Art, Faith and Culture, by Timothy Schmalz

Timothy traced his journey from shock-driven contemporary art to a lifelong mission of sculpting the sacred. He reflected on the role of sculpture as a public and permanent witness to faith, the unique power of Christian iconography, and his ambition to help reclaim the cultural imagination through beauty, story and form.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Thank you so much for coming out this evening. I am President Jonathan Sanford. Most of you know that, but um maybe not all. And we have had just a delightful week with our artist friend, the extraordinary Tim Schmals. And before I turn it over to our provost, Matthias Forverk, I want to thank a couple of people, one of whom is Dr. Forverk. He collaborated with another person that I will thank in just a moment, as well as with the incomparable Roshana Fernando, who has done so much legwork in putting together the events of this week. The person I also want to thank is Dan Torpey and his wonderful wife Patty. But Dan and I were together at the Napa Institute last summer, and we had the privilege of spending some time listening to Tim talk about his vision for restoring beauty and cultivating a real commitment to those higher truths that are part and parcel to the Western intellectual tradition, his commitment to an evangelistic spirit, I would say, if you think that that's fair in terms of how he approaches art. I was already familiar with some of Tim's work because our own alumnus, Daniel Fitzpatrick, had collaborated with Tim, who provided illustrations for a number of his sculptures within Daniel Fitzpatrick's translation of the Divine Comedy. And we had Daniel on campus together with several other alumni translators this week. So I wanna I want to thank finally Tim, who has been incredibly generous. But uh when when Matias and I would talk about the things that you were committing to do at the university, it just became really apparent to us that you're you're all in. And um you you wanted to spend several days with us and really get to know us, and we feel like we've really been getting to know you. I want to thank you for your generosity with our students in particular, so many of whom have magnanimous spirits and want to do great things and building up our culture and reclaiming all things for the good. So Tim is going to talk to us about something tonight. I don't know what exactly, but we we have been dreaming about ways to integrate some of Tim's sculptures on our campus, and that is exciting indeed. So more on that anon, and I'm going to turn things over to our provost, Dr. Forbeck.

SPEAKER_00 3:08

Thank you, President Sanford. Um, welcome and uh expression of gratitude to you, Tim, uh, for being here with us, not just for a one evening event, but really for most of this week, uh, to speak to us, uh to speak to our external guests, whom I welcome here as well, to our campus in Irving, uh, on the hilltop. That reminds me, in some respects, to uh the Acropolis in Athens, right? An elevated place where the intellectual life uh is possible. And uh and we have some of that here at the University of Dallas. Um, art plays an important role in the education that we provide to our students here at the university. Uh, we have and we are here uh in the art village, um, that is a series of buildings, in fact, that are dedicated uh to the visual arts and uh and that have played an important role and can continue to play an important role here at the university. Um the university also maintains a campus just outside of Rome, um, which I visited now twice. Uh part of the program there is, of course, to bring the students away from the books into the city, right in the place where the art, the architecture can be observed. And it is an experience that is really transformative to the students, and as it is for anyone who has been visiting the place. I've been speaking there at some at one point after visiting the Villa Borghese about uh the Bernini statues uh that you can see there. Um just think uh of the rapture of Prosapina or Apollo and Daphne. And uh it is just stunning standing right in front of that uh of that art and and seeing in that static, in that static, uh in those static sculptures, the dynamic that is present. And uh it is something that you don't uh see in the pictures of it. It is something that really becomes alive in the presence of the artwork. And uh I've often thought how wonderful would it be if the art that our students produce captured some of that diamond dynamism. And for sure, um a few months later, when our art seniors were doing their exhibit, there was a student who did, in fact, that took elements of that classical art of Bernini's and transformed it in a modern way that you could still see the reference, but at the same time, it translated something into our contemporary world, contemporary issues, and uh and was just uh transformatively appealing. That is what I see in the artwork of Tim Schmaltz. Um, it is classical in a sense, and at the same time, it is transformative and transformed. Uh, it picks up classical elements, um, it is infused with uh the faith of um the artist and uh and speaks of all of that uh to the person who is looking at the artwork. The first piece of art that I saw of Tim's was Angels Unaware, uh an impressive sculptor that I did not first see on St. Peter's Square, where you can actually see it, that's the original place, but in Washington, D.C. on the campus of Catholic University of America. And uh and I thought, wow, the how expressive that piece of art is of something that, from an American perspective, is defining uh for American history and culture, that is immigration, right, uh, from all kind all parts of the world uh into this country. And then thinking of the fact that the original sculpture in St. Peter's Square is the first sculpture uh installed in St. Peter's uh in 400 years, that tells you something about the value uh that uh Pope Francis um attributes uh to the art of Tim Schmaltz. It is simply wonderful. I did not know at that time that Tim had in fact created uh a hundred a hundred uh bronze sculptures to commemorate each one of the hundred cantos in Dante's Divine Comedy. Purgatory, um, sorry, hell, purgatory, and then uh Paradiso, uh, of course. We have a selection of those prints um out there in our exhibit, and I hope you had a chance to to review them and look at them. Um this is um, I think likewise a wonderful experience for those, not just for those who have read Dante's Divine Comedy, but for anyone who is engaged in the reception of uh of classical culture. For our students who in fact do read the divine comedy, it is even more than that. I think it is Dante coming alive beyond the words of the divine comedy, now in visual representations, in a visual translation of the artwork of um um of Dante uh in now the interpretation of Tim Schmaltz. We had a whole panel on Monday to discuss you know the ways in which um Dante can be translated in word and in visual representation. So I'm grateful uh Tim uh for your visit with us, and we are all looking forward uh to what you have to share with us about art, faith, and culture. And uh thank you for being here. Please welcome Tim Schmaltz.

