St. Vincent DePaul would be “aghast” to see his seven-story likeness gazing out from a DePaul University dorm, over the soccer field , says a university art teacher.
“‘You will not make any image of me because I am not worthy,’” said Brother Mark Elder, reciting a quote he attributes to DePaul, the university’s patron saint. But that hasn’t stopped Elder from painting DePaul anyway.
Elder is a full-time instructor who teaches a detailed mural class and serves as internship director at The Art School at DePaul, where he has taught since 1994. He composed a massive portrait mural of the saint not just once, but three times: twice on the Lincoln Park campus, and once in Rome.
His second campus image of DePaul, overlooking the university’s Wish Field soccer pitch, celebrates its 25th anniversary in July.
Each time, Elder has created the giant portrait with a painstaking process using sepia paint and 16 hand stamps. The stamps contain images of DePaul students, faculty, staff and neighbors whom Elder says embody characteristics of the patron saint. He created the murals using the stamps, over and over, on the wall to develop the various tones, lines and shapes needed to create the saint.
He still has the stamps, he says, showing off one he keeps stashed in his desk. After all, he might need them again.
Elder’s created his original mural portrait of DePaul in 1998 as part of the university’s centennial celebration. It was on the wall of the DePaul University’s Schmitt Academic Center, 2320 N. Kenmore Ave.
Choosing a location was simple, Elder says. He walked into the plaza that was once adjacent to the building and thought, “Wow, that’s a big wall right there. It would be really cool if we could do a mural.”
He created 16 rubber stamps of different individual faces belonging to four students, four faculty members, four neighbors and four staff members.
Then Elder began painting. That mural was viewable to passersby as he worked, he says, and he enjoyed watching pedestrians stop and take it in.
“It would dawn on them, ‘Oh, I’m part of this project,’” he says, as they too were part of DePaul.
Elder painted a second version in Rome in 2000, again replicating the portrait with the same rubber stamp faces. That one is in a neighborhood five miles southwest of the Vatican, at the Vincintian Curia. Members of the Vincintian community had noted that the wall looked “a little drab,” and asked Elder if he would add a portrait there.
In 2001, DePaul’s maintenance staff called Elder and told him, “We have to remove the Vinny,” he says, using the affectionate name for the mural around campus. The building was expanding and construction would destroy it.
So he created a third image above the soccer field, serving as a landmark for those traveling north and south on the L.
As for how Elder obtained an image of the saint-who-did-not-wish-to-be-pictured, it wasn’t easy, he says. Before DePaul’s death in 1660, the story goes, an artist was hired to enroll in one of DePaul’s retreats and paint him at night from memory, Elder says. Also, when DePaul died, the French made a death mask , he says.
“They plotted to make a portrait,” Elder says. “This is why we have an idea of what he looked like.”
That’s not the only spot where L riders and others can find Elder’s work. In 2022, he and about 100 DePaul students finished painting 25 pillars under the Fullerton L stop, representing significant moments in the school’s history. That display is titled “The Little School Under the L.”
“I basically got myself a doctorate in DePaul history by doing it,” Elder says. “… Do I know everything about DePaul history? No. But I know a lot.”
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