITZPATRICK: And then we can add and see how you feel, “Gee, I had never thought about the way the sun shining or...the way…”
JOAN BENEFIEL: There are a lot of things that come into play. IN HIS IMAGE: ROUGH TRANSCRIPT P a g e | 8
JEREMY LEICHMAN: I have a long view towards things, so I mean, I understand the importance of having this done for a certain time, for a certain event that’s going to take place here and the need for that to happen and the need to not necessarily move it but I also know that the problems of the immediate future are kind of small in the lifetime of this sculpture, which will be a part of this campus for a long time
JIM FITZPATRICK: Then now might be a good time to look at the patinas because I think they tie in directly.
JOAN BENEFIEL: This is our light and shade, our response to that, not doing actual blackened bronze. We have a grayish, whitish patina, and then a patina that allows the bronze to really show through.
JIM FITZPATRICK: Boy, is it subtle enough, is it a dark enough shade? I don’t know.
UNKNOWN VOICE: Do you think this is too light, color-wise?
JIM FITZPATRICK: Maybe, yeah.
JEREMY LEICHMAN: I was thinking going lighter...
UNKNOWN VOICE: Cause’ I was going suggest going lighter.
JEREMY LEICHMAN: The light patina that was in question was something that I saw on my old sculpture in Paris and it’s this very silvery, gray and its actually an outdoor piece too so I now its going to work. We just thought that that was going to be perfect for the light. Dark, to us, I don’t even think it was ever a question. It was like we knew a patina that symbolized that, that would allow us to get not the black but to pull out some highlights from the bronze and to have a lot of interests in the surface, so.
JOAN BENEFIEL: It’s a beautiful patina. It adds a lot of depth and a lot of warmth and a lot of action on the surface.
JEREMY LEICHMAN: We just want to make it the very best that we can make it and to have all parties be pretty happy about that, so that we feel confident that fifty years down the line, people will still be happy with it.
(SEPTEMBER 2011)
JOAN BENEFIEL: This is the mold making area. The first thing we do is make a mold of the object and the rubber takes all of the detail and then that’s supported by a hard mother mold material, which is fiberglass or plaster or something like that and from that mold we’re able to make a wax that’s an exact replica of whatever the object is. Everywhere you see bright sherbet orange rubber, that’s a St. Ignatius mold (chuckles). IN HIS IMAGE: ROUGH TRANSCRIPT P a g e | 9
So from these molds, like I said, we are able to make an exact wax replica of the sculpture. Here are our hands in wax... his feet. Sometimes people come in with stuff they had made overseas for us to fix because the quality is so bad. Of course, that’s not always the case but it’s often the case. And why would you bother? You should make it here. I would say Brooklyn, more specifically (chuckles).
The heads are already in the investment room. So you’ll see those in the next stage. So this is the investment room. I’ll just get right to what we want to see here. Iggy! (chuckles). So when its time to pour, this is just a piece of cardboard, this will be taken off. We cut off the top and then metal pour through this funnel and circulate through these vents and gates into him. So he will be poured upside down. These have to be dipped over and over again to be strong enough to hold the amount of bronze that’s going in, right. So it starts from something like this, it starts to build up to this and you can see it just gets thicker and thicker as it gets closer and closer to being ready for pouring.
We dip the pieces in here and let them drip for a minute. The sand is next door and you throw the sand onto the wet slurry so they combine and start to form this shell. When the shells are ready, we bring them in here and this is the burnout kiln. So what happens here is we put the shells upside down so that the funnel is facing down, into this cage, roll this in underneath that kiln and bring down that container and we heat up the shells really fast. It makes them very hard and very strong and it also cleans the inside out and melts the wax out. So then you have a perfect, clean, hard shell ready to receive the molten bronze.
This is what the bronze ingots and parts that were recycling are melted in, it’s a carbide crucible. The crucible will be inside this kiln and this is what heats the metal. When it’s just the right temperature they’ll lift it out of there and they’ll bring it over to here, where it is now, set it on this stone and then they’ll come back and prepare to pour. For that to happen they’ve taken the shells and they bring them to the sand pit, put them funnel side up and bury them in the sand and the sand helps to keep them still and it also helps to keep the bronze hot, helps it flow through everything.
So they’ve got the crucible, they have two people on either side, you have a third person steering the chain and they pour the metal into the empty shells. What they’re going to do next is just take hammers and chisels and break all that shell off and you’ll your rough bronze and from there it gets sandblasted and taken to the metal chasing department where its turned into the beautiful bronze work that you’re expecting to see.
So, there you have it.
CAMERAMAN: (That’s awesome)
JOAN BENEFIEL: You’re still filming (laughter). You’re supposed to turn that off now.
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(OCTOBER 2011)
CURT KRUSHINKSY: We’re out here today doing the final layout for the Ignatius piece and today we laid out the surrounding stones that will be cutting into the existing plaza, surrounding the eight-inch high granite base.