SPEAKER_02 9:04

Well, thanks so much. It has been a wonderful week on campus uh meeting uh so many interesting people, especially the students. And um it gives me flashbacks of when I was very young and and just starting to do artwork. And so I think the the best way I can uh I can start out is by uh by kind of giving you a brief biography about my life through pictures, through sculptures that I've done in the past, and and and and the conclusions and uh and uh understanding that that that came upon me throughout throughout uh the the work that I did. But I want to start with something awesome here. And uh it's the uh sculpture I created for uh St. Peter's Square. Certainly a highlight, if not the most uh most exciting time uh in my life as a as a sculptor, as a Catholic sculptor. That was uh one of the most awesome opportunities that I think a sculptor would ever have is to um be working on a project requested by the Vatican and have it installed in St. Peter's Square. And uh it was pretty stressful as well, as you can imagine. I was told that it has to be done on this set date, and there's gonna be 50,000 people there, and it's gonna be unveiled by Pope Francis. So it can't be late, and it wasn't late, but um, my goodness, was I ever nervous. And so throughout uh I had a little funny story that um I told as a kind of a something humorous, and it was taken the wrong way uh this year when I was speaking in Rome at one of the Jubilee events. I mentioned that when the sculpture, um all bronze sculptures are hollow. That sculpture weighed three and a half tons, and it was hollow, and it was brought over to Rome in a ship. And because of the height restrictions, the angel wings had to be screwed in on the top, bolted in uh on the bottom in the cavity, uh, bolted in tight. And so at the foundry, I was working on it, as you can see me on top of the piece and making sure everything fit perfect. Several different dry runs to make sure the wings look perfect there. Well, at the time, they they they actually, the fascinating thing is is um imagine this. They had to, months before the piece came to be installed, they had to take the cobblestones away and they had to build a concrete bridge uh to protect the catacombs that were right underneath the sculpture. And so the whole area was was was basically draped uh and covered, and there's always stuff going on in Rome, so no one really thought, hey, what's going on here? There's always some construction, right? So at the time of the installation, and this is this is what I thought was a humorous joke, at the time of the installation, as the crane was bringing the piece down, it was uh uh put still for several moments so the wings could be attached. And so the Italians, I didn't understand a word that they were saying. They were putting the wings on and everything, and I wanted to make sure that um they bolted them thoroughly and tight. And and it was so loud there with the with the grinding and the machines and the crowds. I I actually myself uh crept underneath the sculpture and was in the cavity and climbing up a little bit to make sure it was really tight, all the bolts were tight, and then all of a sudden, boom, they let they set the sculpture down, and I was inside. And the light, the the the the the sound of the crowds and the thickness of the bronze, because it was pretty thick. When I said help, help, no one heard me. And my cell phone did not work because of the metal, it was like I was in a tank, so I couldn't call anyone. So then I started to panic. But one of the first things I thought is my wife, and I thought, oh, she's gonna think this is the biggest stunt I ever pulled, and I was unhappy in my marriage, and out with a bang, I left after I did the biggest sculpture possible. But I was smoking at that time. I quit, but I was smoking. I'm in Rome. I'm having a cigarette all the time in Rome. And then I remembered that on one of the refugees, I had their mouth open and I didn't close that hole. And I thought, because you don't want water to pool up in someone's open mouth, or you know, it's it will stagnate and everything, so you put these weeping holes. Well, there was one single weeping hole of uh one of the refugees that was actually the Filipino woman that was screaming. So I lit my cigarette and I started to puff on it frantically and blow smoke out of her mouth. And only then people saw it and made the connection that someone was underneath. They lifted it up and I was free. Thank God. Smoking saved my life. And so I told this story to Juan. Juan is very close to Cardinal Cherny. Um, and I told him it just as a joke, but he's doesn't speak perfect English. But I he thought it was absolutely hilarious. So we're at this huge panel in at the Jubilee, and then Cardinal Cherney says, Tim, tell the amazing story what happened at the installation that Juan told me. And I'm thinking, oh my God, Juan told it thinking it was true. And now Cardinal Cherney thinks that really happened. And I thought, oh no. And so I kind of avoided the whole thing. But that's what my imagination uh brought up at that point of what could have happened in Rome, but it didn't. The installation went absolutely perfect. It went seamless. Uh but that could have happened. But um what one of the amazing things about that that experience um is if you remember the short video that the Vatican made, the last thing I said, and that was bringing this new sculpture here, one of the beautiful things about it is it makes a powerful statement above the statements upon statements that are within all those faces and all those figures. A statement is that our Catholic Church is not an ornament, but it's a growing, living place. And uh I think that it's interesting because I love Rome, it's my favorite city in the world. Um, the artists there, uh now there's a and unfortunately a new message that's that's attached to so many of the sculptures there. And that is that the Catholic Church belongs in a museum. The Catholic Church is something that is old, the Catholic Church is something that has to have glass over it. And that removes people, in a sense, from the truth that we are living, growing faith, and that every year we're getting stronger and better. We're adding new saints every year, right? Carlo Acutas pretty soon. And so I think that one of the powerful things about creating artwork now, it's like I mentioned um talking the other day, um, they're like frozen homilies. And the priest every day or every week crafts a new homily and pushes it out there into the world. And I think sculpture has that same power. And I do believe that it's necessary to, just like the priest, to come up with a new homily, for the artist to come up with a new visual ambassador that that expresses our faith. And I oftentimes think that that sculptures are, in a sense, the face of our faith. And I have a challenge, I have a challenge for everyone here. Think about it for a minute. Think about think about how Mary looks. And I almost guarantee you that the picture that comes into your mind is a picture or a combination of several different artist pictures put together to make up that image of what Mary is. And so I think it's very important that that now, more than ever, we bring new visual ambassadors out into the world to authentically show what our faith is like. And so that's my my job, and that's that's really my mission as a sculptor. And it started. I don't know how to bring this big. Let me see if I can close that. It started when I was very young. It started when I was 22. And I like to I like to include this sculpture in my presentation because I don't have to say I started sculpting when I was young. I could show it. Look at that, right? Some people say, is that your son? No, it's not, it's me. But um here I was, and it was an interesting time in my life when this photo, and this is one of the only the few photographs I I have of me in my Toronto studio. And this is the uh after the point where um I quit art school because I was angry, and I kind of looked angry actually. I was angry at the um the way they were teaching artwork. Um, they were teaching it as uh uh a race to the shocking. It was it was a game that was being played that had nothing to do with truth, nothing to do with philosophy. It had everything to do with sensation, it had everything to do with uh shocking someone, or just doing something that's never been done before. And I remember uh I love Renage Art, he talks about innovation for innovation's sake, and that was artwork. And oftentimes I think about artwork, it's almost like um it's it's considered a reflection of culture, and everyone thinks that. That's why you go into a museum, and most of the artifacts you see are art art artifacts. It's a reflection of culture, and uh I think like artwork, in a sense, is the canary in the coal mine, it it shows uh really some essential things about our culture. And when you look at a lot of the artwork that's done today, it's very nihilistic. Well uh St. John Paul II was was was perfect when he said we're in a culture of death. And we look at look at artwork today in galleries, public