Medicine of the SpiderAfter severe multiple sclerosis inexplicably vanished from his body, a talented Michigan artist who believes “great art comes from pain”finally finished his decade-long project to beautify a church. He revealsthe inner source of his inspiration and healing.

Medicamentum araneus meansmedicine of the spider. It is alsothe title of a self-portrait paintedby artist Michael Northrop inwhich he depicts his headmounted on the long-leggedbody of a venomous spidercommonly known as a brownrecluse. He is staring at theviewer and his left eye appearsswollen shut and hideous.

He stopped by my lake house,across the road from his farm, to show me his painting.

Michael created it in a fury of emotional releaseimmediately after the last of the12 stained-glass windows he made were installed anddedicated at St. Catherine of Siena, a large Catholicparish in Portage, Michigan, capping a decade-longproject that transformed the church’s enormoussanctuary and adjacent meditation room into places ofastonishing beauty—a showcase for the highest levelsof artistic skill and craftsmanship.

“When the project was finally finished, all that wasinside of me instantly poured out on this canvas,”Michael said. I marveled at his work.

The St. Catherine projects, as beautiful and remarkableas they are, were commissioned and therefore had toconform to the guidelines of church committees andcanon. True, he poured his heart and soul into thoseworks and it shows in every detail. But he painted hisself-portrait in a burst of creative freedom—its beauty is divine as well, but in quite a different way.

A parishioner of St. Catherinemight have a different reactionthan I did—perhaps one ofastonishment that theunassuming 49-year-old artistsporting a well-groomed goatee,who adorned their church withexquisite mosaics, sculptures,stained glass windows and amonumental crucifix thatseemingly floats in the air abovetheir worship space, could paintsuch a grotesque image. LikeMichael’s entire body of artwork,including non-liturgical art, it isrich in symbolism and allegorythat invites seriouscontemplation.

But I understood, at least partially, the painting’smeaning and underlying motivation. He had enduredmuch during the course of creating his artisticachievement including being bitten by a real brownrecluse during the final phase completing one hismasterpieces—a life-size statue of John the Baptist.

Working in his studio virtually around the clockand under intense pressure to meet an impending deadline, Michael was asleep when the spider crept onhis face and bit him. Its venom caused his eye to swellshut and Michael, delirious and in shock, managed todrive himself to the hospital.

“I wanted to paint this since the day I was bit, butcouldn’t because of the deadline,” he said. “This ishow I felt, like a spider, a venomous spider.”

By William Allen Baltz Photography by Sherie Presta

Artist Michael Northrop shows MedicamentumAraneus at his farmhouse in Michigan.

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Near death with MSThe spider bite was only one in a series of mishaps and hardships that plagued him. Nothing, however,compares to his battle with multiple sclerosis.

When I met Michael in 2005, he was struggling withthe disease that first attacked him at age 24. It flaredup intermittently through theyears and by 2009 was gettingprogressively worse. The painshooting through his body likeelectrical shocks was at times sointense that he could not sleepfor days. He suffered throughdebilitating headaches, aconstant ringing in his ears andsevere nausea. Eventually, hecould scarcely move aroundwithout the aid of a cane andlater a wheel chair.

Desperate, he took experimentaldrugs that medical specialistssaid were designed to alleviatesome of the symptoms ofmultiple sclerosis—drugs thatcould also kill him—but by nomeans offered a cure.

He did not stop working, evenwhen he felt near death andquite possibly was. Yet, hishorrible affliction andtribulations he dealt with whilemaking extremely challenging liturgicalart never altered his stoic demeanor.

Once, while loading a large mosaic for delivery to a Catholic church nearDetroit, he passed out from the aftereffects of a recent spinal tap and themosaic fell precisely on its weakest pointand broke. Undaunted, Michael made yetanother piece—even more beautiful than the onebefore. Due to defective resin, however, this one shattered on its own while curing the day before delivery.

On top of all this, pressure from the donors at St.Catherine to finish his sculpture of John the Baptist andthe second set of stained glass windows intensified. Asharp businessman with ironclad contracts he was not.“I’m an artist, not a spreadsheet wiz,” he admitted.“But, I’ve learned now.”

