Stained Glass Windows Featuring Controversial Figures As Saints

Many controversial characters have achieved sainthood throughout history, and even saints like Paul the Apostle, Francis of Assisi and Teresa of Avila have skeletons in their closet.

So perhaps in some far off future age, when there's nothing left of the entertainers of today but the strong impression they made on pop culture, the stars will achieve sainthood.

If those idols and sinners ever get called up to the big leagues and become saints the stained glass windows created in their honor will probably look a lot like the amazing works of Neal Fox.

Neal wanted to pay homage to the gods of the underground such as Johnny Cash, J.G. Ballard, Hunter S. Thompson, Screamin' Jay Hawkins and Serge Gainsbourg in a hip yet traditional manner.

So he built his stained glass panels the old fashioned way- using leaded stained glass in a steel frame, with each window measuring about 8 feet tall.

From the Daniel Blau exhibition notes:

As traditional church windows show the iconography of saints, through representations of events in their lives, instruments of martyrdom and iconic motifs, Fox plays with the symbolism of each character’s cult of personality; Albert Hoffman takes a psychedelic bicycle ride above the LSD molecule, J G Ballard dissects the world, surrounded by 20th Century imagery and the eroticism of the car crash, and Johnny Cash holds his inner demon in chains after a religious experience in Nickerjack cave.

-Via Dangerous Minds