artwork, that's all full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. That is our culture, that's our mainstream culture. They don't we don't want to have any deep, significant meaning, and certainly we don't want to express it in artwork. And so that's what I was rebelling in the way I rebelled is I uh started doing only Christian artwork. I would refuse to do some uh a sculpture that wasn't Christian. And how I came to that conclusion is um not just because I wanted to be the most radical artist in Toronto, which instantly when I did that, I was. I was doing a stuff that wasn't considered artwork. And that's pretty hard to do in a world of modern artwork, but uh this stuff was absolutely radical. It was it was completely opposite to what they were teaching at the schools. And what one of the one of the first sculptures I did was a sculpture of Christ, and it was a crucifixion scene about that big. And I wanted to do it, and I was in my studio, and as I did it, I just felt absolutely amazing. I felt completely at peace. And it's it's it's a wonderful feeling to be creating something and knowing what you're doing is right and knowing what you're doing is good. Instantly I felt that. Instantly I realized that how I feel when I do something really matters because it's gonna rub off on the actual final product that I do. It could have to shine through, I thought. And so at that moment in time I began to say, I'm gonna strictly do Christian artwork. And so it was an amazing journey. At first, I was happy with just doing very simple things. Um, this is the first life-size sculpture I did. It was a pregnant Madonna, very simple. And I um I took my artwork so serious that uh for years I would just sleep on a board, wake up, and sculpt until I went to sleep. And I was obsessive with it. And as I was doing this, I was learning more about Catholicism. If I'm doing a sculpture of a saint, I really have to know who that saint is to represent them in a real cool way. And so I kept on uh doubling down in a sense with the sculpture. I did trying to uh represent in a more authentic, in a more cool way. I knew what the art school people were like. I knew how cynical they were. I knew how they hated Christianity. And I wanted to show them up. And I wanted to prove them wrong. And I thought the only way I'm going to prove them wrong is by showing the authentic face, the hardcore face of Christianity, and bring that to the table. And then they will not be able to do anything but agree with what I'm doing. So it was in a sense a cultural battle right from the beginning. An example is I went to uh a church asked me to do uh a baptismal fund, and they said, well, let's just do uh a simple bowl with carved in Father, Son, Holy Spirit, because we want the Trinity being represented there. And I thought, no, no, no, no. Let's do the symbols, let's do the fish, the hand, and let's do the dove swirling around. We'll animate the water, we'll make it look really interesting. And now when you see the baptismal font, it has that power. And I did this with other pieces too. Uh I created a holy family. I did this piece when I was 23 years old. And what I wanted to do here was was, and this is a benchmark piece of mine, I do believe. Uh, I didn't know where the piece was going. All I knew is the ride, the experience about creating this. Everything just started suggesting itself to me. And I became like a tool working on this piece. Um, the baby in the center, and then surrounding that center, the protector, the mother, and then the final ring, the the father. It is the nuclear family. I look at that and I say, that's a nuclear family. And look at how all their drapery, all every single line, pulls you right into that scene. And I call it the quiet moment. I really have to say that that's a piece that has very much deep harmony about it and deep peace. And that piece at the age of 23 became nationally known in an amazing way. I had so many people wanting the small versions of it, because I made small replicas of it that I couldn't even keep up. And it got so powerful that the Canadian uh bishops arranged for me to present the original size piece, which was only about this big, to Pope John Paul II the year before he passed away. And that was the first encounter I had with Rome, and it was absolutely amazing. Just like my sculpture had these rings. I I uh the way I can describe the encounter with the Holy Father was there were these rings of intense spirituality, and the closer you got, uh the more you it almost felt like a physical presence of that spiritual. And so the encounter there um uh was absolutely phenomenal. I've heard years later um that uh Pope John Paul II absolutely loved that sculpture, and he placed it in an area where he could see it all the time in the Vatican. And uh what a what a mystical experience that was, and that just gave me more more courage to continue. And you can see other pieces now. There's and and this piece is in uh in Pennsylvania at a shrine. Uh I still felt I I I wanted to prove people in the secular world that what I was doing was intentional. So I created some of the largest, most complex public monuments in Canada just to prove that I could. Um but the amount of time, this is the National Mining Monument, there's a thousand miners in there. What I learned is it's a lot of work. I remember when I was at I was at art school and one of my teachers did two life-size figures, and I was so excited when I was before I quit, I was so excited that he did two life-size figures, and he said, those will be the last two I do. And I said, Why? And he said, Because it's too much work. And and so I'm doing this, and I'm saying and I'm agreeing with uh Francis Lebouthier, my old teacher, it is too much work. And that's when I realized, and I basically confirmed to myself that it's only uh doable if uh you're dealing with saints and if you're dealing with something bigger than yourself. And so you see the mining monument, the piece I did afterwards, my piece, was the sculpture, which I call one body. I was gonna call it all saints, but there's only 140 saints in there, and I didn't want to call it some saints. It's interesting because this piece here, uh this piece here, I did research on every single saint. It was just an amazing experience. Imagine having a map, and I didn't have a map out of my studio floor of which tape was where and everything like that. The fascinating thing about this, if you really study, how do I want to represent this saint? And that's what you do. You want to put them, that's their moment. They have one little moment on my sculpture, so let's give them a moment to shine. How do I do it? And then you realize that most of the saints had crazy, absolutely fantastic lives, and most of them ended brutally. Absolutely. The amount of martyrs that we have is just unbelievable. And then you you contrast that with, oh, she's a saintly person. And I'm thinking about Joan of Arc, and I'm thinking about all these radical people, and I'm thinking, yeah, we have a disconnect with our mainstream culture and what real saints are. And uh as I was working on this piece, um, I'll tell you one thing about it. I didn't, and I always find it difficult to do the faces of uh Jesus. I always find it very difficult. This face is a little bit unusual. Um, there was a homeless person outside my studio uh one morning when I was working on this, and I decided that I would ask him to model for the face of Jesus. Why not? And so there that is. I remember this one time working on this piece too. Uh a truck driver came in, long-haired baseball cap. He was delivering something to some other uh building close by, but he stumbled across my studio and he just stopped there. And he looked at it, he said, that is awesome. And I knew he doesn't he doesn't know very much about Catholicism, but he just stood there and he started asking me questions. And then I thought that is the power of artwork. It can bring people in if it's done correctly. And so I thought, yeah, he left after a while, but he was impressed, like beyond belief. And I thought, if he's gonna be impressed by the artwork, he's really been impressed by what the artwork is represented. Because what I believe, and I believe like great artwork, is only great unless you have a great subject matter. And the better an art piece is, the better it makes that subject shine and do whatever you want to make it, use whatever tricks you have to make people see that subject. That's what art's about. And the best compliment I could get is from someone looking at, say, a sculpture of St. Codre Peel that I make, and then saying, Isn't Codre Peel awesome? And I would say, Yes. And that's that's a successful piece of artwork. An unsuccessful piece of artwork is look at the breaststrokes. That's a very unique style. And that's not that's looking at the surface. And a great art piece penetrates to that subject matter, and that's what I believe in. And so when I've had experiences like this, I realize that that artwork is very powerful, and uh and so is our faith. And so we have to do as much as possible to bring