Artwork on display in the main gallery of the center does not require a statement from the artist. However, Melton was asked to post an artist's statement a few days after the display's debut. Melton said it was a good idea because it provided more understanding to the meaning of his photographs.

In his artist's statement, Melton explained he took the photos when he was invited to contribute for an upstart fashion magazine in New York. He was collaborating with a fashion designer who was known for using elegant and classy fabrics and juxtaposing it with fabrics that were rough. For example, one of the designs was a high-fashion dress that had a slit held together with deer ribs.

That's where he got the idea for his subject of a fashionably dressed woman to holding a lamb carcass. He bought the lamb from a meat distribution place in New York.

Melton said he wanted to contrast glossy fashion images with raw images and religious iconography. The use of apples in two of the photos is meant to suggest an Eve figure, while the hoisted lamb alludes to Old Testament doctrine of lamb sacrifices. Sometimes that photo is interpreted as a comparison of woman as objects compared to meat, Melton said.

"I don't seek to tell people how things should be," Melton said. "I am ambiguous, and I want people to interpret them as they want."

He said that the woman hoisting the lamb reminds him of the idea of bearing your cross, referring to Christian doctrine of Jesus Christ dying on the cross for the sins of the world.

"I don't have a set belief on it (the photo), but the viewer can see it as either lifting the carcass as a burden or supporting it as a belief," Melton said.

"Obviously I don't want people to be offended, but I want there to be a personal dialogue where it will evoke emotions and feelings hopefully in relation with their religious beliefs, and incite them to investigate their feelings," Melton said.

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Contributing: Laura Hancock

E-mail: jdoria@desnews.com