But two weeks ago, the 48-year-old Speer learned that - like the Jesus in his painting - there is not room in the little brick church on Northeast Avenue for his cathedral-scaled tableau.
After Calvary Lutheran dissolved in the fall due to dwindling membership, a Ukrainian Baptist congregation bought the church. For months, Speer called from his home in Chicago, trying to learn if the new occupants wished to keep the mural, he said, but got vague replies.
Early this month, the leadership of First Ukrainian Evangelical Baptist Church informed him that it wanted the painting gone.
" 'Please pick up now,' " Speer said he had been told.
"I went pale. I said, 'Please. This is not like scraping off wallpaper.' They said they understood. They gave me until Aug. 1."
So eager is he to save the mural, he said, that he will donate it to any church or public building in the Philadelphia area and arrange to mount it free.
Still, the task promises to be a challenge.
Based loosely on Jesus' miraculous healing of the blind Bartimaeus, the 300-square-foot image has a curved top and is notched by three doors. During 1994 and 1995, Speer and church volunteers labored on a scaffold five or six days a week.
Then a master's degree student at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Speer was paid $15,000 for Bartimaeus, whose controversial Jesus was the subject of an Inquirer article on Feb. 15, 1995.
"Very sinister," an elderly Lutheran parishioner called the image back then.
The Rev. Dmitri Login, pastor of the 58-year-old Ukrainian congregation, said last week that neither theology nor aesthetics figured in the church's decision to remove the mural.
Rather, he said, the church must take down the rear wall to add pews.
