THE WORLD
Religion: Acceptable Flemish craftsmen accompany to activity a California painter's eyes for 'Communion of Saints.'
BRUGGE, Belgium — In a arcade below the 13th aeon belfry belfry that dominates the aerial streets here, Basal Roger M. Mahony on Friday presided over the actualization of awe-inspiring tapestries advised by a California artisan and produced by Belgian craftsmen for Los Angeles' new cathedral.
Brugge is as Old World as Los Angeles is New World. A medieval gem with a citizenry of about 110,000, it has canals instead of freeways and a cityscape that is a pedestrian's dream.
But Mahony came to Belgium because Brugge and Los Angeles accept been affiliated artistically and spiritually by the "Communion of Saints" tapestries. The artwork will be the adorning centerpiece of Our Lady of the Angels Cathedral, appointed to accessible in September 2002.
Displayed for the aboriginal time Friday, the tapestries characterize a advance of 135 saints and added abstracts called to represent the animal circuitous of the better U.S. Roman Catholic archdiocese, with its 5 actor aggregation who appear Mass in 42 languages. The works will be the better affectation of tapestries with images of saints in a abbey anywhere, the basal told a acquisition that included leaders of Brugge, affectionate from L.A. and participants in the project.
"It is a day of abundant amusement for us," Mahony said. "You are actual abundant a allotment of our burghal now. Those tapestries will be a abundant point of absorption for endless visitors for abounding years to come."
And so the admirable Flemish art of carpeting authoritative becomes yet addition aspect in a basilica whose aggressive calibration aspires to accurate the adroitness and agitate of a world-class burghal entering a new millennium.
The carpeting activity teamed John Nava, an Ojai-based painter of Basque and Mexican descent, with the Dekeukelaere brothers, two sturdy, barbate artisans with roots in a bolt attitude that began back Brugge was a medieval hub of barter and culture.
Roland and Christian Dekeukelaere accept never been to L.A. They assignment alfresco Brugge in the apple of Wielsbeke. Their business, Flanders Tapestries, is based in a baby comminute that contains two advanced looms and four employees.
In contempo years, they accept confused from aberrant for appliance and bartering articles to authoritative reproductions of acceptable tapestries. Their sales adumbrative affiliated them with Nava; the artisan absitively he had begin the men and machines for an abnormal job.
"The boxy affair is . . . big companies don't appetite to horse about with you," Nava said. "It's adamantine to acquisition bodies who aloof appetite to do article on an aesthetic basis. And that's what these guys capital to do."
The brothers were addled back presented with the achievability of aberrant the 36 tapestries, anniversary of which measures 7 anxiety advanced and 20 anxiety high. They will adhere in two rows in the axis of the cathedral, advised to bench 3,000.
"We were a little bit afraid," Christian Dekeukelaere said, chuckling.
The claiming was irresistible, however. The basilica will be an all-embracing advertise of talents, such as Spanish artisan Jose Rafael Moneo and nine artists including Nava, who has formed primarily in allegorical oil painting. (His brother, Gregory Nava, directed the acclaimed 1983 blur "El Norte.")
"John is a actual nice man and a admirable artist," said Dekeukelaere. "But he didn't accept a clue about weaving."
That meant a blast advance in the tricks and limitations of breeding corrective images in fabric--and ample all-overs about how the accomplished artefact would appear out. Nava may accept been a neophyte, but he brought a quiet attraction and a well-researched eyes to the work. He didn't appetite aphotic art about torments and blood, Cain and Abel; he capital a faculty of hope, redemption, inspiration.
Moreover, he envisioned the saints as absolute people. If Joseph was a carpenter, he should accept a vigorous, workingman's air. If St. Monica was a atramentous North African, she shouldn't attending Scandinavian.
In chase of accurate multiethnic faces, Nava assassin a acclimatized casting administrator to cruise the streets of Ojai.
The artisan kept his eyes accessible as well, award models amid friends. His archetypal for St. Perpetua, a 3rd aeon Carthaginian martyr, was one of his son's classmates, Eleni Towns. A adroit and analytic beatific-looking 14-year-old, Towns came to Brugge for Friday's event. She carefully acquainted her affinity aerial overhead, smiled and offered a quiet "Looks good."
Nava corrective ceaseless for 20 months, e-mailing his assignment to the Dekeukelaeres so they could accumulate the images. There were last-minute changes and additions, such as Mother Teresa of Calcutta, the alone developed amount in the tapestries who has not yet been fabricated a saint, and Maria Venegas, the aboriginal Mexican woman to be beatified.
The accomplishment assuredly took abode in July and this month. The tapestries will be displayed actuality for about three weeks afore actuality alien to Los Angeles.
Mahony seemed admiring with the results. Afore the ceremony, he explained the airy bulletin abaft the artwork as he strode through the exhibition hall--a alpine amount in atramentous afterward the all-embracing advance of saints on their way to a new abode of adoration ascent fast in Los Angeles.
"The abstraction is we're in the middle, we're in the church, still active and on the way to the commonwealth through the Eucharist," the basal said. "But we are accompanied by the archetype and attestant and ability of the saints. They are already at the kingdom, but they accompany us, alike now, alike here."
