Years ago my friend Ellen worked at the Museum of Natural History and showed me a few of the back rooms which had racks of various parts and pieces of animals sorted by category. To me it looked like God's parts warehouse. I decided to make an image of a blue collar god, a maker.

So I began God's Workshirt with an identifying patch (so you'd be able to tell him from Jim or Bob or Sue) and then the buttons of the shirt would be the insignia of the major religions.

I didn't want to fully personify a deity, just the trappings and so I chose to base the design on two objects, a department store shirt mannequin and a coffin.

A child's grave in a cemetary less than a mile from the town I grew up in.

Ishmael in "Moby Dick" avoided dying with the others by embracing Queequeg's coffin and floating to safety.

The symbols of major religions are placed in no particular order. The light bulb symbolizes technology/secularism and the globe a nod to the concept of Gaia.

I cut the image into a neoprene stencil with screen mess connecting the parts.

My friend Paul Wong helped me make hand made paper pieces of the design.

I decided to make a free standing object extrapolated from the 2d design.

My favorite piece from the series is the hardware wire piece which is "open air". It stands 3 feet tall and the insignia are the pieces from the above black stencil.

I also made smaller folded versions. The one below is 12 inches tall.

Originally I did the calculations by hand calculator, but as CAD became more accessible it made making different sized versions easier.

This piece is from a flat sheet of handmade paper folded into the conical form. It stands 18 inches tall.

All of the images and text contained in this website are original images by Timothy Palmer of his own artwork (Unless noted). He may be contacted at mit@rem-embers.us

Reproduction of these images is by his permisson only.