Play Ball
I’d like to think I was named after “The Babe.” My name is Meghan “Ruth” Flynn, and I have always wanted to be an artist. I come from a “baseball family” and grew up in Hartley, a town in Northwest Iowa with around 1,600 people. My father, alongside many other Americans, collects baseball cards of his heroes and has passed this tradition down to my brothers and me. This body of work serves as a way of honoring these baseball heroes and visualizing their importance. I am currently painting a series of baseball card replicas with gold leafing and halos, referencing religious icon paintings from the Byzantine Era, and highlighting the importance of the stature of the players, many of whom have been elevated to “hero” or “icon” status in American culture. My paintings are rendered in egg tempera and gold leaf, which are the traditional materials used to create Byzantine icons. Icons are sacred objects that were often touched or kissed in veneration, and my baseball cards relate to icons as objects of reverence. The baseball card paintings are all replicas of the cards given me by my father over the years, for Christmas and birthday presents, as well as significant or special occasions. These cards, therefore, have also become very precious objects for me personally, that serve as introspective markers of the passage of time, in addition to paying homage to the iconic status of the players and the importance American culture has placed upon them.