Recalled to lifeOne day I visited St. Catherine to see Michael’s work in progress. Walking into the enormous sanctuary, thealter lit by an array of colors electrified by the sunstreaming through his stained glass windows, I cameto an abrupt halt when I saw the huge nine-foot highby eight-foot wide crucifix that Michael designed and

built with the help of fellow artists.

He painted the figure of Christusing tromp-l’oeil, a techniquewhereby the figure of Jesusappears three-dimensional andshockingly realistic. This is nosanitized version of thecrucifixion. Christ’s expression is one of desperation as well asintense human suffering—helooks like any man would who isdying an agonizing death. Bloodoozes from his head, hands andfeet. Jusepe de Ribera, the 17th

century master of portrayinghuman suffering, would surelyapprove.

In March of 2010, I stopped byMichael’s farm to say goodbyebefore returning to Chicago. In awheel chair, his body tormentedby pain and eyes dark from sleepdepravation, he bid farewell tome with a trembling voice. Theentire drive back I was haunted

by the prospect that I might never seehim again.

Then, something happened. When Inext saw Michael he was feeling andlooked better. During the next sevealmonths, I was overjoyed and amazed with

his progress. At a Christmas gathering athis farmhouse, we celebrated that Michael’s

doctors found no sign of multiple sclerosis. They didnot attribute hi s recovery to any drugs. In fact, medicalspecialists had no explanation why the diseasedisappeared from his body without a trace.

With a new lease on life Michael plunged back into his art. He invited me to join his group of volunteers to help complete his statue of John the Baptist.

I welcomed the opportunity. Meeting Michael hadreignited my passion for art and artists. Growing up in a northern suburb of Chicago, I made good use of

Michael’s crucifix, mosaics and stained glasswindows at St. Catherine of Siena Parish.

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a family membership to the Art Institute. I always had a keen interest in the lives of artists and, when Ipurchased art, it was because I had met and gotten to know the artist.

Occasionally I had dipped into Paul Johnson’s Art: ANew History, an incisive book written by an acclaimedBritish historian I admire. Now, it served as my chiefreference as I worked on the statue and discussed artwith Michael.

Moreover, I was intensely curious about his recoveryfrom multiple sclerosis and his thoughts on how thishappened.

I knew Michael was an accomplished artist whoworked in many mediums. He was skilled in thetechniques of the GreatMasters—artists from the 14th

century to theImpressionists—whereby oil isapplied to the canvas in layersand, done properly, produces asensuous transparent andtranslucent quality.

The Oratorians, a Catholicreligious order, recognized hisskill and commissioned him topaint a portrait of canonizedsaint that appeared in theVatican and he was one of a fewqualified to restore a 17th centurymasterpiece fresco in Italy. On the walls of his home, a mixture of farm-livingpracticality and urban art gallerysophistication, hang some of hispaintings—amazing copies hemade of works by Caravaggio, Rubens and Rembrandtas well as his original paintings, drawings, stainedglass and bronze-cast statues.

Assisting with John the Baptist was my chance to get toknow him better. “When we know about the life of anartist, we see his works in a different light, and it isright that we should,” wrote Johnson. “If paintingscould talk, they would have strange and illuminatingtales to tell.”

Indeed, there were other paintings I had seen in hishome and barn that intrigued me because they weremysterious and, though painted in the same style ofrealism, not the kind of paintings one would expectfrom an affable Midwestern art professor. Many of his

secular paintings are dark and foreboding—eventerrifying. One I saw hanging in the barn depicts a manstraining to lift himself over a ledge, his face in agony,while a three-eyed beast holds the man’s severedtesticles in one of its monstrous claws. Whatilluminating tales might I hear?

Life on the farm Michael lives on a farm that has been in his familysince 1899. It is located in the outskirts of Three Rivers,a small town about 130 miles east of Chicago. Hebought the farmhouse, old barn and several shedsfrom Arvid Norton, his maternal grandfather, who hadfallen on hard times when his entire hog herd froze todeath one winter. His cousin Bill bought the rest of the

property and farms the land.

