When Immaculate Conception Parish in Terni, Italy, commissioned frescoes as part of its church restoration, they chose Minnesota artist Mark Balma to create them.
Balma’s “first true love” as a painter was portraiture, but after studying in Florence, Italy, in the early 1980s with a teacher who not only painted portraits, but also frescoes, Balma was hooked.
Mark Balma
“That introduced me to a medium that, being in Italy and seeing the spaces and seeing the works on the wall, inspired me on a whole new level,” Balma said. “And so between portraiture and fresco, that’s kind of where my artistic direction led me.”
Even today, Balma said, “there’s a space and a real necessity to keep that tradition alive.”
Balma and Don Giovanni McElmore, fresco project manager and former pastor of the Terni parish, recently joined “Practicing Catholic” host Patrick Conley to discuss the project, with Father McElmore by phone from Italy.
Balma said the church fresco project he is working on is his largest commission yet, both in scale and breadth: a series of frescoes, destined for the walls of a recently restored church, Immaculate Conception in Terni, Italy, about 65 miles north of Rome. He’ll eventually fresco the church’s ceiling, too. It’s not only the size of the commission, Balma said, but the subject matter that thrills him: women from Scripture, a subject that he says has never been explored on this magnitude.
Don Giovanni McElmore
During the interview, the men described meeting in a garden in Assisi where Balma was staying to discuss the project. “We started saying, ‘What should we do?’” Balma recalled. “The idea came up, ‘Why not dedicate this to women?’ It’s the church of Mary. Why not use it as a springboard for a whole dialogue that has never really done before, as far as I know, in the fresco world, where the women become the predominant subject of the church.”
Father McElmore called their discussion “a brainstorm of faith and spirituality.” The following summer, he spent many hours choosing women from the Bible, writing about and researching them.
Balma has been painting the frescoes in Minneapolis and plans to ship them to Italy.
To learn more about how the frescoes are made and how they will be shipped — and to hear the full interview, listen to this episode of “Practicing Catholic.” It airs at 9 p.m. Jan. 7, 1 p.m. Jan. 8 and 2 p.m. Jan. 9 on Relevant Radio 1330 AM.
To read more about Balma’s frescoes and get a sneak peek, check out a recent article in The Catholic Spirit.
Produced by Relevant Radio and the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, the latest show also includes interviews with Alyssa Bormes, who describes a new children’s book that helps young ones know and love Mary, and Bill Lentsch, chief operations officer for the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, who discusses his learnings and priorities after three months on the job.
Listen to all of the interviews after they have aired at
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