The Dilemma of Joseph
Bronze Bas-relief -- a curious percept
Commissioned by a devout Roman Catholic who wished to gift her pastor with a bronze of St Joseph, the design demanded that I face biases I'd long held about representations of the Patron of Carpenters as well as the Patron of Fatherhood. A father myself, I'd never liked the ubiqutous, sentimental -- pretty! -- images of the saint I considered an exceptional, strong, and compassionate man.
I explained to the lady who commissioned the work that I would not, could not, sculpt a traditional version of Joseph, which she may have been expecting. She graciously conceded that I do whatever I felt best, assuring me she'd not demand prior design approval before the work was executed and cast.
Joseph's dilemma when confronted with his betrothed's pregnancy illustrates, I feel, his true nobleness. Disturbed by doubt of a Miraculous Conception, his anxieties are eventually resolved by an angel who appears to him and assures him that Mary is truly the Mother of God. As I worked on the clay model, without a sketch, concentrating primarily on form rather than literal representation, Joseph's visage became a split ikon. I'd found the theme of the work -- Joseph's Dilemma.
When I delivered the finished sculpture, the lady who'd commissioned it shed a few silent tears. Confusing me. She softly explained that Joseph's visage on the bronze echoed a physical handicap with which one of her daughters had been born. The infant's face had appeared split, one side perfectly formed and beautiful, the other shrunken, distorted. Much surgery through childhood and youth had corrected, though not entirely, the rare birth defect. Her mother now told me that she saw in the bas-relief "the hand of God" in leading her to request this work.
I met the daughter, grown into a lovely young woman, a few days later. Though all ravages of the facial defect hadn't been obliterated, she was one of the most beautiful young people I've ever seen. Physical beauty was certainly there; but above all, her face glowed with an extraordinary radiance not of the coporal but of the soul.
Years later I learned that the priest to whom the bronze had been given delivered homilies on its commission, interpretation of the design, and significance for the donor family to parishoners at his church in Manhattan.
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