Client

Overview

A poured and sculpted night sky with constellations, nebulas and of course the moon, to illustrate the Sister Moon portion of St. Francis’ Canticle of the Creatures.

“Praise be You, my lord, through Sister Moon
And the stars, in heaven you formed them
Clear and precious and beautiful.”

Measuring 9′ x 4′ x 4″, the moon appears in low relief and winks at the children coming to visit it!

Goals

I was asked to create the lobby artwork for 4 floors of the OSF Children's Hospital of Illinois. The theme of each floor is based on a portion of St. Francis’s Canticle of the Creatures that addresses different aspects of the environment. My goal was to create something beautiful that would appeal to children and adults alike, and pay homage to the spirit of St. Francis.

Process

I worked closely with Blythe Lee of Healthcare Environment Services to create work that would please the sisters of St. Francis, and also small children.

Additional Information

I poured the night sky using acrylic inks, water and gravity to mimic movement patterns that happen daily on a micro and macroscopic level, both in space and here on earth. Of the billions of galaxies out there, Sister moon smiles down at ours- a beautiful spiral galaxy called the Milky Way. NGC346, an emissions nebula, fires away in the upper right hand corner. I chose NGC346 for a couple reasons: it’s a stellar nursery, or birthplace of stars (fitting for place where kids are born everyday!), and emissions nebula are the most colorful of all, glowing like neon signs from the energy released by the stars within. Being 210 000 light-years away from Earth, most of us wont have the opportunity to view it- but most of us living in the northern hemisphere can identify Ursa Major, the Great Bear, or the Big Dipper, in the upper left and corner. A telescope on the right tries to take it all in-including the fireflies circling down closer to earth! I chose the font Herculaneum to render a portion of the canticle, because it is, for me, reminiscent of text I saw on the beautiful banners hanging on and above the altar at St. Michaels.