TORONTO - If people mistake the new larger-than-life crucifix at Edmonton’s St. Joseph College for something old it won’t bother Toronto artist Gregory Furmanczyk.

Furmanczyk is getting ready to ship his new sculpture to Edmonton for an official unveiling some time this fall. The crucifix, with a corpus of hardened plaster made to look like marble hanging on a wooden cross, was commissioned by Edmonton Archbishop Richard Smith for the new chapel at St. Joseph’s Seminary.

“It’s the age-old image of the story of redemption,” is how Furmanczyk describes his new work.

Smith and the seminary gave Furmanczyk leeway to produce a piece of liturgical art that would be unique.

“Firstly, I did it as my own expression,” he said. “You create something you want to create.”

While the artist makes no bones about paying homage to Michelangelo and 17th-century masters, he chose to emphasize the redemptive peace of Christ rather than suffering on the cross.

“I wanted to project a feeling of peacefulness and mysticism,” he said.

He likens his crucifix to Michelangelo’s famous Pieta.

Furmanczyk is best known as a portrait painter of official, public figures — from Heather Smith, the first female Supreme Court of Ontario Chief Justice, to Alvin Curling, the first black Speaker of the Ontario Legislature. But he has also built a career as a sculptor and painter of religious works. His Jubilee Cross was the centrepiece of Jubilee 2000 celebrations in the archdiocese of Toronto. He has painted a traditional icon of Christ the Pantocrator for Toronto’s Our Lady of Sorrows parish and has provided stations of the cross to St. Marguerite D’Youville in Brampton, Ont.