Young sculptor Ramon Camilleri McKay believes that the custom of depicting Good Friday and Easter through the exhibition of statues of all sizes is seeing a revival as the tradition of building Christmas cribs fades.
"More and more individuals and clubs in practically all towns and villages in Malta nowadays organise this kind of exhibition," Mr Camilleri McKay, 26, of Sta Venera said as he shapes papier-mâché life size images of two apostles at his workshop.
The two statues will be an addition to the private exhibition of a client who displays sequences in the Passion of Our Lord at a premises close to Maria Regina parish, in Marsa, during Holy Week.
Mr Camilleri McKay, who has been interested in the art of statue-making since childhood, said feasts are also strongly rooted in local traditions and, therefore, there was considerable demand for statues to decorate streets for processions.
And as long as feasts continue to be celebrated there will always be work to do, which apart from making new statues also involved restoration.
Mr Camilleri McKay, who is one of the four or so artists engaged in the statue-making trade, said that working on statues did not afford him enough income to enable him to take this work on a full-time basis. The demand is not big enough, which meant he had to engage himself in other work. In fact, Mr Camilleri McKay is also a hawker at the Monti open air market in Valletta.
"I look upon sculpture-making as work and also a hobby which I love. A finished work gives you satisfaction and I would not do it just for money," he said.
He had studied the art of sculpture at the Targa Gap crafts school and later at the School of Art, in Valletta. But his most rewarding learning experience, he admitted, was with Gozitan sculptor Alfred Camilleri Cauchi.
After manufacturing small statues in his younger days, he went on to making life-size papier-mâché or reinforced fibre statues in 2000.
Many of his works are used in Holy Week exhibitions put up by private individuals and organisations including band clubs. He mentioned, with a touch of pride, the Last Supper and the Risen Christ, two of his works that feature in Holy Week exhibitions mounted at the Holy Trinity church, in Marsa.