Last Supper

As part of the construction of Communion Hall, we have a permanent art installation. The installation, a 24 by 5 foot mural, is comprised of 480 cement tiles and is a stylized version of Leonardo Da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” featuring 12 children from the parish sharing Communion with Jesus. Monsignor Larry Pichard had the inspiration for this art project. We contacted Freda Vaughn who was able to put us in contact with artists that could make this a reality.

Bill Rogers, president of pixelthink was the project manager. Bill utilized the skills of Marcellus Amatangelo to take pictures of children at St. Pius X in various poses. Then Marcellus electronically manipulated the images to create a more 'historic' look. The images were then arranged so that it looks like the kids posed altogether. They actually did not. In fact they posed individually and Marcellus determined which children to use in which position and in which pose. The additional features such as the background, chalice, bread, pitchers, table, etc were all digitally added to the scene. Marcellus was unable to complete the project and Bill stepped up to complete the final artwork. The chalice used in this picture is the chalice used at our Sunday Masses. The artwork was then printed on the cement tiles using a process called thermal dye sublimation. Orlando Artigliere installed the tiles in the opening. Everything worked to perfection.

The image of Jesus is a gentleman named Mark Hoffman. Mark is a friend of one of the Communion Hall architects Lance Raney. A funny aside is that we received a serious inquiry as to why we didn't use an image of the 'real' Jesus. To the best of our knowledge, there are no photographs of the real Jesus.

The children used in the image are: Jason Dixon, Sydney Goudie, Kathryn Guerrero, Colton Paradowski, Alexandrea Behne, Brandtley Adams, Amelia Jaska, Gabrielle Perez, Thomas Hess, Diana Figueroa, Andrew Nguyen, Melissa Jefferson. Thanks also to Freda Vaughn for helping us to put the artists together to make this happen.

Tiles on the factory floor.	And on our floor.
Full view on the floor.	On the floor in front of the opening. The image on the wall is a reduced print of what the artists created.
After day one, May 3.	After day two, May 4. We have to stop here because 5 tiles are being redone.
The finished product.	Partial financing provided by the Ladies Society. Note the font used is DaVinci script based on the artist's actual handwriting.

And the original picture by Leonardo DaVinci

And just for fun. We had a little flack about the children picked for the picture so we thought this would be a good compromise. Not.