It is a beautiful place, rich inhistory, where a dozen familymembers once crowded into theeleven-room house to weatherthe Great Depression livingvirtually self sufficient for adecade. The farmhouse issurrounded by flowering bushes,fruit trees, enormous oaks andmaples, and 80 acres of blackloamy earth that rolls outward to a thin line of trees marking the boundary between aneighboring farm.

“There is no where else I wouldrather live than here,” he said. In addition to a deep sense ofbelonging and more than 70relatives in the area who gatheron his farm each year for a

reunion, Michael says he is nourished by the area’sspiritual dimension.

Many believe that the spiritual energy created bysacred Native America burial grounds and a medicinewheel on the nearby property of an elderly hermit—who, for more than 40 years, has felt called tosafeguard them—are the manifestation of an “earthspirit” that pervades the land. “I can literally feel thechanges in energy here,” he said.

After St. Catherine approved his design, Michael’sinitial step was to sculpt the statue from 800 pounds of Michigan red clay. His first attempt failed when the

Working in his kitchen, Michael sculpts 800 lbsof red clay into John the Baptist.

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statue froze in his basement. So, he set up work in thekitchen but had to halt the project when his bout withmultiple sclerosis intensified. After he recovered, thelife-size statue gradually took shape under his skillfulhands. I watched in amazement as he transformedJohn’s face from a hunk of lifeless clay into an expressionalive with feeling. He worked quickly and confidently.

The next step was to create the mold. At this point,Robin Jewell, an accomplished artist and Michael’sstudent, helped coat the statue with a rubbercompound. The statue’s head, torso and arms were allseparate molds and each mold consisted of two halvesbolted together. This allowed Michael to take themapart, remove the clay and pour in a substance calledhydrocal that would eventually harden into cement.The base—composed of John’s legs and bare feet in a rockylandscape—was made separately.After several days of applyingthe rubber compound, wetransported the statue via dollyfrom the farmhouse to the oldbarn for completion.

The workshopBuilt by Michael’s ancestors usingnails forged in the farm’sblacksmith shop, the spacious oldbarn with its huge rafters serves ashis primary workshop. In thecenter, there is an enormouscustom-built table, sawhorses,and various tools for shapingstone. In one corner is a 1940s-erasoda fountain he got from thenearby Happy Landing restaurantcomplete with counter top, steelstools with rotating red vinyl seats,jute box, and a Coca-Cola menuboard spelling out the day’s specials.

Hanging on the walls are several of Michael’spaintings. One of my favorites is a scene in a diner,sometime in the 1930s. A man in a wrinkled suit,crumpled hat and cigarette dangling from his mouthsits in a stool at the counter next to a sweet, nicelydressed woman wearing a hat with a feather. She sits,looking downcast, as though the man has justmatter-of-factly told her that their affair is over. A sodajerk smiles mockingly as scores of rabbits, peering outfrom behind cereal boxes and chairs, look on.

In another painting, Michael’s father is holding baby

Michael outside a window seemingly about to drophim. The malevolent papa displays a guiltless smilewhile the naked baby peers at the viewer indifferent to his plight.

During the summer months various friends and artistscame to help. At times, the old barn was a beehive ofactivity. Reading up on the great Italian artists, I likedto fantasize that I was a humble apprentice in Andreadel Verrocchio’s renowned workshop in 15th centuryRome where assistants such as the young Leonardo Di Vinci, Perugino and Lorrenzo di Credi createdmonumental paintings and sculptures. In reality, ofcourse, I was an unskilled laborer not good for muchmore than lifting, mixing, sanding, fetching suppliesand lending moral support during innumerable times of frustration and despair.

We built a wood crate to hold theenormous mold making it easierto lift and rotate it for pouring inthe hydrocal mix. At virtuallyevery turn, there were challengesand problems to solve. One ofhis assistants over sanded John’sleft leg to the point whereMichael, already troubleshootinga host of other issues, said, inexasperation, that the leg wouldbe “very sexy if only John were a woman.”

When it came time to mix andpour the hydrocal into the moldwe worked furiously. Because ofthe short drying time, it wascritical to fill the mold rapidly,which required us to mix dozensof buckets of the substance,pour and mix more.

