Kayla Areglado
Our Lady of Guadalupe
Prompt: We were asked to use clay hand-building techniques to create a clay architectural model inspired by a building in Greenwich Village. Our professor asked us to take a walk around Greenwich Village, find a building that we found interesting and use this as a basis for our project. This could be a literal iteration of a building or a reinterpretation of one.
This piece is a simplified version of the Our Lady of Guadalupe at St. Bernard Church in Chelsea. I chose to the church as my inspiration for the project because Our Lady of Guadalupe holds a special place in my heart because I used to attend mass at a church with the same name back in the Philippines. When I walked by it in Chelsea, I was immediately drawn by its architecture, and upon further research, found that it was the first church in NYC that was built to cater to the growing Hispanic community.
This was my first time working with clay, so I had to keep simplifying the piece throughout the making process. I simplified the facade of the church and kept the key elements it had – the large openings that were windows and doors. I wanted the inside of the clay structure to be accessible to represent how religions (not specifically Catholicism) are meant to be accepting communities.