out an authentic, an authentic representation of our faith, not just the cookies and cream, not just the sentimental, not just the cute, but the hard, raw, hardcore Christianity. And it's interesting because um it is that. And a lot of people, if you look at, like I mentioned, the life of the saints, but if you look at Christ and if you look at all what's represented in there, um I want to balance out the the comfort artwork with the challenging, shocking artwork. You know, it's interesting because I initially started that I left art school because of uh the the shock art. If it's not if it's not shocking, it's not art mentality. Well, I tell you, the sculpture like what I created, the homeless Jesus, is shocking. Why? Because Christ is shocking, and what the Bible asks us is shocking. And if the artwork reflects it authentically, then it's then it's a piece of great artwork. The piece that I'm flipping by here is the homeless Jesus sculpture. And this really impressed on me because the sculpture, as you can see, has been installed all over the world, and it still is installed all over the world. In Johannesburg, they actually made the homeless Jesus a birthday cake when he was installed. And what what I find fascinating, and this is it in Capernaum, um, Archbishop Fizzy Kelly, the president of uh the Vatican New Evangelizing, installed one in his hometown in Cordogo, uh near Milan in Italy, which is really nice of him. He's he's been a great supporter of my artwork. But um when this sculpture here, and it was I'll just briefly talk about it because it was a it was uh a eureka moment for me, as it is for many people that see it. I was in downtown Toronto, and I don't go to big towns very often. I have my small idyllic little hamlet that I live in with my studio. When I do go into a city, I'm usually shocked at seeing homeless people because I see them. And I think a lot of people that are used to living in the city, slowly and slowly these people become invisible, their whole lives become invisible. And perhaps that's the defense mechanism to get on your daily life. Um, but when I went there this one time specifically, it was right before Christmas, and there was a homeless person. I don't know if it was a man or a woman, it was a it was a haunting figure shrouded in a blanket. And I just turned and I looked, and I thought, that is Jesus, and I couldn't get that out of my mind. I went back to my my small town doing my other sculptures, and then I thought, yeah, it's almost like you know, you have a song in your head that you can't go through. Well, that was a vision in my head that I could not, I could not just just close my eyes and it disappeared. And then so I thought I want to sculpt that experience. So hopefully other people will see Christ within the least. And so I started to work on the piece, and it was a fascinating experience because um uh, as you can see, there is a little space here, and I remember working on the feet, and I I decided that the only way, just like the figure that I saw, um, that the identity will be obscured, but I had to identify it as Jesus somehow. So I pulled up the blanket a bit and I put the wounds in the feet. And that was the only way that you could identify it as Jesus. And actually, when I was working there, I was sitting there on that that that corner of the of the bench, and I thought, I've never been this close to a homeless person in my life. And this is a sculpture. And I thought, I'm gonna keep this part of the bench there so people can sit there. And because I think homeless people have a bubble, you know, they have a psychological mental bubble that that we almost a force field that prevents us from coming into. And then to put the wounds of the feet there, um what I realized afterwards is how how uh coherent it is with Matthew 25, uh, because there is that ambiguity in it initially, and the sculptor has that too. Um a lot of people see the sculpture and they think it's a real homeless person sleeping on a bench. And it's not because I'm a great, great sculptor, it's because homeless people on benches sleeping don't move, and sculptures don't move, so I have that advantage. And so it really plays with your mind on a very realistic bronze bench. You take a look, you take a second look, that might be a person. Some people actually, sculptures everywhere in Europe and in America, people called the police, people called the ambulances, and uh actually in Poland, in uh Warsaw, Poland, right down calendar is one of the pieces, and a journalist thanked me for it because although it disturbed the paramedics, apparently this year tons of paramedics came and tried to resuscitate the sculpture, and it gave them a moment of uh it just gave them that that that one moment to think. And and I actually got a call from this Polish journalist thanking me for that. And uh, but it's interesting because it's like the uh uh scripture, absolutely theater, and that's what the scripture is. If the scripture was done any other way, if it if it unraveled any other way, it wouldn't have been as poetic. And there is that that ambiguity, and then there's uh there's the ambiguity. When did we see you hungry? When did we see you? When did we feed you in prison? And then the punch, it's when you've done that to the least of my brothers. You've done it to me. And so this, you see it, it looks, okay, it's not a real person, it's a sculpture, and then only later you find out that it's Jesus. I had one person that sat on the bench, and only after he sat on the bench and was about to touch the feet, did he realize it was Jesus. He almost jumped out of his seat, he said, and he was like freaking out, and he thought, this is awesome, right? And I think that's what artwork has to do. That's what this piece does, and this proves to me that people have a hunger for Christ. It just has to be presented in a way, visually in a way, being an artist, it has to be presented in a way that they can understand and they can see. And that's what this sculpture I think does to me. And for me, it's a slap in the face and says, start sculpting harder, Tim, because there's so much evangelizing to do with artwork. And so from that, I just continued to do sculpture. And that gave me faith that in the year 2019, whenever I created the piece, um, it's still there's so much more to do with sculpture. There's so much more ways that we can evangelize. There's so many blind spots that we can light up in the world today. And uh so I've basically spent uh so many years actually creating these pieces. And what I'm always hungry for, knowing what I said before, that you have to have an epic subject matter to have a great piece of artwork. I've been combing the scriptures, I've been combing the saints, and I'm always trying to find that perfect gem that can be that can be pulled out and put on a pedestal so people can see it. And it's a it's obviously it's a it's more than one life to actually uh do this job, but the challenge is there. And and what I what I feel is that that uh that we in our culture need it. You know, it's interesting because you think about the idea of of culture, and one person comes to mind more than any any one actual quotation from one person, and that's Oscar Wilde. He summed some summarized my my my thoughts completely on the power of artwork. He said, and you know, Oscar Wilde, the playwright, he's at the turn of the century, and he wrote this uh essay called Decay of Line, which is all about the power of artwork. And he said, people in London didn't see the fog till the painters started painting it. And I thought, oh my goodness, that's me with my own sculpture, because now whenever I see a homeless person, I think of the homeless Jesus. And it's fascinating the power of artwork to crystallize something and and and hold it there in a culture. And what that that that really does is it is it brings it to the forefront. I oftentimes think that that um the idea of sculpture throughout history has always had that power, I think. When the Protestants wanted to destroy artwork, I can guarantee you they destroyed the sculptures, not the painting. Now, I think I consider that a compliment, a very strange compliment, but but there is that power that sculptures have that no other artwork has because it's I think it's three-dimensional and it takes up space in a sense and it occupies our world in a very powerful way. Another thought about is the terracotta warriors, how um this uh apparently uh instead of killing the whole army, uh the idea was to create terracotta warriors and bury them with with the emperor. And it was believable, and I think it is still is believable. There is some mysticism that that is is attached to the idea of sculpture, and I think that's why the real seat of sculpture is spirituality, is celebrating religion. Even pre-Christian, there was that connection, and I think connect that that connection through artwork in total. And so my my my job here is is to comb those those those scriptures and find out and pull those out and and take those blind spots and bring light to them. And there's so much saints, there's so much life