I could not fathom how this gigantic mold—with itsleaks, bolts, seams and different parts—could possiblyproduce a stone sculpture as beautiful as the clayversion with John’s well-defined muscles, curly hairand penetrating eyes. I was not the only one—thedonors funding the project paid a visit and promptlycontacted church authorities to express their shock.

Great art comes from painSometimes I would stay for supper of steak, potatoesand a salad with tomatoes, peppers, and herbs—everything from Michael’s farm, including the meat. In the warm, half-lit evenings, the old sheds, cows

Artist Robin Jewell and Michael apply a rubbercompound to make the mold.

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standing motionless, sounds of unseen birds, driftingfeathery balls from cottonwoods, and the land overflowing with corn took on a sublime sensuality.

For all its beauty and ethereal feeling, Michael saw or,more precisely, felt another side. “Outwardly, this farmis beautiful and I feel peace here. But look closely. Youwill see that something somewhere is dying, being eaten,scavenging or hunting for a meal. It represents both myexternal and internal life and that’s why I love it so.”

To some degree I understood. This is the country andfarm life is a world apart from the tranquil communityof nearby lake homes, including mine. Once I showedup to work and Michael greeted me wearing ablood-spattered t-shirt. He apologized for hisappearance and calmly related that he had just bashedin a woodchuck’shead with a shovelbecause it hadattacked his dog,which in turn hadbeen threatening thewoodchuck’s young.The T-bones wedevoured on theveranda came fromone of Bill’s cows,similar to the onesidling peacefully inthe corral. There wasalways a hawk circlingabove, a carcass ofsome half-eatencritter in the fields,the early-morningsounds of shot gunblasts, the howlingscreeches at night of ahapless creature being eaten alive by an owl—alwayssomething to remind one of the carnage of life.

For me, our conversations were enlightening andeducational. Michael was steeped in the history ofpainting, sculpture, architecture, religions, the life and times of great artists, mystics and philosophers.

He is most inspired by Jan van Eyck and I can see why.Van Eyck, writes Johnson, “was the first to explore [oilpainting’s] possibilities to the full, and he did so withself-confidence and professionalism, which markedevery aspect of his work.”

The same applies to Michael. He is the antithesis ofself-doubt, hesitation and indecision. There were manyinstances working on the statue when, I must admit, I was glad I was not in his shoes. Tough decisions hadto be made, the kind that could mean financial disasterfor him. He would size up the situation, consult withothers, then decide and forge ahead. Even when thingsdid not pan out, with Michael there was nosecond-guessing, remorse or self-pity.

“My illness taught me that he who hesitates is not justlost,” he said after making a paticularly tough call. “Hewho hesitates is dead.”

I also gained insight into his own motivations andinspirations as an artist. “Great art comes from pain,”

he related one eveningduring a break fromour labors. “Peopleask me if I paintflowers or landscapes.I tell them no. A floweris perfect, just stepoutside and look atone.”

Many of his paintingsare inspired by thegrim reality of dealingwith an insidiousdisease that allows forperiods of relativelygood health thenflares up with avengeance. One is apicture of a young manlying naked on hisside. Next to him is asyringe and behind

him a skeleton. With a sardonic smile, the skeletonreaches around the man and in his bony hand showshim a clock, bidding him to ponder his fate. Like manyof Michael’s paintings he makes use of chiaroscuro toheighten the drama producing a scene that is at oncestrikingly sensuous and disturbing.

Not all of his work is jarring or sinister, but all attemptto convey a message. “Using symbols and allegory, Iwant people to think, to view their lives or somethingdifferently,” Michael said. “Ultimately, a good artisthas the power to do that.”

A wood cage is built in the old barn to maneuver the heavy statue torso. At every turn problems must be solved as the deadline approaches.

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On the verge of fame During one of our suppers, Michael related how hebegan his career as an artist. “I was always makingstuff and I made a sculpture and a copy of Ruben’sAnnunciation and it came out okay,” he said. In 1996 hewon a partial lottery ticket that paid for a trip to Italywhere he was inspired and transformed by the art. “Icame back and took a class in portrait art from a lawcourt artist. When the instructor looked at my work, he said I was better than he was,” Michael said. “So, I took a course with Martha Mayer Erlebacher at theKalamazoo Institute of Art. When I got to the class itwas packed. I had to set up my easel directly in front of a nude model staring right into her naked crotch. I was the only non-professional artist.”

