North Sacramento resident Ty Gardner, who has been posing as Jesus for Kentucky artist Steve Sawyer since 1995, holds one of Sawyer's posters. Sacramento Bee/Owen Brewer

The face is familiar ... and some folks think it's divine

By Jennifer Garza -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 2:15 a.m. PST Saturday, December 21, 2002

Posing as the Son of God may seem like an odd thing to do, but Ty Gardner considers it an honor.

For the past seven years, since a painter stopped him on the street and told him that he was exactly what he was looking for, Gardner has been modeling as Jesus.

"If you're going to look like someone, I guess there's no one better than Jesus," says Gardner, who speaks with a whisper of a Kentucky accent. "Do I think I look like him? Well, I don't know."

A lot of people seem to think he does. Or at least they think Gardner resembles the popular image of Christ that so many people accept. There's the long, brown hair; the loose, comfortable clothing; the five o'clock shadow; the sandals he wears every day  rain or shine.

"I've always looked like this," explains Gardner, shrugging his broad shoulders. But there's something else about him. Gardner, who works as a gardener at a senior citizens retirement home in Sacramento, has an ethereal quality that you can't quite put your finger on. He credits his family and his faith.

"I'm just a regular guy," Gardner says.

He's just a regular guy whose image appears in homes across the country. It has been reproduced on paintings, bookmarks, posters, T-shirts and even the cover of a jigsaw puzzle. This month, several paintings featuring Gardner as Jesus are on display at the National Catholic Museum of Art and History in New York City.

"It's not something I set out to do," Gardner says in such a soft voice that you have to lean forward to hear him. "It just happened."

It happened one day in 1995. Gardner was living in Versailles, Ky. (pop. 7,300), where he was working at a family-owned deli. One day, he was walking down the street when a man he had never met came running after him.

That man was artist Steve Sawyer. Sawyer -- a first cousin of TV newscaster Diane Sawyer -- had made a promise to God in 1975. He vowed he would devote himself to becoming God's "portrait artist." Sawyer then started looking for his Jesus.

"I wanted someone who could show his strength and beauty," Sawyer says.

But it wasn't easy finding someone to play the chosen one. Sawyer searched for a Jesus model for years. He interviewed dozens of potential candidates. Then one day, Gardner walked by Sawyer's studio on his way to work.

"I felt it immediately," Sawyer says. The painter ran to catch up with Gardner. "I've been looking for you for 20 years," Sawyer told him.

To his surprise, Gardner did not seem startled. He simply listened to the frenzied painter explain what he wanted to do. When Sawyer was finished speaking, Gardner simply nodded. "Yes," he told Sawyer. "I'll do it."

The two began working together right away.

"In addition to his physical looks, Ty has the inner quality that I was looking for," Sawyer says. "He is a really nice person, and I think that shows."

Gardner, 35, says he was not surprised by Sawyer's request because people have mentioned the resemblance for years. He's a muscular Jesus -- he stands 6-foot-3 and weighs 195 pounds -- but that's exactly what Gardner wanted to capture.

Of course, no one really knows what Jesus looked like. Artists from Michelangelo to Leonardo da Vinci have interpreted him differently.

"If you look all over the world, there is an incredible array of representations," says Brent Place, an assistant professor of religion and visual arts at Texas Christian University. "There are African representations, abstracts, very gothic-looking icons from Eastern Europe. It runs the gamut."

Sawyer's images are sold at church stores and online (Art4God.com). He says the Web site has received more than 2 million hits over the past two years. Reproductions sell from $2 for a bookmark to $495 for a custom canvas reproduction.

In the past seven years, Sawyer has taken many traditional poses of Gardner. He has done Jesus looking peaceful, Jesus holding a lamb, Jesus with the Good Samaritan, Jesus holding a child and, of course, Jesus being crucified.

"That was absolutely the most difficult one," Gardner says. "It was hot and there were flies everywhere."

Recently, some images have drawn controversy. Sawyer painted one of Gardner as Jesus sporting a heart-shape tattoo with the word "Father." Another shows him in a boxing ring with the word "undefeated."

Some people have complained that these images are too sensual, too contemporary.

"They say the images are too beautiful. Or they think they're blasphemous because they're in untraditional poses," Sawyer says on the phone from his studio from Kentucky.

Sawyer, a Christian, believes Jesus should be as beautiful on the outside as he is on the inside. When he painted the tattooed Jesus or the boxing Jesus, he wanted to remind people that Jesus is very much alive today.

"I felt it was important to put him in settings that people could relate to," Sawyer says. "Remember, this was a person that people fell in love with. ... Why shouldn't he be beautiful?"

Sawyer's work -- and the controversy surrounding it -- soon will be featured on "Donahue," "The Oprah Winfrey Show" and the "700 Club," he says.

But Gardner has no plans to leave Sacramento. He moved here two years ago to be closer to his wife's family. He and his wife, Raylene, live in a cozy North Sacramento home with their 8-year-old son, Jacob, and 3-month-old daughter, Savannah.

There's a lot of warmth and love in their house. Maybe it's the water fountain outside. Or the Christmas tree standing in front of the window. Or the family pictures that dot the walls. Or the many photos of Gardner as Jesus.

For some reason, Gardner as Jesus is a role that fits. His mother's name is Mary. His middle name is Dove. He exudes calmness. (His birthday is not, however, Dec. 25.)

He is a Christian although he doesn't belong to a particular church. He is just, he says repeatedly, "a regular guy" who takes his son to soccer games on Saturday mornings.

Gardner's life has changed since he started posing as Jesus. Other artists have asked him to model for them, but he's declined because he feels a commitment to Sawyer. Pastors of local churches have asked him to participate in Easter pageants, but he's turned them down because, as he says, "it wouldn't seem right."

He once walked into a friend's house and saw his image hanging over the fireplace. "His mother was shocked," Gardner recalls. "She kept looking at me and then back at the picture."

His wife seems amused by it all.

"People say he looks like him but I don't know. ... I just see Ty," says Raylene Gardner, who works as a loan processor.

She says her husband has worn his hair long over the years and -- with the exception of work boots during the day -- she's never seen him wear anything but sandals since they married in 1991.

Gardner flies out to Kentucky and poses for Sawyer several times a year and makes about $500 a pose. He hasn't exactly gotten rich. He doesn't expect to.

He does it because he believes in the artist -- and the message.

"I'm happy to be part of something that makes other people feel good."

	Ty Gardner holds a T-shirt showing one of the Steve Sawyer artworks that has stirred controversy: Jesus as an undefeated boxer. Sacramento Bee/Owen Brewer