Pray, Hope, and Don't Worry

 

I uploaded this picture and I'm thinking of how I am going to explain it. It is the story of Our Lady of Guadalupe. How does this fit as a journal entry? I don't know. When I started this collage, I just had the background. I have 8 boards for this project, and I painted and/or put transfers on the front and back of each board right at the start. So, I took this one background and started looking for an image. Wait. Maybe I had the image and started looking for a background? I forget, but these two were meant for each other. So now what? Something made me think religion. These people look like they don't have it too easy. I would bet they pray for help. So, I began to look through my saint cards. Some of them are in Spanish. I was thinking  Padre Pio. It turns out that though the card is in Spanish, he was Italian. In the end I chose OL of G. She is just so colorful, and what a great story. You simply cannot beat Catholicism for colorful stories and saints. So in the end, I wrote out a condensed version of the story on the collage. There is no direct connection to the imagery, but I feel OK with that. I feel like it isn't hard for someone to make a connection by themselves.

Back to the beginning, when I was thinking of how to talk about this collage, it occurred to me that I could do a book of Saint collages. I'm all over the place with this, no telling where it is heading. But seriously, if you click on the Padre Pio link and read his story... amazing. I could do a book just on saints that had the stigmata! If that isn't enough, Pio is the "unofficial" patron saint of stress relief and the January Blues. WTF??? (You've heard? January 22 has been declared the most depressing day of the year. There is significant research behind this) This is because of his famous saying, "Pray, Hope, and Don't Worry."