Erlebacher, a renownedrealist painter, taught in thestyle of the Great Mastersand Michael wasenthralled. During ourconversation, he excusedhimself from the table andretrieved his first painting,created while takingErlebacher’s workshop. Heset the painting in front ofme and I was astonished byits beauty—a portrait of 15th

century woman withflowing red hair, pensiveeyes and seductive smile.

Two years later, Michaelrecounted, he wasapprenticing with artistKenneth Freed at theKalamazoo Institute of Art. He helped Freed with hisMadonna and Child, an enormous painting that nowhangs in his barn. He also studied anatomy under JohnBuscema, the famous artist for Marvel comics.

In 1992, Michael was set to play the organ at aprestigious Bach festival. Just before the concert, helost feeling in his left hand from multiple sclerosis. “I got through the concert, but quit playing and gavemyself totally over to fine art,” he said. In 1994, hewon an art competition juried by artist Jack Beal, whowas impressed with Michael and invited him to studycomposition at Epano, his bucolic retreat andworkshop in Franklin Mountain, New York.

Steven Doherty, editor of American Artist magazine,heard about Michael and came to his studio and asked

him to write a feature about his art. Michael was on the verge of notoriety and a fabulous career. He went to New York to review his article at Doherty’s officewhile his works were selling at several New Yorkgalleries. In 1996, the popular television show SundayMorning with Charles Kuralt was going to featureMichael and his art. “I was in New York eating a burgerand saw a guy in a hard hat reading my article inAmerican Artist,” he said. “I was on top of the world.”

Then, so characteristic of the many ill-timed and quirkymaladies that have befallen him, Michael faced a majorsetback. While studying at Beal’s Epano one summer,he contracted Lyme disease from a tick bite, whichtriggered a multiple sclerosis flare-up. He becamehorribly sick and had to cancel the television show.

Depressed and ill, heresigned from his 14-yearposition as pastor of aNazarene church and wentto the Mayo Clinic fortreatment. He then traveledto Italy and began readingbooks on healing andmysticism. After aninspiring and intenselymoving visit to St. Peter’sBasilica he decided toconvert to RomanCatholicism.

Soon afterwards, Arvid told him that he was facingfinancial ruin and had tosell the farm. Michaelcashed out his retirementsavings to buy a portion of

the property. He sought refuge in the old barn, whichhad no electricity or heat, and subsisted there for threeyears until Arvid died allowing him to move into thehouse.

One of his art apprentices during that time was thecousin of the dean at Glen Oaks Community College innearby Centreville. She encouraged Michael to applyfor a teaching position. “I was hired immediately,” he said. The college, however, required him to get a Masters in Fine Arts. So, he enrolled at WesternMichigan University in Kalamazoo. “I wanted to learnmore than the university was offering so I went to theTamarind Institute of Lithography in Santa Fe andstudied egg tempera with Michael Bergt and frescoswith Gary Marisch.”

Michael struggles with focusing after a brown reclusespider bites him near his left eye.

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Michael also went to the SACI Academia in Florence,Italy, where he received rigorous training in artconservation. “I trained under a woman who hadrestored all of Caravaggio’s work and a 16th centurychapel,” he said. “It was one of the most fulfillingtimes of my life. I worked in room in Galileo Galilei’shouse restoring a 17th century fresco by MassimoStanzione, the Virgin and Child, in a private collection. I was in a perpetual state of euphoria.”

Opportunity knocks His experience and skills came to the attention ofFather Kevin Covert, pastor of St. Catherine. In 2003,the church embarked on a multi-million dollar programto renovate the church’ssanctuary and otherspaces. He interviewedMichael for the positionof overseeing thecreation and installationof all artwork. Michaelwas in the actual St.Catherine in Siena, Italywhen he was informedthat he had beenselected for the position.

