After my photoshoot I decided to upload the images and play around with them using photoshop and other various editing apps. This idea fits in quite nicely with my sculpting techniques; just as I sculpted one original finger from clay and cast the copies in plaster, only one photo was taken of the finger and the others were duplicated. This echoes the fact that Catholics today are worshiping a relic that has been fabricated 3 times and is claimed to be owed by 4 different churches. 

I began by cutting the finger from the photograph and duplicated it 3 times. With these 4 identical fingers I began to build up a reliquary around them .

The photograph had the fingers at an elevated level in relation to the decorative pieces; I thought that this would be appropriate as I wanted to enphasise their 'importance'. 

As you can see below, there are marks and imperfections where I have cut out the images. To amend this I used an app called ProCreate to darken patches, correct the colour and straighten up some edges. I also had to edit the coluring in the decorative pieces as they were different to the fingers.

The end result was definitely a complex pattern. I wanted this as my research into relics and reliquaries suggested that the bigger the reliquary the more important the relic. The completely black background does make the image look rather flat. In order to have more depth in the piece, taking inspiration from Kris Kuksi, I need to add a colored light to the image. 

I used an app that allows you to recreate analog photo effects, light leaks and textures. I first tried out a purple backlight in an attempt to bring the sculptures forward. As found in my research into colours and meanings in Catholisim, purple represents pain and suffering which leads to mourning and penitence. This is quite appropriate with the context of my work as the saints often died gruesome deaths; Thomas was stabbed with a spear. 

The next lighting choice was golden. Again referring back to the colour chart, gold is seen as  precious, valuable and suggests the presence of God. Suggesting the presence of God through a colour, changed using technology, seems rather ironic as this piece was in no way influenced by God, but the colour attached to it must elevates its meaning somehow? The contemporary meaning of gold may be wealth, greed or materialistic? How does this change the meaning of the piece? Perhaps it is bonding the traditional with the contemporary, Catholisim with the modern westernized world. 

The piece may not obviously seem religious at a first glance, however I didn't want to make it too blatant with a cross or a painting of the relic himself. The piece has a degree of subtlety and the whole point is to play with the observers perceptions as only 4 pieces/elements of the sculpture are hand sculpted and photographed. Maybe the title would be something along the lines of 'Saint Thomas has 4 right index fingers'?