LOVELAND, Colo.—The artist behind an artwork destroyed in Loveland will create a new painting for a church there.
The pastor of Resurrection Fellowship, Jonathan Wiggins, told church members during weekend services that Enrique Chagoya will create a portrait of Jesus.
The offer came up during discussions they had been having after the display of Chagoya’s work drew protests at the Loveland Museum.
It shows what appears to be an iconic image of the head of Jesus on top of the body of a woman engaged in a sex act. Chagoya says it’s about the corruption of the spiritual.
A Montana woman is accused of destroying the work. Wiggins told church members he suggested that Chagoya create a new work showing an “uncorrupted” image of Christ representing love and understanding.
Wiggins told his congregation the he began exchanging e-mails with Chagoya before Kathleen Folden allegedly took a crowbar to a glass case holding Chagoya’s work and ripping up the image.
“Whoever is without sin cast the first crowbar,” Wiggins said he wrote Chagoya after expressing regret at the works’ destruction.
Wiggins said Chagoya, who did not immediately return messages left by The Associated Press Monday, agreed in an e-mail to begin working on a portrait as early as this week, with the finished work ready by spring. Chagoya suggested a “spiritual abstraction portrait,” or an abstraction of a cross, but agreed to a portrait after Wiggins suggested several themes from the Bible.
Loveland Cultural Services Director Susan Ison applauded the agreement and called it “a positive response to a very contentious situation.” With the original print collected by police as evidence, an image of the work is on display at the museum in a book.
Edward Armijo, deacon at St. John’s the Evangelist Catholic Church in Loveland, who said he organized the protest against the artwork after seeing children staring and giggling at the piece, decried the agreement.
“How can you even entertain the thought of allowing somebody like that to paint, to draw a portrait of our Lord?” Armijo said. “He (Chagoya) creates pornography for a living.”
Folden, meanwhile, has pleaded not guilty to felony criminal mischief. Her trial is scheduled for January.