of the saints, and there's so much work out there that that should be done. After I did the Angels Unawares sculpture, that created so much awareness of migrants and refugees, the Vatican asked me to do a sculpture on the theme of human trafficking. And so I started to work on this other piece, using artwork as a tool, as a weapon to fight human trafficking. As I was working on this, believe it or not, after I started working on this, I read a quote from Pope Francis: Human trafficking will always exist if it's kept underground. And look what I created there. I've created that the Let the Oppressed Go Free, a sculpture where the victims of human trafficking are coming out of the ground. And so that sculpture is being used in many different places. Uh, a smaller version of it was put at St. Peter's Square. Uh Cardinal Timothy Dolan, uh, uh not this St. Patrick's Day, but last St. Patrick's Day, installed the Let the Oppressed Go Free, uh smaller version of it in St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City. And St. Pikita, the hero in the story, is from a small town outside of Venice, and there the sculpture is right near her tomb. And so that's another use of sculpture, another example about how sculpture can bring attention to things. And uh yeah, so I could I could continue for a long time about the different sculptures that I've done and and and the need. Here is a sculpture that actually um um I've created one for Texas, and the governor of Texas is working on getting it installed uh at the state capitol, and it's a pro-life celebration of life sculpture. A Madonna and child with the child still in the womb. The first cast of it is uh in Washington, D.C. as you can see, and it's a huge size there. So the amount if you're a Catholic and and you wanna you wanna fight the uh the culture of death, and if you want to not only fight that but celebrate God, there's no end to it. Um but again, what I say is that there is uh there's a a key, and the key is finding what warrants to be sculpted. Because it takes a lot of time and a lot of energy and quite frankly a lot of money to create one sculpture. And so one of the fascinating things that I stumbled across, um no, I can't say stumbled across, that I've always wanted to do was to celebrate Dante. Because when I was, you know, the first photograph of me where I was very young, um one of the role models for me was Dante. I mean, via Rodin, because I loved Rodin. And Rodin was deeply, deeply influenced by Dante. In fact, his greatest piece, The Thinker, everyone knows The Thinker. I think it's probably one of the most popular sculptures in the world. That was actually a sculpture of Dante called The Poet. And from that sculpture, he created all the gates of hell. And this is when I was a teenager, and when I was in my early 20s, this is what I, this was my role model, this is who I wanted to be, someone that did that. And again, I understood that it was because he used Dante as a subject matter that he created epic pieces of artwork. Well, years ago, my homeless Jesus was installed in Florence at the Badia Florentia, the old monastery in the center of Florence. You might know the place if you watch Holy. With movies, because Tom Hanks did a movie called Inferno, and at the beginning of it, there was a race on the Via Florentia up that tower, and then someone fell off, and that's how the story started. So right there in the center of Florence, my sculpture of the homeless Jesus was installed. And I was there for the dedication of it. And I was chagrined by the lack of Dante that I saw around. And I was furthermore upset because the only Dante that I've been hearing for the last two decades of my life was the Inferno, the Inferno, the Inferno. Hell, hell. What about paradise? What about purgatory? It seemed like it's been wiped off the face of the earth. And I thought, yeah, leave it to the secular people, even to take our treasured Dante, I'd say the greatest Christian poet ever, leave it to our modern day society, leave it to a couple centuries to wipe out the fact that Dante was actually a Catholic skull, a Catholic poet. And I thought, and that's what that's in a sense what our mainstream culture is doing, because anytime they bring up Dante, they only bring up hell. What about purgatory? What about paradise? Because those are the canticas, that's the part of the poem that is the conclusion and the celebration and the amazing uh uh features of God and Christianity. They only really become very powerful when you get out of hell. And so I thought, you know what? Someone should do, someone should continue and do sculptures of purgatory and paradise and give them the equality of it. And there's actually the abbot um looking at the homeless Jesus there. And so what I did was I started to sculpt, and I decided what I would do is I would sculpt all of the divine comedy. 100 sculptures. And what I realized is it's the first time this has ever been done. And I I was amazed at it. I thought, what do you mean? 700 years? And no one sculpted every single canto? Well, I decided I would, it's about time it's done. So I started sculpting every single uh canto in the morning. I would I would sculpt, I would do five at a time, I'd be studying at night and then coming in the morning and working on it. It was an absolutely amazing experience. One of the things I thought about is how Dante is the greatest type of artist because he leads people to Christianity. You can't read the full divine comedy and not fall in love with Christianity. You can't. It's almost impossible. And I thought, you know, he's very clever because his gateway, you know, the gates of hell, are an easy entranceway. It's an entertaining entranceway. It's a way that people can relate to. It doesn't ask much of you. You walk into it, you know it's a fictitious story. At least now we do. During his time, they thought he was thinking it was real. But it's a story, it's it's something that's fun. And it's like walking in a haunted house. But then as you go in that, it becomes more complex and more beautiful and more spiritual as you get out of hell and into purgatory and paradise. So I thought if this is a if Dante throughout the centuries has been a great uh gateway or or or a doorway into our faith, well then artwork of that doorway, of that poet, is absolutely perfect use of my my talent as a sculptor. So I went on and I actually created all the hundred uh sculptures, and they are awesome. As you can see, there's some photographs out there. Uh starting out with a portrait of Dante, and this has been installed in Florence at the Badia Florentia, very close to my homeless Jesus. And uh the the the sculpture project has been installed in many different places, but not to the extent that I hope. My extent is to make a world-class Dante park. University of Toronto, they had a small piece of land that they installed the pieces. Um Cambridge uh University in England, they installed in a beautiful park uh given for the Dante sculpture. Um there's Toronto. But what I wanted to really see is sculptures like what I'm doing for Orlando. In Orlando, right now, I'm just finishing off a world-class, one of the biggest sculpture parks, not only in America, but in the world, celebrating the gospels and celebrating the stations of the cross. What I wanted to do is see Dante put on that level of a world-class destination. And that's one of the pieces that I'm doing for Orlando as well as uh as well as for um the Vatican Observatory. It is awesome. That's the huge piece. Those figures are life size at the base. And at nighttime, the stars, as you can see, it's Mary Queen of the Universe, and light is cast through. I could talk about this for an hour, but I can't. But what I envision is the Dante sculpture part being on a mall, a colonnade, or uh however you want to call it, with some principal large pieces and with the 100 cantos, all creating a sculpture park that will blow people's minds. And what I mean is is secular people as well as Christians, including obviously Catholics. I want to create a landmark location that people will talk about and that people it will become a destination, a destination not only of art and poetry, celebrating Dante, but in turn celebrating our faith, because Dante is just an instrument to Catholicism. So this is this is my latest project, and as I said at the beginning, um that you need a great subject matter to have a great piece of artwork. And that is Dante, and this is hopefully my next big project, and the hope is to have that project here in Dallas, at the Dallas uh at the university here. And one of the thoughts is that this will put uh the university even more on the map because I've I've heard about this university when I first started doing Dante. It's already known as the Hub of Dante in North America, and this would just further that and accentuate that that truth. So that's a little bit about myself, and I'm leading on the uh the uh the hope about the new sculptures because really with my life I I realize that there's so much to do. This is one of the great pieces, I think. Is there any questions? Yes.

