The Record Online

Spring/Summer 2001

Creativity Poured Out

Translucent milk spills out of a golden bowl and flows down the face of the hewn marble pillar. This silent act of pouring out becomes the source of new beauty, as the undulating waves of liquid fan out into a shape that could be perceived as that of a woman wearing a flowing white garment. To those willing to see her, it is the Virgin Mary. Symbolically, the image of Mary is just as clear: mother’s milk being poured out over the solid rock.

Sculptor Steve Heilmer knows how it feels to be poured out. The Greenville College art professor spent the past four years of his life laboring to create this contemporary vision of Mary out of a 2,300-lb. chunk of Carrara marble imported from Italy. The golden bowl at the top, the milk spilling out, and the pillar itself are all part of the same continuous piece of marble.

Now at the end of his creative ordeal, Heilmer is mostly pleased with the result and deservedly proud of the accomplishment. But more than anything else, he is relieved to have the thing finished. Finito. Crate it up and ship it out.

The statue’s new and permanent home is 2,000 miles from Greenville, in Seattle, Washington. Four years ago Seattle University, sister school to St. Louis University, decided to build its first freestanding chapel. Prior to that time, services were held in a campus auditorium. The university chose renowned architect Steven Holl to design the building. The contemporary St. Ignatius Chapel has since become the second most visited place of architectural interest in Seattle.

At the beginning of the project, a committee began searching for the right artist to carve the image of Mary customary in a Catholic chapel or church. After reviewing dozens of proposals, the committee chose Heilmer, who has focused on religious works for the last 13 years.

The committee made the decision largely based on the recommendation of Father Dempsey at St. Louis University, where one of Heilmer’s earlier works is part of the Museum of Contem- porary Religious Art’s permanent collection. That earlier piece, called “Nativity Stone: Mother’s Milk,” is the forerunner of Heilmer’s newest creation.

Originally the university asked Heilmer to create a replica of the Black Madonna. According to tradition, it was before this statue in France that Sir Ignatius was converted, throw-ing down his weapons and going on to found the Jesuit order and eventually gain his sainthood.

After spending three days in Seattle looking at the new contemporary building and studying the student body, Heilmer felt that a less traditional approach would be more appropriate. He proposed a carving of a bowl of milk spilling over the side of a stone flowing down into the shape of Mary. The milk symbolizes Mary as it represents motherhood. For those not satisfied with pure symbolism, the milk flows down over the rock in a shape that suggests the outline of Mary.

Heilmer sent a small clay model of the design to Seattle for review. After showing it to students and others at the university, the committee accepted his new design.

Fast forward to February 2001. In the Kelsey Building sculpture studio at Greenville College, the statue stood for its first viewing by the public, as mostly faculty and students straggled in over a period of several weeks to contemplate the completed work. Religion professor Rick McPeak, who has developed a close association with the Art Department in the past few years, lauded the accomplishment as “spectacular” (see story "Listening to the Stone").

Heilmer may be too close to the piece at this point to be objective about the outcome. During the local viewing in Greenville back in February, he admitted, “I keep seeing things I want to change. I just need to ship it.”

The statue was crated up and shipped from Greenville later that month and arrived at the warehouse in Seattle just minutes before the earthquake on February 28. Fortunately it did not sustain any damage. The statue was installed in St. Ignatius Chapel on the Monday after Easter. A dedication service was held April 26 for the statue, which has been named “Gratia Plena: Mother’s Milk.” Gratia Plena in Latin means “Plentiful Grace.”

The two major newspapers in Seattle, the Times and the Post-Intelligencer, have both done feature stories on the statue. Those articles can be viewed online by going to their websites at www.seattletimes.com and www.seattlep-i.com and doing a search for the name “Heilmer.”

It took two tries and two years for Heilmer to get a stone “of the quality Michelangelo searched for,” he says. He finally found the stone he was looking for in this piece of marble, which was shipped from Carrara, Italy. It is milky white and translucent when polished. The first stone he received from Italy was unacceptable. It was too grey and did not have the translucent quality he needed to portray milk.

According to Heilmer, one of the most interesting things about the finished sculpture is that it contains examples of everything that can be done with marble, from rough, earthy carved surfaces and sawing to smoothly polished and delicately shaped features.

Another aspect of the project Heilmer really enjoyed and was challenged by was the connection the piece brought to art and art history, as it is for the Catholic Church. Now one of his creations has joined 500 years of art preservation that the Protestant tradition does not have (see related story by Nathaniel West).

Heilmer quickly defers much of the credit for the piece to his assistant, Paul Bayer of St. Louis, an expert carver, technician, and artist. Heilmer is more about “ideas and concepts” and does not consider himself to be a carving expert. In the last eight months of the project, Bayer traveled to Greenville frequently to add his expertise and experience to the creative process.

The 2,300-lb. sculpture is the largest Heilmer has ever carved, and it proved to be a heavy burden in more ways than one. Beyond the shear magnitude of the project, there was the personal financial cost, the strain on his health, and the complicating factor of the breakup of his marriage during that four-year period.

Heilmer rejects the notion that the statue somehow contributed to the failure of his marriage. He sees the cause-effect relationship as working in the opposite direction — his marital problems made it more difficult to work on the statue. The stress he was under led to the development of a heart arrhythmia.

The financial burden also threatened to overwhelm him. As the cost of the project climbed to around $44,000, Heilmer saw his life savings disappearing. His original commission for the piece was increased to cover the unexpected costs, but in the end he netted about $4,000 for four years of pouring himself into the project.

After the second marble slab arrived in Greenville, it took about two tedious and exhausting years to do the carving. Heilmer says Bayer’s improved equipment and technical expertise saved the project. “I would have quit without his help,” says Heilmer. “It was absolutely critical.”

The low point of the project came when he accidentally broke off part of the marble where he was carving the flowing milk. “It was just carelessness, really,” says Heilmer. He was understandably despondent for a while after that.

His friend Rick McPeak believes that was the turning point in the project, when the statue in essence became part of the artist, reflecting his own brokenness. The only way to fix it was to carve further back into the stone. McPeak thinks the final result is even better than it would have been without the break. “It allows all of us, a broken or wounded people, to participate with both the art and the artist.

Out of this brokenness came new beauty,” says McPeak. “It was a struggle, and I didn’t like the work for a long time,” Heilmer told the Seattle Times. “But now that it’s done, it’s grown on me. It’s a turbulent surface, and that reminds me of what Mary means to people. Many people think of her as leading a turbulent life. It certainly wasn’t a serene life.”

He added, “I don’t even consider it my best work. It’s too compromised, as any public art is from the beginning. You have to do what the people who are hiring you want done. It doesn’t come out of my need, as art should. But in the last month or so I became happier with the result.”

Heilmer’s creation is now entrusted to the curators and patrons of St. Ignatius Chapel. He will leave it to them to discover their own meaning and appreciation within its flowing textures for many years to come. He welcomes the thought of Catholics and Protestants alike gazing upon his creation, running their fingers across its surfaces, and finding some measure of comfort in its presence.

Related Links:
Steve Heilmer Faculty Page
Art Department

Last updated: July 17. 2001