For the next severalyears, and with the helpof his apprentices andstudents, he created aseries of artworksincluding a sculpture of Mary and Joseph, a painting of Mary andElizabeth, two toweringmosaics, numerous stained glass windows, a tiled baptismal pool and a painting of the angel Gabriel. Michael painted the front side of the enormous crucifix in his barn, and finished the obverse side, which features symbolic elements especially pertinent to the consecration, in the church.

I got to know Father Kevin, a large and gregarious man,who enjoyed wine and feasting well into the night atMichaels’s house. He was immensely knowledgeableon all things Catholic but clearly did not oppose life’scarnal pleasures or judge those who indulged in them.I likened him to an affectionate church patron in thehigh Renaissance, and I sensed that he derived avicarious pleasure interacting with an artist whoseworks are erotic, sensual and provocative.

“Michael possesses the rarest of qualities. In my mind

he is one of the greatest liturgical artists alive becausehe has complete and total mastery over both subjectmatter and art,” he told me one summer evening as weenjoyed sauvignon blanc on my cabin deck.

Over budget and his church clients threatening legalaction, Michael was so paralyzed by pain andexhaustion that, at one point, he was forced to hireanother artist to help complete his statue of SaintMary. In many ways, Michael’s life echoed the brilliantyet desperate and tumultuous existence thatCaravaggio endured—constantly hounded, jugglingobligations, and all the while attempting to createworks of art under extreme duress.

“I was overwhelmed and,looking back, shouldhave stopped work andlet myself heal,” he said.“I was desperate for a cure and that wasactually the root of my problem.”

Michael related that hebegan investigatingShamanism and took aclass in Reiki, a Japanesehealing technique, from a local practitioner. Hewent on to become amaster Reiki teacher anddevoted Shaman,regularly retreating to asecluded spot on his farmwhere he induces thehypnotic state necessary

for Shamanic journeys and visions that he carefullyrecords in a journal.

“I needed to get to a point, on a very esoteric level,where I chose to stop being the victim and start gettingwell,” he said. “People want a pill, a cure, a magicbullet. But Illness is part of the cycle of life and you canlearn from it. In fact, the seeds of our own healing liewithin us. I learned that, if I genuinely chose to getwell, I could—and I did.”

He related that this healing process, in which painplays and integral role, was the meaning behind thetitle of his painting, “Medicine of the Spider.”

“My paintings come from the place between the pastand future, male and female, light and dark—theliminal zone,” he said. “The spider makes a web and

One of many all-night sessions, Michael cuts steelrods to secure the statue torso to the base.

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feels every little vibration. When we are still enough,we can feel the vibrations of all the things that affectus and that in turn we affect. This leads to a morecareful examination of one’s life and place in the world.This is powerful medicine, more powerful than a curebecause when you go through an inward healingprocess you heal everything—your mind and spirit aswell as your body.”

Michael is critical of much of the new art he sees today.Arts schools over the past century, he believes, havelargely failed to teach the rigors of drawing and thepreparation and application of paint, or impart an in-depth understanding of anatomy, perspective and light.

The result is what Paul Johnson terms “fashionart”—leaping from one fad tothe next led by a conspiracyamong elite galleries, millionaireartists and critics to orchestrateand profit from the next fashionshow. It is for this reason thatMichael is not an admirer ofcubism, expressionism andother modern “isms.” Untilrecently he felt thatImpressionism was “sloppy”because of the manner in whichpaint was applied.

“Artists were once a servantclass. They came from thepeople,” Michael said. “Art hasbeen taken from the people andthat’s why most people don’tlike or understand what theysee.

“I had an instructor who said that if you spend morethan 60 seconds looking at a painting you were rapingthe artist. This kind of thinking is pervasive andoutrageous. Go to any museum and you will see howpeople rush by many of the contemporary works. Whyshould they linger? Great art, on the other hand,invites you to look closely, ponder it in relation to yourown life, and return again and again.”

Between conformity and freedomFinishing John the Baptist came down to the wire. Weworked day and night two weeks before delivery. I wasenthralled when the mold was first removed, exposingJohn’s face—that compelling and mystical expression I had seen in clay but could not imagine surviving was there.

The head, torso and arms required much sanding andrepairing. It weighed hundreds of pounds and requiredan elaborate system of straps and a hydraulic hoist tolift. Even then, it took six of us to move it. At one point,I accidentally broke off one of John’s fingers and felthorrible. “No sweat,” said Michael accustomed torepairing many breaks. “If John can lose his head, he can lose a finger.”

