Public Art Project billboard

From the Public Art Project press release:

Four Evangelists

April – June 2008

The Four Evangelists, a photographic collage billboard project by Andrew Maydoney, is created in the tradition of miniature paintings from illuminated manuscripts. Parallel to this project, Andrew Maydoney’s project “Way Finding” and immersive photographic collage cyclorama will also be on exhibit at Cranbrook Art Museum from 18 April 2008 through 10 May 2008.

Maydoney’s explorations challenge us to consider new ways to look at and consider the space between classic miniature painting and contemporary modes of image production: If early miniaturists could paint with photographs, what would the images look like? How would such images function?

Specifically, this project references folio 27v from the Book of Kells, perhaps one of the most renown illuminated manuscripts dating approximately from the year 800. Following sacred and
secular notions of iconography, the evangelists are commonly depicted in the form of a human, a lion, an eagle and a sacrificial bull. These symbols evoke four common virtues associated with traditional ideas of salvation: reason, courage, determination, and sacrifice.

Maydoney composes street imagery to speak to broader universal and secular notions of storytelling. This collage is about how images of people in conversation, images of street graffiti and detritus create a new context for mutual understanding and secular communion. Most of the imagery in this project comes from the streets of Poland and the Czech Republic, places with long social histories of change and evolution. The Four Evangelists is part of Andrew Maydoney’s continuing collage series Illuminations.

Maydoney’s work is primarily exploring notions of street theology. He states: “My work explores the extension of myth and fable to discover contemporary cultural conditions. I am specifically considering the way beliefs manifest in the street to create an evolving secular street theology.” To see more of this work, visit www.andrewmaydoney.com

Andrew Maydoney received his BFA from the University of Massachusetts in 1991 and will receive his MFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in May 2008.  He has exhibited widely and has received numerous art and design awards.

The offices for The Public Art Project are located at Lemberg Gallery at 23241 Woodward Avenue in Ferndale. The Billboard features a new installation approximately every three months, and is located on the SW corner of Woodward and Maplehurst in Ferndale, one-half mile south of Ten Mile Road. For additional information or to submit a billboard proposal please contact the Public Art Project at (248) 591-6623.