Sacramento art gallery showcasing creative tributes for dead relatives
SACRAMENTO - In death, some people remember life through tributes, and now, a Sacramento gallery is turning a collection of tributes into an exhibit called "Reliquary."
CBS13's Rachel Wulff got a tour.
"Reliquaries were originally started by the Catholic church," said Dee Neath.
Reliquaries are containers or shrines where sacred relics are kept.
"The Catholics used to make reliquaries out of the saints' bones," said Neath, owner of Archival Gallery.
She showed us how art imitates life.
"These are actually thumb bones, so it's a thumbs up in the top and a thumbs down in the bottom," said Neath.
Internationally-renowned artist Al Farrow incorporated skeletal remains with other personal items for a piece that is both macabre and magical.
"This has the buckshot -- the bullets and...this is a pistol barrel," she said.
The painstaking detail took months to put together.
"Those are real bullets. These screw off this serves as a handle and there is a box in there with the remains," said Neath.
Another one of farrow's pieces was commissioned for a San Francisco art dealer using his grandfather's gun.
"It's just a way to pass your personality on after you're not there to do it yourself," she said.
This exhibition is personal for Neath who lost her husband of 24 years earlier this year.
"I just couldn't bring myself to bring his cremains and intern him in some generic jar," she said.
She interned his cremains in the family cemetery, then commissioned this reliquary for her home, using her husband's tooth, parts from a drill because he was a contractor, and a crucifix he got for his first communion.
Teeth are a thing.
"This piece is by Jimmy Dann and it has his mother's dentures in it," she said.
Another artist encased his mother's bridge.
"It's called 'Bridge,'" she said.
You don't need to be dead yet to be included in the show.
"These are all functional urns by Eric Weiss and they are meant to hold cremains. This is the one I chose," she said.
Neath makes no bones about it. She has already picked the urn that will hold her ashes. Her dark humor coming to light.
"And it's going to sit as a décor in my home until I'm ready to go in it," she laughs.
The exhibition runs through October 29.