Fitting the torso on the base was an engineeringchallenge in itself. Even though we had a hydraulic lift,we needed to position the massive torso on the basenumerous times until Michael could figure exactlywhere sanding and drilling was required to produce atight and stable fit. This process required a great dealof time—and Advil.

In addition, due to technicalfactors, he was unable to savethe mold of John’s head. He hadpeople lined up that wanted tobuy a bust and now that route tore-cooping some of his sizablefinancial loss was cut off.Thousands of hours had goneinto the statue, and hiscommission did not even coverhalf the expenses, let alone hisor anyone else’s time.

It was at this point, exhaustedand dispirited, that the brownrecluse bit Michael. Unable torest and fully recover, he had totackle the challenging task oftransporting and installing thestatue, and lurking in the back

of his mind was the terrifying prospect that thespider’s venom might trigger the return of multiplesclerosis. Our concern was that the statue might breakduring the 20-mile trip to the church—one pothole,bump, encounter with a bounding deer, or roughrailroad crossing could mean ruin.

The statue was to be installed on a Saturday afternoonbefore the mass at 3 p.m. At exactly 2:59 p.m. it was in place, not without difficulty, to the delight of St.Catherine’s clergy and parishioners. For us, it wasanticlimactic and we left exhausted and grateful theordeal was over.

Michael was not finished, though. The church wasbreathing down his neck to install the final set ofstained glass windows depicting the “seven days ofcreation” to complement his already installed Celtic

At the church, the statue’s torso requires sixpeople to move it. One misstep means ruin.

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knot—a stunningly beautiful piece symbolizing the dayof rest. Once again he worked day and night, this timemaking thousands of cuts of glass, more than onceslicing into his own fingers.

Weeks later I returned to the church to see thewindows and marvel at the statue of John the Baptist,now painted and complete with his wooden staff,which Robin Jewell donated.

I noted that on the walls of the meditation room are plaques with the names of those who donated money for the renovation and Michael’s monumental art projects. Like a medieval church whose art was created by anonymous geniuses, Michael’s name (and those of the artists who helped him) is nowhere to be found except hidden under the skirt of John the Baptist. “Ego is not always a good thing,” he said. “Imagine what the angels at Chartres would look like if every artist wanted to makesomething of theirown creation just tosatisfy their ego.There would be no harmony, no symmetry. We live in asociety where the ego is driving people do somethingjust because they can with no thought about theconsequences.”

For all his efforts and suffering, Michael lost money onvirtually every liturgical project. His church clients gota bargain—a gift, you might say, from heaven, andthere was something ironic in their hardball businesstactics, especially with a man who was desperately illand merely wanted to please.

Michael is now focused on creating his own art,teaching and conducting oil and watercolor workshops.

The setting for his latest workshop, “Creativity &Reiki,” is his farm. “My vision is to create a spiritual,healing and artistic center,” he said. “I’m proof thatthis vision can change and save lives.”

During the course of getting to know and assistMichael, I learned that great art does indeed comefrom pain. And something else: “Of all the problemswhich afflict artists and afflict them more intensely the

stronger their skillsand passions,” wroteJohnson, “the mostimportant is choosingbetween conformityand freedom.” Iconcluded that it is a good thing thatMichael is free onceagain to create workssuch as MedicamentumAraneus.

William Allen Baltz isan independent writerwho resides inNorthbrook, IL. Hismost recent essaysare, “A Little BrotherRemembers,”published by the NewYork Times on the50th anniversary of amid-air planecollision over NewYork City in 1960 thatkilled his brotherStephen; and the“The Last Hunt,”outwardly an accountof teaching

a shelter-rescued springerspaniel how to hunt, buton a deeper level ameditation on thecultivation of humanpotential. He has alsowritten about theexperiences of combatveterans, including thosecoping with post-traumaticstress disorder throughart, music and poetry.

St. John the Baptist installed minutes before the final deadline and mass.

© 2013 William Allen Baltz, © 2013 Sherie Presta. All rights reserved.