Somerville's Bath tub Marys

When I moved to Somerville in late 2013 I was instantly struck by the statuettes I found in many a yard of the Holy Virgin. It was something I didn't know and at first I just took photos of something unusual, until I found out that there were so many Virgins that one could hardly call them "unusual" anymore.

I found out these Virgins were put up by immigrants originally from Portugal and southern Italy, where it supposedly was a tradition to put a Virgin in your yard to ask for Divine Protection (and what better way for that than to be on good terms with God's Mom?). Because many of these immigrants worked in the factories in Somerville this town became sort of famous for its Virgins. And when the immigrants got a new bath tub they put the old one on its side and used it as a chapel for the Virgin. Hence the name Bath Tub Marys.

The Virgins appealed to me because I knew the visual language; after all I did grow up Catholic. But there was also some special quality to them, for I couldn't just walk past a yard with one of the ladies and not stand still and check out the statuette.

My mother's mother had passed away a year earlier, and I had had the strongest connection with my grandmother. She always loved me unconditionally, and I have the feeling that me being an outsider brought out the motherly element in my grandmother.

My grandmother was brought up very conservatively Catholic. One of the many things I admired about my grandmother was that she always found her own way amidst the icebergs of Propriety. And so she developed her own version of Catholicism. She was a huge fan of the Holy Virgin, and when my grandmother was around, the Holy Virgin always felt very real for the rest of the crowd. Hers was a loving Virgin, a protecting Virgin, a supporting Virgin. If you sincerely tried to be a good person you were good with her, no matter how big your mistakes were. I loved that Virgin.

I had soon decided I wanted to do something with Somerville's Bathtub Marys to honor my grandmother. Originally I thought about making a photo book, but that quickly didn't feel sufficient to me. At the time I took classes on oil painting (I had always painted with acrylic paint until then) and decided to combine the class with the project for my grandmother.

I decided I wanted to paint each and every Virgin. I had no idea how many there were, even though I knew there were a LOT of them. I immediately chose not to "depict" the Virgins, if you want realism you can check out the originals. But I wanted to make interpretations, I wanted to visualize how the Virgins "felt" to me.

I found a map of Somerville and literally walked up and down each and every street of the town. While walking I checked out the front yards and as much of the back yards as I could see. When I saw a Virgin I made a photo of the general setting and several close ups of the Virgin. Back home I went over the phots and let them inspire me to create a painting.

In the end I thought I had found 333 Virgins. I loved that number and am inclined to stick to it, even though later I discovered I had actually found about 10 more. Making the paintings was interesting, for I forced myself to use as many techniques as I could come up with, so it was one big learning experience for me.

The project got extra interesting when I realized that paintings of the Virgins developed an interaction with each other. Every now and then the painting was "mwah" in my opinion, but in combination with the others it took on a completely new quality. That's why ideally I would want to exhibit the paintings on four walls of a large space, all in a single line. But to show you what happens when you put them together I have put the paintings in a huge group. You can click on the individual painting, which will take you to a special page per painting. From there you can go through the whole series clicking the "next" button, or you can go back to the big group on this page. If it gets too much for you, you can also click this one: