Artist to parishes: Have it your way

By KATE BLAIN- | Comments: 0 | Leave a comment

It's easy to turn to page 41 in a catalogue of religious art and choose a machine-made statue for your church.

Alice Manzi hopes you won't.

The Saratoga County sculptor has been shaping images of God since she was a little girl in Brooklyn, looking at the statues in her Catholic parish and carving saints out of wood in imitation.

Today, she is in the midst of a massive project commissioned by St. Joseph's Church in Millstone, New Jersey: life-sized statues of Joseph, Mary and the infant Jesus; a 14-foot Crucifix; an outdoor Holy Family group; and possibly St. Francis of Assisi.

Parish idea

"The statues go with the parish because the parish made them, in a way," she told The Evangelist.

Ms. Manzi, the owner of Manzi Studios in Porter Corners and an adjunct faculty member at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, competed with 26 other sculptors of religious art to win the commission from St. Joseph's two years ago.

The parish wanted new statues to go with a new church building, statues sculpted by a "real artist" to whom they could explain what they would like to see. The entire project would cost around $3 million. The architecture of the building was under the direction of Rev. Richard Vosko, an award-winning designer and priest of the Albany Diocese (see separate story on pages 16-17).

Original art

"Father Vosko was very much for the whole idea that one of the things Vatican II brought up was [that] if a church is acquiring artwork, it not be out-of-a-catalogue, mass-produced stuff," Ms. Manzi said. "It's a lot easier to say, `We want what's on page 41,' because these things take months."

Creating the statues has involved much more than just shaping clay. First, Ms. Manzi spoke to a parish committee about their ideas for each statue, from size to the expression on its face.

Ms. Manzi then did four months of research, reading all she could about the Blessed Mother and St. Joseph so she could depict them as real people. For the statue of Mary alone, she sculpted three different 12-inch-tall models from which parishioners chose the features they liked best: the folds on the Blessed Mother's robe, the position of her hands and the way she held Jesus as if she was presenting Him to passersby.

Feet of clay

The sculptor also contributed her own ideas, finding it important to start from the bottom up.

"Feet became very important," she explained. Since Joseph was a human being placed in the role of Jesus' foster father, "I wanted him standing with his right foot on the floor, because he's here with all of us. But his left foot is up on a stone, giving the indication that he's really doing work that's out of the realm of normal humans."

Statues of the Blessed Mother usually don't show her feet at all, she continued, but portray her as "a saintly, off-the-ground person." In Ms. Manzi's still-unfinished version, part of one foot peeks out from under Mary's robe, uniting the two sculptures, yet still symbolizing that Mary is on a higher level than Joseph.

Inspiration

When she began work on the life-sized crucifix, the sculptor found her task even more difficult. Christ has been so often portrayed on the cross in art that it was difficult to create something new; she also needed to do even more research to show the Crucifixion accurately.

This was when one of Ms. Manzi's "magical things" happened. The artist claims that throughout the project, small miracles have occurred that helped her work along, from finding a needed book to meeting someone unexpected. In this case, the father of one of her Skidmore students turned out to be a renowned authority on the scientific facts about crucifixion. He gave her such details as the probable location and angle of the nails in Christ's hands.

Next, Ms. Manzi had to decide at what time during His agony to portray Christ. She settled on the moment before His death, when He looked heavenward and said to His Father, "It is finished." One hand is clenched in a fist; the other is reaching upward toward the Father as He speaks the words.

Finished products

In June, the sculptor's first two statues -- St. Joseph and the Crucifix -- were completed and installed in their new home. Ms. Manzi remembered two emotional moments: when the statues were fired in Skidmore's immense kiln, and when they were unveiled at St. Joseph's Church in front of more than 1,000 people.

She asked Rev. Gary Mercure, a friend and associate pastor of Sacred Heart parish in Troy, to bless the statues and those helping to move them before the works were placed in the kiln. "They came out perfect!" she exulted.

At St. Joseph's, she said, "it was really overwhelming. When the bishop was blessing the statues, I couldn't look. It was very emotional; an awful lot of people were crying that day."

Since then, an unidentified man comes to the church every day to simply sit and gaze at the Crucifix, then quietly leaves. "I've never had any experience like this," Ms. Manzi said.

Madonna and child

Lately, the sculptor is working on her statue of Mary holding the infant Jesus. The finished bottom half of the massive statue stands in a paint-stained studio at Skidmore, its simple robes of red clay giving little hint to what lies ahead.

Depicting Jesus as an infant will be one of her most daunting tasks, she said, noting: "This is the Lord! I've got pictures of babies in every possible position and expression; my studio is covered with them."

As she works, she often entertains visitors. Since her relatives found out about her project, she is frequently surprised by family members "that I haven't seen in 20 years" who drive up from Brooklyn to see her work. Skidmore students have also offered suggestions, the men even pointing to their own beards as models for St. Joseph's.

Family finale

Ms. Manzi hopes to finish the Mary-and-Jesus statue this fall and deliver it before Thanksgiving. After that, she estimates that it will take a year to complete the outdoor family group: Mary, Joseph, and Jesus at the age of 10. And since Jesus' face in the Crucifixion is tilted up, making it hard for the congregation to see, the sculptor plans to make a bronze copy of His head for display as her gift to the church.

Remembering that she spent 20 days working on St. Joseph's face alone, she figures that the statues will be finished whenever they're finished.

"This has been like a dream; it really has," she said of the past two years. "The whole thing is really sort of blessed."

No copies, please

The sculptor would like to see her work inspire other parishes to commission statues, rather than mail-ordering them.

"This makes it so much more alive!" she said. "The people [at St. Joseph's] have been really involved with it. They can say, `I had the idea about the child tugging at Mary's veil.' They can tell their grandchildren they knew the artist, guided the artist. You can have something everyone else has -- or you can have whatever you want."

(Manzi Studios can be reached at 893-2267.)

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