unknown 51:10

What was the name of that Padre Peel piece with the crucifix?

SPEAKER_02 51:15

That's I absolve you. That's a piece that I fell in love with St. Padre Pio. And uh the the sculpture was a eureka moment for me because I wanted to have St. Padre Peel at the confessional. And then I realized that that window on the other side where you think you're gonna be looking at St. Padre Pio, you see Christ and the hand of Jesus, not the hand, not the covered hand of Saint Padre Pio. And that is a piece that that that is in many different places. I think I had a picture of it in in uh Ireland. I did one for Tanzania and one for America and one for southern Italy. Any other questions? Yes.

unknown 52:08

So I love how you have the people interacting with the sculpture.

SPEAKER_05 52:13

So obviously, when you are conceiving these sculptures, you want people to interact. And does it give you joy when you see that the there's the patina is gone, or because so many people have touched it or interacted with it?

SPEAKER_02 52:29

Absolutely. And I I think that it's it's interesting. Um, this sculpture is another example, and this is a real, a real exciting moment uh for my artwork. Um after I did the piece in St. Peter's Square, um, Be Welcoming to Strangers, many of Entertained Angels Unawares, I decided to do another one on the same subject matter, and this is on the Camino in Spain, and I'll just say it right now Be welcoming to strangers, many of Entertain Angels Unawares. So on the one side, it's a stranger with a backpack, on the other side, it's an angel. So the stranger transforms into an angel, and it's in some really cool spots right now. It's on the Camino, it's in San Giovanni Retondo, and that's it right there. It's a kind of a bad photo. Um but the latest, and this is so exciting, um the latest placement of this piece is happening right now. Uh a month ago I went to the Vatican and I had a meeting with Cardinal Conrad Kryjowski, who's in charge of the papal charities, and I showed him a little model of it. And he loves my homeless Jesus. In fact, he installed the homeless Jesus at the uh in front of his charity office at the Vatican. So he loves the peace, and he says to me, this sculpture should be installed in St. Peter's Square. And he said, and there's only one person that can make that happen fast, and that's the Pope. And he said, I'm gonna meet with him, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna bring, I'm gonna mention this to him. The next day I'm driving to Assisi, I get a call from Cardinal Conrad. The Pope loves a sculpture. Yes, it's gonna be installed in St. Peter's Square. And so it was an amazing moment for me because after I did the Angels Unawares 2019, I thought, oh, that's I'll never get a better spot than that. And I never knew God would give me two in St. Peter's Square. So that was fascinating. Another thing about that encounter, um uh the Holy Father uh asked me to do 10 small versions of the peace that he could give to people. And I thought that is really special. And he said, Tell Tim I'll pay for them. He doesn't have to pay for it. But I airshipped those over, and then a week later he became sick. But thank God he's better now. And so the sculpture, uh, it's called Be Welcoming, is just uh delivered to uh to Rome this week as it had to be airshipped because they want it for the um for the Jubilee. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 55:21

Yeah. Early in your career, you discovered life side sculptures are too much work, and here you are producing even larger than life size sculptures. What what accounts for the ability to achieve that that quantity of such high quality work?

