The Millennium Pilgrim is a digital collage which is an amalgam of images and ideas that span over two thousand years.
The Millennium Pilgrim is a digital collage which is an amalgam of images and ideas that span over two thousand years. The central image of the Medieval Pilgrim originated in a German woodcut, circa 1530. The dark, looming city from which the pilgrim is fleeing is a photo-still from the classic 1925 motion picture - METROPOLIS.
The “Palm Tree Garden” image was found in an old book titled LOST WORLDS. The quotation is from the gnostic Gospel of Thomas which is included in the NAG HAMMADI LIBRARY.
The icon in the upper left corner is an ancient symbol of the Christ. It is an anagram comprised of greek letters which spell ICTHYS...”fish”. The fish sign is a symbol dating from the earliest days of Christianity. The letters forming the word “fish” in Greek are also the initial letters of five Greek words meaning: Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour. The icon in the lower right corner denotes the Fallen City. It comes from Rudolf Koch’s BOOK OF SIGNS.
The solitary rose in the lower left corner is a colorized version of a Rosicrucian symbol by the 17th century mystic, Robert Fludd.
Readers of the late science fiction writer, Philip K. Dick, (1929-1982), will be familiar with the image of the “Black Iron Prison” from which the pilgrim is fleeing and the Palm Tree Garden which he is about to enter. Dick believed that man’s present perception of reality has been occluded by the The Empire and that mankind’s salvation lies in becoming a homoplasmate - one who has experienced the “birth from above”, or birth from the spirit. (See VALIS.) Similar themes run throughout the writings of the ancient gnostics as well as the works of the English mystic/prophet, William Blake and can also be detected in several recent motion pictures, notably: BRAZIL, DARK CITY and THE MATRIX.
This print has been in the making for many, many months and has undergone numerous changes and revisons before reaching this final version.
John Meluch was born in 1948 in the once industrial town of Lorain, Ohio. His earliest memories include the nightly fireworks of a nearby steel plant, the rumble of locomotives in his backyard, and the distant chatter of shipyard riveters......all a distant memory now. He has worked at several careers including: teacher, shipyard worker, graphic artist. He presently resides in
Lakewood, Ohio where he teaches High School English and also does freelance
digital graphics and photography. He has most recently collaborated with
British 3-D digital artist Tom Grimes.