UNKNOWN VOICE: This one falls... This is not one of the five points of reflection so it can stand alone.
CURT KRUSHINKSY: Sure... After much discussion, there was a final decision to locate the St. Ignatius piece in the center of the plaza outside the chapel.
UNKNOWN VOICE: So let it be written, so let it be done.
CURT KRUSHINKSY: Centered between the entrance to the chapel and the bell tower to the North. Its right along the main axis between those two elements, it will reinforce that axis. So when people come out of the chapel, the two pieces once again are flanking each other. You look through the pieces and onto the bell tower in the distance. It can be seen from the North as people walk from the campus center toward Bellarmine. It will be a prime location that will be viewed by many on a daily basis.
(GIORDANO BROS.)
TOM CURRAN: Today we’re here at Giordano Brothers and they’ve been contracted to do the actual sandblasting. Once the decision was made to place it in the chapel plaza, we were looking for a stone that was going to respect the gray of the pavers that were there and not look like it was too out of place. Granite became a natural material for us to look at. Once we made the decision to go with granite, we looked at local suppliers and vendors and then we started to look also for engravers, etchers, sandblasters.
RALEIGH CAMPBELL: I’ve been doing this for about thirty-five years and I didn’t like it when I started. I wouldn’t do anything else now, it just, I love it.
TOM CURRAN: Back at Connecticut Stone, the holes will be drilled in for the statue and then when its brought to campus and the statue is placed there, we’ll grout the statue and the rods into the stone.
(CT STONE)
ED MISH: We’re here at Connecticut Stone, these are the raw blocks that the sculpture base was cut out of. This is the jet mist granite as it comes in from the quarry. This type of granite that you’re using for this project comes from quarries out in Virginia. It gets hauled up here in IN HIS IMAGE: ROUGH TRANSCRIPT P a g e | 11
blocks around ten tons in size and the next step we would have to do is take these to our big saws and slab them out to the sizes you needed for your sculpture base.
Overall, you can see that the monument was made in three pieces due to the size of it, generally blocks don’t come in from the quarry that size. This here is the template for the sculptures. Basically what this provides is a layout for where the wholes need to be drilled to mount the sculpture base.
STUDENT #5: I mean the Examen is with just reflection and an opportunity to kind of look back on your day and your experiences and think about how they all fit together.
STEVE BOTTARI: You come in here, you’re very naïve, but then you see all these things and all these transformations take place and over these four years you grow tremendously a person. If you don’t look back and say, “Wow, that’s where I came from and here’s where I am.” You’re never going to realize how much you grew and you’re never going to grow even more.
STUDENT #6: In terms of art, reflection is very important. It becomes more than just the art that’s visible there before you that you’re working with. It’s about all of the ideas and how you got to that moment.
STUDENT#5: This is kind of like a foundational piece of what St. Ignatius was all about, of what the Jesuit tradition is all about. This is kind of where it stems.
STEVE BOTTARI: Its going to stand as a symbol of discovery and its going stand as a symbol for this idea of the magus, the more, basically going out and trying to achieve these big, huge things that you don’t think possible.
(OCTOBER 20, 2011)
JOAN BENEFIEL: We’re at the foundry, at Excalibur Bronze Sculpture Foundry. Today is the day that we deliver, I want to say, it’s close to a half-ton of bronze sculpture. It’s pretty exciting.
JEREMY LEICHMAN: I’m just hoping it all goes well. They’re wrapped in foam sheeting first and then some fleece blanketing and then furniture blanket and then bubble wrap.
JOAN BENEFIEL: You can never have too many straps (laughter).
It’s a nice little plaque.
JEREMY LEICHMAN: It looks like I designed the church (laughter).
JOAN BENEFIEL: Its some nice architecture you did here.
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It looks like they made it, in the two pieces they were supposed to have arrived in. (Good call on that styrofoam)
SPECTATOR: Oh, that’s exciting.
JOAN BENEFIEL: What’s great about them is that they can stand on their own without any threaded rod, without any mounting, which is pretty cool. Perfectly balanced, kind of awesome.
JEREMY LEICHMAN: It’s right on, it’s right on. They lined it up perfectly.
JIM FITZPATRICK: It’s so powerful in its simplicity and I don’t think any of us imagined just how powerful it was going to be, its overwhelming, overwhelming.
SPECTATOR: I think it’s awestruck by it.
JOAN BENEFIEL: It’s a little hard to say goodbye. Its alright. We knew this was going to happen someday.
SPECTATOR: Yeah, that was the end result, to uhh release him.
CAMERAMAN: Its like leaving you’re kid at college (laughter).
JOAN BENEFIEL: That’s totally what it feels like. I’m going to have the empty nest syndrome.
SPECTATOR: His face is so alive. I feel like he’s standing right here with us.
JOAN BENEFIEL: Well, now that its done, we should go have this baby. That’s terrible (laughter).
CAMERAMAN: I actually wasn’t expecting that.