No. 410: "Ascending"

"Ashlyn's Ascending" by Tom Wills, April-May 2018 (from a vision by Renee DeVengencie)

“Ascending” is not the full name of this piece, No. 410, May 2018. It is “Ashlyn’s Ascending.”

The clouds are balancing and enveloping the drawing.

The story behind it will not be fully told by me, because it is tragic.
Suffice it to say that this piece fulfills a grandmother’s vision of seeing her granddaughter going to heaven.

Following "gramma"'s butterfly.

It’s a beautiful vision and, I am now satisfied, a beautiful drawing.
But it took a lot of coordination to get here.

This is where it all began.  Rough work sketch, many interview notes.

In fact, this is the only piece for which I’ve made a house call.
Grandma, who is my age and a childhood friend, and I sketched out the rough idea and built upon that through successive sharing of the work in progress.

On the wall at her home.

She had seen a previous drawing of Jesus that I had done, and she was adamant that I was the artist to carry out her vision.
The other drawing, No. 300, "Crown of Thorns" from July 2015, is here:
http://tomwillsproductions.blogspot.com/2015/07/no-300-crown-of-thorns.html

Ribbon, robe, sandals, stairs.

She clinched the deal when she bought the massive frame that she'd had in mind all along for this drawing.

Working in the morning, working at night.

I was presented with pictures of Ashlyn, a butterfly, dove, and those massive stairs — each carrying a deeply personal meaning — and asked to weave them together. These symbols represent family, history, faith and hope.

I signed this piece in the bottom right cloud. Can you see it?

The goal was a dark drawing, but not creepy, punctuated with a lot of light.  She also wanted a pretty Jesus, looking up.

A lot of lead.

This was a tearful process, which made it difficult for both of us.
What I can tell you about is how the drawing came together in various stages, in late April and early May.

Working on the black.

The illustration is unique in that it has two central elements: The stairway and the Christ.

The main elements.

The staircase was the first element to be placed upon the white poster board. It had to be carefully drawn and sized to that I could fit Ashlyn at the base, beginning her ascent. We used a photo of the little girl strolling in sandals across the grass.  I replaced her striped sun dress with a white robe, but kept the sandals. We also put her hair down and added a ribbon, like Grandma used to do. 

The drawing is completed except for the black background.

Jesus is based upon my other Jesus drawing, and the Jesus of Nazareth miniseries from 1977. But she sent me photos of a different set of thorns, which were incorporated into the crown. Also, I tried to make his wounds and bruises less obvious, because again the goal was to be uplifting, not terrifying.

Bringing him into the light.

But there’s no arguing that darkness. In fact, I joked that “Jesus gave me arthritis.” It took three passes across the paper with three grades of pencil lead to create that pitch blackness, and to hide the pencil marks.

Tying together the crown of thorns and the hair.

In fact, after two days of drawing and rubbing over that blackness, my hands would not wash clean. The graphite had gotten under my skin.

This was before we decided how the crown of thorns would look.

This is the largest piece I have done, to date.

Immense, and weighing a ton.

The framing proved very difficult because of its size. It would not fit onto the art table so the work had to be done on the well-vacuumed floor. I didn’t dare remove that huge pane of glass to clean it, so that process was a careful one.  I stashed the frame behind a bunch of pillows to keep my dogs from crashing through it.

Test fitting, prior to actual placement of piece and frame repair.

Also, the drawing was just a little too small for the mat, so I had to cut out black poster board and securely center it between the picture and the mat to fill the space. I smashed down the picture, black poster board and mat with a chunk of cardboard to keep it flat, and it worked.

Finished piece.

It was quite an expensive frame but it was old and used, so it needed some repair and touch-ups.  I was able to use putty and acrylic paints to fill in and cover up some dings and scratches.
We will need to use wall anchors to hang it.

Stairs, child and dove came first.

I thought about religion, faith, Jesus, God and the mystery of it all as the lead got into my pores. I'm not a big church-goer but I am surrounded by people who have very parochial views of organized religion. I'm not going to argue it, other than to say I've read the book -- years ago -- and it both enlightened and scared me enough to accept that there is something.

On the wall!

Grandma, though, is deeply religious and knew from the beginning where she would hang this piece. It’s central to the entrance to her home, and there are other symbols of faith throughout. People find and take comfort where they can in times of great sadness. If my work can help in that process, I am grateful.
 

Finishing touches on the final day of drawing, a Sunday.

I came across this on the day I finished the drawing: "Faith is not about everything turning out OK. Faith is about being OK no matter how things turn out."

Do I look relieved that the wall anchors worked well?