SPEAKER_02 55:43

Well, it's it's I I consider it um I consider it prayer. I consider doing a sculpture prayer, and and I I consider it um I consider there's an urgency for it in our culture. And um like I mentioned, Francis Lebuthia said it's too much work. I agree, it's too much work to to glorify anything but but God. And I and I oftentimes think about the great cathedrals in Europe, they're glorifying God, and if it was for any other any other reason, they wouldn't be half as high, and they wouldn't be half as beautiful. And I think that so me as a person, as a as a sculptor, that gives me super strength. Strength that I would not have. I would be sleeping in in the morning, I would be sleeping in on the weekends, I'd be doing other things. But over over the last uh uh 30 years of of doing uh doing sculpture, I've I've just learned that there's so much that the God of surprises has thrown my way, that it's a heavy responsibility. Like, like it's true, um 400 years nothing has been installed in St. Peter's Square. When I was finished that, um I was working on the human trafficking sculpture. And I think that there, like I feel that there's a I don't have time to celebrate, I just feel that there's a huge responsibility that's been given to me right now that I better put it back into the artwork. And I better I better use it uh to shine a light on things. And the beautiful thing about sculpture is you know, when I was working on the human trafficking sculpture, um a couple of people that I knew said, Oh, you gotta see this film on human trafficking. And I forget what it was, it was like two summers ago. Um and I didn't see it. One of the reasons because I was so focused on my artwork, I couldn't take two hours away to watch a watch a watch a movie. And then lo and behold, what happened is it disappeared. No one's talking about it anymore. And I wouldn't even know where to find it now. And now people are talking about other movies that I should see. And I think that I thought about this, that the medium of film, there's there's a race going on. There's so much overlapping, there's so much great things going on, great things going on, that I thought about that it's that's making it less powerful than bronze sculpture. Because you put a bronze sculpture out, like this one in Spain, it's going to be there for 200 years. And no other movie is gonna come over top of it in a couple of seasons or something like that. So, sculpture, it's permanent, and it's being out there in real space really has a power that is that is perfect for evangelizing. Like, for instance, say here at the university, we put the Dante Mall, the Dante Sculpture Park. That will be there for 200 years. It's not gonna move. And what what film can be playing for 200 years non-stop? There is none. And that's why I think sculpture is great. I love painting, but again, painting, you have to go inside to see it. And uh you can't put a painting outside on a street on the Camino, or it's gonna get ruined. And I think that now, like a lot of people are intimidated of going into the church. The idea of sculptures bringing preaching outside the church, and that's why I'm I'm so I'm I'm so devoted to to uh doing Christian sculpture. And and so I just worked to the end, right? And I I think I meant might have mentioned to you or it was someone else about going to one of my studios and sculpting so frantically that I was blind in the center of my my vision was lost for a bit, and I had to rest and and and just take a break. Um but it's the idea of being an um artistic soldier for Christ and the Vatican that really really gives me that energy. I wouldn't have it, I wouldn't be a sculptor. I wouldn't even be a sculptor if it wasn't for for that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 59:58

So speaking of cinema or other media, um, is there a work of literature or of film that you have seen that for those of us who can't get inside your head and experience that sort of mania of being possessed by creating the work? Is there another work of representational media you can think of that represents or depicts the artist at work in a way that rings true to you and to your experience? Is there a um uh another artist, or are you saying Is there a work of literature or cinema that sort of that someone might watch and that you could look at and say, yeah, that that work depicts the artist in a way that I, Tim Schmals, recognize? You know, for those of us who don't know what it's like to create and be obsessed with the work the way that you are.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:53

I I can't, not nothing really comes to mind, but as far as as in uh uh inspiration and and uh and what inspires me in in other mediums and other other uh it would have to be Renee Girard. And because and I I I oftentimes think about this because I've read most every single book I could get my hands on several times on his, and and though he's he's he's not a a a visual artist, he's a thinker, and um it's hard to pin him down to define who he is. Is he a theologian, is he an anthropologist or or a philosopher? But but what I see in him, the the optimism and the and and the power of understanding is so similar, I think, to a beautiful masterpiece sculpture. And just if you if you read some of his books, like I see Satan Fall Like Lightning, that excitement, that rush of truth and discovery of that truth is I think the same thing that a beautiful sculpture is to me. And so I actually did a sculpture of Renee Girard that's pretty awesome. And uh I wanted to promote him as many ways as I possibly can and use art. Uh that's it that's a great way, but but I think that that people like Renee Girard that prove Christianity, and I really do believe that he just proves Christianity, um, is what I want to do with my artwork. I want, and I do believe it's possible, and it's just my own uh human limitations, that there could be an art piece that's done, that is so powerful that if people see it, they would instantly understand Christianity, they would understand Catholicism, and they would be converted. I really do believe that that exists in this platonic uh sphere that has to come down, or if it could come down. That's the hope that I have. And it's it's it's it's it's conviction in in Catholicism, but it's also faith in artwork. That artwork has that power to move people and convert. Like uh Renee Girard, I mean not Renee Girard, Oscar Wilde said, Um people can see the fog after the painter started painting it. And if we uh artists and and uh people promoting Catholicism can present it in a way like I think Renee Girard does, that you can see Catholicism. Oh, there it is. You know, and that's I think the great the great hope of art and what art can do. And so so yeah, that he's the closest hero that I have.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:34

Yeah, I'm I'm wondering whether you could let us actually a little bit into your head as far as the creative process is concerned. So, you know, from the conception of a particular piece and then the execution of it, what is you know how what's the religious experience? Because I mean you have described it that way, that the artistic process is a religious experience. Is it in the conception of it? How does it manifest itself when you're working with your hands, executing it?

SPEAKER_02 1:04:06

What what yeah, it's almost like I I I think one of the best ways is like I'm watching an awesome movie. You know, I'm watching a film that's happening. And it's almost like it's or you could say it's like I'm on a roller coaster ride where this happens and that happens. It just so happens to be that my hands are participating and creating this experience. And it's like this sculpture here. I was just I was just absolutely amazed at how it how it unfolded. And so I one of the great things about doing sculpture for so many years, like me, since I'm 20, now I'm 55, is I have a whole library of different, and then also I think I'm maturing in in my understanding of my faith. And so that that's actually allowing me to sculpt more. And so, yeah, oftentimes it's it's uh like I could say it's like a roller coaster, or it's like I'm third person watching, and that's how some of like like the Eureka moment with St. Padre Peel, who on the one side is reaching out to the window, and then you turn around and you see the other side of the window, and it's Jesus in its hand. That just boom came down. And it's like I was I almost jumped up and and and and screamed of happiness when that came. And and I I do believe that my job is just to be this this um uh chimp at a typewriter. As long as I'm at the typewriter going like this, something might come up. And that's why sculpture in clay is great as opposed to sculpture that like in stone that I'd have to take a year to do one piece. It's a very fast, it's almost like a chocolate blackboard, uh, chalk and blackboard. You can go really good, really fast. You can wipe things out, you can change things, and it's an amazing quick experience. Yes.

