Michael’s Story

I was lettering a wall menu for a friend who was getting ready to open a sandwich shop the following week. I had just finished a very handsome "Blueberry Muffin with Cream Cheese" when everyone - the plumbers, the electrician, the cabinet maker - stopped for a morning break. Looking for something to read while I drank my coffee, I picked up someone's pocket Bible. "For I am persuaded," Paul said in his letter to the Romans, "that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities... nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God." I finished my work on the menu, but something had changed. Why not use the alphabet, I thought, to share words like Paul's? My experience, my revelation, in the sandwich shop was that a larger text had beckoned to me. I share these words of praise from the settings of my beliefs and activities. The symbolism of the artwork is personal, as well as general; the Scripture is often a paraphrase or a combination of translations. Family, work, friendship, the seasons, music, memory… these are the experiences in which I have seen the line that separates the 'spiritual' from the 'secular' blur and then completely disappear. These are the experiences in which I have found God's good gifts and tender mercies sufficient to the needs of everyday life.

— Michael Podesta 1942-2020