stigmata

In the tiny museum snugged away in the inner courtyard of the Cathedral of Guatemala City there's a small room in the back that features framed scraps of cloth that appear to capture the impression of stigmata.

We found the room just as the guards were ordering us out, so I only had time to snap this one shot -- which I regret, because the many impressions were varied and various. Roses, crosses and other iconography were scattered in among more crowns of thorns like these.

I didn't have time to read the placards that accompanied the exhibit, but my darlin' companion did: he said they weren't stigmata blottings at all, but were ascribed as miracles to a nun who would touch the cloth, and in the morning these bloody impressions would be found to dot the muslin.

It reminded me of the outsider art of that fellow who created whole canvases with the spit from his tobacco chaw.