SPEAKER_07 1:05:58

So um I wanted to say, first of all, thank you. Very, very exciting to hear about this Dante project. And yeah, the first thing that I would do once I get back to it to tell my friends about it. But I wanted to ask you, where exactly is this project now? Where is the have you made the sculptures in the I don't know what the content? I thought I saw making uh a replica of these now. And I'm I'm afraid I got here very recently.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:34

Oh, okay. Well let me see if I can flash back here. The Dante, I've already sculpted 100 cantos of the Divine Comedy. And um that took me years because what I was doing was uh visually translating them to two audiences. Uh the audience of people that have never heard of Dante before, and also the scholar that knows quite a bit about Dante and is going to be watching for things. So I had to be very sensitive about both uh both those elements. And so, almost like a director of a movie, what I did was I created uh um something that would almost be a window into Dante. So I created a hundred cantos of the divine comedy, and I mentioned before, I'm the first person in the history, 700-year history, to actually create every single representation of every canto. And actually I thought about it, why hasn't this been done before? And when I was in purgatory, I thought, oh, I know, it's a lot of work, it's it's tons because you have to be very much on your toes, right? And so I did the hundred of them, and now what I want to do is do uh the sculpture park here of all hundred spread out so people can turn the pages with their feet in a sense. Uh um and and bring Dante outside. Most people, whenever they experience Dante, it's sitting on a chair. Well, here they can walk in in uh in an outdoor setting and actually walk from from hell to heaven, which is awesome, right? Um, so I had several different places install fragments of the divine comedy, but not the way I see it, with some of the cantos being absolutely huge, where you feel like, oh, I'm walking in this canto and it's like 10 feet tall. And so it sucks you right in. Another thing about Dante that's great is uh he has the vision of the crucified Christ. He has several different visions of Mary, and these can be represented as life-sized, really awesome sculptures that you walk around, right? So what I see it's a it's a sculpture park in a sense, where it's a full sculpture park where you have 100 can post, but you also have a three-dimensional representation of the cross that Dante is on. And then you also have you have uh one of the infernos, but the flames are life size and the figure, the souls are life size that you can almost walk right into, right? So that's what I see that could make this a landmark. When you're in Dallas, you have to go and see the Dante sculpture part. To have it here would be amazing. I can't find the pictures. Yes?

SPEAKER_05 1:09:27

Do you have any vision of exactly where on campus is?

SPEAKER_02 1:09:31

Uh we talked about having it um on the mall area, and what I and and I think that's really cool because it's a long way. We can have hell, purgatory, and paradise all on that strip. And what I really think is decent, and from my own experience about other pieces, is to have um that photogenic shot where you can see a wow shot, so to speak, right? And you know, you have the huge tower on the one side. Imagine on the other side having a huge cross, but it's not just any cross, it's inspired by what Dante saw, right? And I thought, oh, that's great. You see, Dante's Dante's perfect for this university because it's the poem and it's also the faith all intertwined. So I think it would be really, really exciting to have that right there in the center, almost the heart of it. Yes.

unknown 1:10:29

Did your parents encourage you to get a real job?

SPEAKER_02 1:10:35

Well, um, it was after I quit Ontario College of Art, uh, my father was was quite upset. Um and because he was a teacher himself, he was the head of an English department. And um the uh I think the positive thing about my parents um is I was like a free-range child in many respects, where I wasn't pressured into doing anything. Um and uh but my dad, I mentioned, was an English teacher, so I had a library downstairs that was amazing. When I was 16, I read Plato's Republic, and uh it was just on the shelf. I could pull it off, I could pull up uh Aristotle's Ethics, D. H. Lawrence, you know, all some wonderful literature. And so that was uh that was a great uh upbringing for me. And I wasn't really brought up, well, I definitely wasn't brought up as a as a hardcore Catholic. I had a conversion experience when I was 17. I was baptized Catholic, but my like I mentioned, my parents were really into the arts and not into very much else. And uh so when I really became a Christian at the age of uh 17, I was looking at it um through a more mature lens, and I was comparing Plato to uh the Bible, and that was a really great uh perspective of me. And also, throughout those early teen years, I kind of knew what the secular people thought about the Catholics and the Christians, and they didn't think much. And I knew then that if I wanted to be a Christian sculptor, I knew who my audience was, and it wasn't necessarily the uh the hardcore Catholics, it was those people that don't believe. And I wanted to present a more authentic face of our faith to convert people, and not just to not just to uh to uh uh comfort those that are already uh uh spiritually kind of in tune. So yeah, these are the this is uh the project that I'm doing for uh uh the Vatican Observatory and and also uh Orlando. And you see the power of something like this. And when I'm saying this took me years and years, I think that uh having uh something like this, I guess, as well as a hundred cantos, would be absolutely phenomenal. One last question. Does anyone have one last question? Yes?

SPEAKER_04 1:13:17

Yeah, I absolutely think you um just saying like your life something that happens in the white is your favorite thing and the most interesting thing is how it's coaching.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:54

One thing that amazes me with Dante is how relevant it is today. And uh and and how and I'm just like awe that he wrote it 700 years ago. Because I I think I think most people when they really discover Dante, they feel that that almost Dante's reading them in a sense. It's so it's so universal and it's it for for all humanity, and I think that that's that's phenomenal. Another thing I think about is and I was when I was working on that, so I couldn't help think about how here 700 years ago, he's writing this poem, and it's so refreshing to read it today. And it's because there's structure. And we live in a time right now where anything goes, absolute nihilism. And now here I'm reading this poem where everything is accounted for, and it's just it it's so freeing. And and I find that this this nihilistic modern society that we're in oftentimes is is just claustrophobic. And because of its nihilism, because of its nothingness. And so it it's when I'm in Inferno, when I'm sculpting inferno, I'm having a great time because it's solid, it's substantial. Um it's it's it seems to me that I think that's one of the great uh gifts of Dante today, and that's why I think we really need him today. Um, because as our culture becomes more secular, I think that the representations in the divine comedy are more needed. And so it's it's almost like like a duty that I feel of bringing this out. And uh it certainly was in the years of actually sculpting and creating. Well, thank you. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:58

Thank you so much, Tim, for what has been, in a way, a sculpture in action of the sculptor himself. Um thank you for sharing your enthusiasm, uh, your um your your faith uh that expresses itself in the sculptures, that you're doing your your energy. It's uh truly, I think, an encouragement for everyone who uh in whatever medium tries to bring the message of Christ into the world. Um and thank you for sharing that with us. Uh we look forward to the realization of the Dante uh Sculpture Park uh here at the University of Dallas. It would be wonderful to have. Uh thank you, and thank you for everyone for coming tonight.