Mar 22, 2009 / 12:33 pm
When worshipers walk through the doors of St. Mary Church in Boise, Idaho, they are joining as allies of Good in a battle with Evil. It’s a reality sustained by art on a grand scale. Skip Armstrong, a wood carver from Sisters, Ore. was commissioned to create new church doors that stand 16 feet tall and 10 feet wide.
Carved into the broad-shouldered wood is a swirling scene — metaphor writ large in mahogany. A pregnant Virgin Mary figure stands above, backed by rays of sun as in the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Below, a sword-bearing St. Michael takes on a seven-headed dragon that is striking outward in three-dimensional fury.
The scene is based on metaphors found in the Book of Revelation, in which the dragon is knocking stars out of the sky and attacking the virgin queen. It evokes both Latino and Anglo archetypes, which makes sense at a parish that is growing in the way the entire Catholic Church is growing — a mix of cultures.