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978-0-89587-215-9
0-89587-215-3
$12.95 paperback
5 1/2" x 8 1/2"
212 pages
color and black-and-white photographs, index
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In September 1987, Ben Long
got his first look at the altar wall of St. Peter's Catholic Church in
Charlotte, North Carolina. Over 30 feet high at its peak, encompassing
1,540 square feet, it was the size of a small house. Long's job was to
cover it with a fresco painting.
He was not intimidated. With
frescoes in Italy and the North Carolina mountains to his credit, Long
had a reputation on two continents. A modern man practicing an ancient
and demanding technique, he liked the challenge of creating an artifact
for the ages, an artwork designed to last as long as the building
containing it.
The project consumed the next
two years of his life. Long and the priest at St. Peter's, Father John
Haughey, sometimes disagreed bitterly over the content of the fresco,
recalling the battle of wills between the more famous prototypes,
Michelangelo and Pope Julius II.
This is the story of the St.
Peter's fresco from its birth, when the struggling church was given a
second life, to its aftermath, when Long received a commission for a
major fresco in the NationsBank Building in Charlotte. It tells of the
small crew of artists who paid their own expenses to learn fresco from
Long. It tells of the wall itself, with its great capacity for absorbing
plaster and pigment, love and anger, wine and sweat, exhilaration and
despair.
But mostly, it tells of Ben
Long, a talented, complex man who learned his craft from teachers as
different as his evangelist grandfather and an Italian master, in places
as diverse as Vietnam and Florence--a man bucking the tide of
contemporary art in his effort to create something of lasting beauty.
about the author
Richard Maschal first saw the St. Peter's fresco on assignment for
his newspaper, the Charlotte Observer. Art and architecture
critic at the time, he was so impressed that he stayed to witness much
of the progress of the work. The recipient of an NEA fellowship in the
humanities, Maschal has also published articles in the New York
Times, Architectural Record, and Southern Accents. He lives
in Charlotte, North Carolina.
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