Sculptor and ceramic artist Mimi Miller Miles is creating life-size sculptures of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John for the Josephinum Building outside the walls of Christ Our Hope Catholic Church in downtown Seattle.
The Josephinum Building in downtown Seattle at Second Avenue and Stewart Street started its journey as the grand New Washington Hotel in the early 1900s. It is now gaining some divine figures from the hands of Mimi Miller Miles, a West Seattle sculptor and ceramic artist.
Miles has sculpted each of the four evangelists of the New Testament — Matthew, Mark, Luke and John — to be installed in empty window alcoves of the Josephinum Building, outside the walls of the Christ Our Hope Catholic Church.
She was commissioned to create the pieces by architect Stephen Lee, who worked with the Rev. Paul Magnano to establish a new downtown parish in the Josephinum, which opened in 2010. The church resides in the old dining hall of the former hotel.
They also brought to life a recreation of a long-lost Rookwood fireplace in the new parish offices. Lee designed it by studying an old photograph and finding the flue, hidden in old renovations.
He commissioned Miles to create a patchwork of tiles that piece together an image of Mount Rainier and its forest, and Tlingit artist Odin Lonning to fashion totem poles with characters to tell the story of the meeting of the church and indigenous people in Seattle.