| Spire rises as a vertical triptych of belief systems—commercial, anatomical, and devotional—painted on denim and bordered by frayed edges. At the top, a stylized advertisement for Froot Loops introduces the mythic logic of branding. Toucan Sam, a cartoon avatar of sweetness and color, becomes a secular saint of consumption. The language—“READY-SWEETENED CEREAL WITH OTHER NATURAL FLAVOR”—is ritualized marketing, promising pleasure and purity in the same breath. It’s not just breakfast—it’s belief, packaged and stylized.
The center panel fractures that myth with a butchering diagram of a hog. The animal is segmented, labeled, and reduced to parts: loin, shoulder, belly, ham. It’s a map of utility, where the body becomes commodity. But it also brushes against kosher and halal dietary laws, where pigs are forbidden and slaughter is ritualized. In those systems, consumption is sacred—governed by prayer, ethics, and divine instruction. The hog diagram becomes a visual violation, a symbol of moral exclusion, and a reminder that belief systems define not just what we eat, but what we reject.
At the base, a pair of hands clasp a rosary. The beads and cross are clear, the gesture devotional. It’s a moment of prayer, ritual, and submission. Unlike the cartoon or the diagram, this is belief formalized—structured through symbol, repetition, and inherited gesture. The rosary is not just an object—it’s a system.
Painted on denim, the work resists sanctity. The frayed edges and hanging threads suggest wear, labor, and cultural residue. Denim becomes a secular canvas for sacred layering.
Spire becomes a vertical liturgy—where belief ascends from branding to butchery to prayer. It asks: what do we worship? What do we divide? What do we preserve?
Spire stacks a moral totem of cartoon, carcass, and creed.
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