Email
PrintAngels of imagination
Maria Santilli's "Angel of Peace."
Jory Farr
"Once the eyes go on, it has a soul. And when it has a soul, it calls you back to work,” says Maria Santilli.
Santilli is standing in her Short North apartment in front of her latest creation, a work in progress called the “Angel of Peace.” Just the face, hair and eyes are glued down—the lips full, the irises a deep lapis blue, the gaze piercing and compassionate.
But already the angel has a hauntingly beautiful androgynous presence. And it’s easy to imagine the rest of the body, which Santilli has sketched on the plywood backing, along with a penciled-in dove hovering above. She’ll glue the cracked, one-of-a-kind tile pieces by hand, like solving a jigsaw puzzle, and once the whole composition is done in a few months, she’ll grout it. By then, it will be a 6-by-4-foot mosaic weighing perhaps 100 pounds.
“Is it a male or female?” I ask. “It looks both.”
“It depends on who is viewing it,” Santilli says with a wry smile. “Women think it’s female. Men think it’s male. Run your hands along the face. Notice the ridges and textures. I want people to be able to touch my art. I want them to feel it.”
Thus far, Santilli has completed two large angel mosaics. One is the “Angel of Annunciation,” an interpretation of the classic biblical work featuring an angel at the foot of Mary’s bed telling her she’s to expect the Messiah. The other is the “Angel of Serenity.” Both have messenger stories befitting the purpose of angels.
“I started making the ‘Angel of Annunciation’ three months before 9/11, and only the wings were left to do. But after the terror attacks, I could not bring myself to give her wings and set her free because it would’ve been like announcing the victory of terrorism. So I put her in storage. It took me 10 years to pick up that angel again—until bin Laden was killed. Then I put wings on her. She came to symbolize the rupture in the world and the hope for peace.”
The “Angel of Serenity” took shape after Santilli was pregnant with her son.
“There was a strong possibility of a miscarriage,” she says. “And I went to the hospital bleeding. I was in my seventh month and I had placenta previa, where the placenta falls off prematurely. I was, of course, terrified. I was devastated.”
“Well, one night I lay at home in this state of terror, with my feet up,” she continues. “I was in this twilight mode, half awake. It had to be 2 am. And suddenly an angel appeared at my feet. She didn’t speak, but I understood she was telling me everything would be all right. I remember she was surrounded by light and I felt blessed in my faith.”
The story reminded me of Angels in America, Tony Kushner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, in which an angel comes to a gay man infected with AIDS. It’s a classic visit from a mythical, semi-divine being. For angels come when we’re wounded in body or soul.
Each time I look at Santilli’s numinous angels, I see something different. And when I move back, eight to 10 feet away, they paradoxically come into sharper focus.
Her “Angel of Annunciation” is done in white, blue, yellow, green, burgundy and black shards. Ancient Greek, Roman and Byzantine artisans used little stones, pebbles, glass and tesserae. But Santilli’s tiles are a wild assortment of shapes that give unexpected motion to every detail. The angel’s eyes are beveled and unmistakably tilted heavenward. Her locks of hair flow and the curved, wavelike pieces cause the feathers on the angel’s wings to seemingly take flight.
Mosaics of angels are not new. But Santilli’s approach is fresh. Her angels are at once modern and ancient, sleek and timeless. They lure you into the mystery of the other world even as they awaken your imagination with their eternal resolve. To ponder them for any amount of time is to feel at peace.
Santilli, 46, was born in Columbus, but raised in Pescara, Italy.
“We were a classic Italian-Catholic family,” says Santilli, who speaks fluent Italian. “My dad was very strict. Though I loved to draw, art was forbidden. It was considered a waste of time. But I saw lots of art in churches. And I studied architecture and realized there was a mathematical equation to everything. It gave me an inside knowledge into creating the mosaics to appear lifelike.”
Eventually, Santilli decided to go into one of the family trades, the beauty business. She has been a stylist ever since, teaching master classes in hair design all over the country. But though she loves her field, she says she knows her calling is art.
“I thrive in creating what doesn’t exist,” she says. “I try to re-imagine mosaics as I see them in my mind’s eye. I see curves and motion and color colliding. Mosaics are eternal and tactile. We can still see the mosaics the ancient Greeks and Romans did. They captivate every generation.”
Jory Farr can be reached at joryfarr@gmail.com.
