Sudbury artist Heather Wise twirls a key chain with a tiny, terracotta-coloured head dangling on the end. It’s a small memento of what has come to be known as the Temporary Jesus Head incident.
A decade ago, Wise first created that unusual head in clay to fix a vandalized statue at a local church.
It did not go according to plan. The resulting furor put Sudbury, Ont., on the international map for a time, and attracted all kinds of attention for Wise. It’s only now, 10 years after her creation caused headlines around the world, that Wise is finally ready for an interview.
“I became one of the most infamous, famous artists on the planet,” she said recently.
Wise’s involvement in the story started in October 2016, when she crafted a replacement for a missing marble head of a statue of baby Jesus cradled in Mary’s arms on the front lawn of Sainte-Anne-des-Pins Catholic Church in downtown Sudbury.
A year earlier someone had made off with the son of God’s head, and Wise said seeing the decapitated baby had made her sad.
“I was just going to make a temporary head to give it dignity, and spend all winter learning how to carve a stone head,” she said.
Artist Heather Wise says this temporary clay head was never meant to be the final fix for the statue, but it attracted attention right away. (Marina von Stackelberg/CBC)
It also occurred to her that it would be a way to show her talent.
“In my head I was thinking, ‘Wow, an opportunity to do a gig for a depiction of Christ for the Catholic Church’,” she said. “This is a good part of my resume. I had no idea it would become internationally famous.”
With the blessing of the parish priest, she mocked up a head using dollar store clay, a notably darker medium than the white marble of the statue.
The head featured a large nose, thick neck and spiky crown.
“All in all, I don’t think he’s ugly,” Wise said in a recent interview. “I think he’s got a unique look.”
The priest at the time, Father Gérard Lajeunnesse, told reporters he appreciated Wise’s offer.
“The pose is a bit unnatural, and, I think, around the mouth, the upper lip is maybe a bit in too much, but of course it’s a first try and hopefully whatever is done at the end will please everyone,” he said.
But the new head quickly attracted unfavourable comparisons to a Simpsons character or a chia pet.
Almost overnight, a Facebook post went viral with 14 million views, prompting mockery in the comments and triggering international media coverage.
Father Lajeunesse went on to do interviews with CBC Radio’s As it Happens, The Toronto Star, CNN, The Guardian and The Daily Mail.
Wise did not offer interviews — until now.
“A lot of the media was not exactly nice,” she said. “One headline was, ‘Someone commissioned the worst artist in the world’ when you didn’t see any of my other art. So how would you know?”
Memes adapting Wise’s temporary Jesus head quickly spread. (TemporaryJesusHead/Instagram)
Wise’s creation did not last long. When the clay started to dissolve in the rain, staining the marble, it was returned to Wise, who still has it.
The statue’s original marble head was eventually returned to the church and re-attached. The furor died down.
In the years since, Wise has come to terms with becoming the butt of so many jokes.
“Some of the bullying was just straight up mean,” Wise said. “But these are people that you don’t know, know nothing about you. And also when you don’t take things personally, you can distance that negative energy from you. And we have that power in our mind.”
Now she can laugh at the memes, one of which placed the clay head on then-prime minister Justin Trudeau, another on Darth Vader.
The local art community rallied around her, Wise said, with some even getting tattoos of the head.
A student made a three-dimensional temporary Jesus head mask for a theatre project for university.
Temporary statue head of baby Jesus back in hands of Sudbury artist
Statue’s temporary Jesus head garners international attention
Then a Sudbury garage band called Strange Attractor wrote a song thanking her for making the head.
“These guys have toured Europe and when I heard it, I loved that song,” she said.
What pleases her most, perhaps, is being mentioned in art magazine articles. There was one about botched restorations.
“For instance, somebody grabbed Tutankhamun’s death mask beard, broke it off and tried to fix it with crazy glue,” she said. “Somebody painted the Lord Buddha statues like they’re out of a candy shop.”
Sudbury artist Heather Wise shows off some of her original artwork in her studio. (Kate Rutherford/CBC)
Another article featuring her head, she said, was about art that was so bad, it was good.
Temporary Jesus Head even appeared in a German book about art accidents, she said.
“They said with all the cyber bullying, Heather Wise did what Jesus would have done: I responded with love,” she said of the book. “Well, I’m not Jesus. Whoa, that’s blasphemous. But wow, what a complimentary comparison.”
A final upshot of the Temporary Jesus Head incident is that the previously agnostic Wise has begun going to church — and is even thinking about becoming a Catholic.
“What I love about Christianity, is that we’re all imperfect,” she said. “I feel so free not judging people.”
