Created for SKYWAY, a three museum collaboration in the Tampa Bay area featuring many excellent regional artists. Passion was exhibited at the Tampa Museum of Art.
An elongated voluminous form of dark brown, chocolate, and light flesh tones, hangs prostrate overhead in the 30’ corridor. One end is bifurcated and descending from above as two fleshy appendages of a great sea lion reaching down as if an offering of peace to all who may pass between them. The other end, a suggestion of some alien creature’s head shrouded in translucent polymer film that is tied together with red strips of latex. The distended belly of the beast at a height of just 7 feet is cut open in a vesica piscis, allowing viewers to peer into the open cavity and glimpse the brilliant glow of the enshrouded tumescent crown and the craftwork of the interior structure. The edges of the wound delineated by more red latex detail making reference to the Mandorla and implications of crucifixion.
Passion is a reflection of the hopes and fears of humanity. A representation of our unshakable past and the constantly fleeting promise of future salvation manifested as a contradiction of violence and serenity.