The Work of Our Hands: Art and Worship, Ongoing Conversations
Openings Artist Collective, and artist-in-residence for the Paulist Fathers in New York.
Joel Carreiro, Leviathan, Heat transfer and milk paint on panel, 20” x 24”
In other words, the young artists and I had genuine conversation. Real conversation is conversion—only because in a real conversation, both parties are open to being changed and usually are. I know that the hundreds of encounters I have had with artists over the years have changed me.
Artists gathering during the Openings summer artist residency in Lake George, NY
That same year, in 2006, the artist Robert Aitchison and I started what we called Openings. We gathered a team of artists to support the program. Some were Catholic, but most were not religious; one of our most creative team members was agnostic. They were all committed to conversations. The team came up with our vision statement: “Connections between creativity and transcendence foster meaningful conversations that have the potential to unite individuals and promote community.”
For the last eighteen years, the Openings Artist Collective has had a yearly exhibit in the Church of St. Paul the Apostle, the mother church of the Paulist Fathers and the third largest church in New York City. We have also held discussion groups, online drawing sessions, exhibits in other venues, and a summer artist residency at Lake George, New York.
Openings exhibitions in the sanctuary of St. Paul the Apostle, New York, NY
Lauren Gohara, Lawn, Lauderhill, Oil and alkyd on canvas over panel, 15” x 10 ¾”
In the eighteen years that our exhibits have hosted emerging and mature artists, few have identified as “religious,” though some have. During the pandemic in 2020, when all galleries and museums were closed, we held an exhibit of twenty-seven artists who made works on waterproof paper along the 290-foot iron fence that runs along the 60th Street side of the church. Holland Cotter, Roberta Smith, and Jason Farago of the New York Times named it “one of the 10 most important art events of 2020.”1
Openings Outdoor Exhibition, 2020
Then there are the Sisters.
The Oblate Sisters of Jesus the Priest are an order of nuns who work for the Paulist Fathers in New York and whose convent is in our building. They are semi-contemplative, wear the habit, and observe very traditional practices, but they always come to the exhibits. One of our most controversial events in 2016 was an exhibit of seven Islamic artists which was held in the church. The art was primarily illuminated script from the Quran, devotional passages praising God. This resulted in some very hateful emails, but the Sisters came to the reception. They were fascinated. They listened. They spoke to the artists and had their picture taken with the artists in their hijabs. To me, this is what real Christian faith looks like. The Sisters weren’t afraid of conversation. They were open to being changed.
Worship and art are ongoing conversations.
Worship is about waking up to the presence of the Lord in our ordinary daily lives. We go to church not for what we are doing for God but for what God is doing to us. Art, great art, art that is not merely decorative but has a voice, is also about waking up.
Peter Sellars, the American theater director, writes, “The purpose of art is to find a way to wake people up who are going through their lives sleepwalking and say: ‘Stop it. You can’t walk past this. This is your life.’”2 Worship means coming up with more questions than answers. If you have more answers than questions, or if you are free of doubt, you leave no room for God to break in.
Robert Aitchison, Selva, Oil on canvas, 26” x 34”
Art threatens anyone who needs to preserve the illusion that they are in control. Art and contemplation threaten a world we have defined for ourselves with us in the center. Art and contemplation challenge our rivalry with God, which is the original sin.
The Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain writes:
The fact remains that the Prudent Man and the Artist have difficulty in understanding one another. But the Contemplative and the Artist, the one bound to wisdom, the other to beauty, are naturally close. They also have the same brand of enemies. The Contemplative, who looks at the highest cause on which every being and activity depend, knows the place and the value of art, and understands the Artist. The Artist in his turn divines the grandeur of the Contemplative and feels congenial with him. When his path crosses the Contemplative’s, he will recognize love and beauty.3
Oksana Prokopenko, Guardian Angels, Micro mosaic
Art is useless, about as useless as prayer.
When we first began Openings and decided to have an exhibit in the church, we set about inviting artists. It was difficult because most of the contemporary artists we knew were suspicious of religion. Our first exhibit featured the work of eight artists. A few years later, we had thirty-six artists with eight hundred people attending the reception. A major turning point was when a young MFA student at Hunter College was invited to be in an early group exhibit. After installing her work in the church, she went back to her classmates and said, “You can trust them, they’re cool.” She realized we had no hidden agenda; we were truly about conversations. After that, the chair of that MFA department exhibited, as did a number of professors and young artists who have become major figures in the art world.
Though our programs have done well, we are clear that we are not running a gallery. We remind artists that St. Paul’s is an active worship space and that their art must be approachable by ordinary Catholic worshipers while at the same time nudging them to expand their world. In juried exhibits, we judge the work by its faithfulness to the theme and consider whether it will work in a church context. Will it be so edgy as to offend people who would otherwise be open to a new experience? The vast majority of parishioners have been accepting of the exhibits, and many have greatly enjoyed them.
How to summarize what Openings is all about? At a past exhibit in the church, two artists planned on doing a collaborative photographic installation. One of the artists was a Jew from Israel, and the other was a Muslim from Lebanon. They took a break from their work and flew home for visits with family. Both families told them they had no business collaborating with one another, but they returned more determined than ever to complete their work, which was displayed in the church near the Marian shrine.
We have many stories of such conversations, conversations that never end.
Notes
- Holland Cotter, Roberta Smith, and Jason Farago, “The Most Important Moments in Art in 2020,” New York Times, December 4, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/04/arts/important-art-moments-2020.html?unlocked_article_code=1.r00._zMj.L1mHpTYPU0XC&smid=url-share.
- “The Arts: A Catalyst for Social Change,” Stanford University centennial roundtable, September 30, 1991.
- Jacques Maritain, The Responsibility of the Artist (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1960), http://www3.nd.edu/~maritain/jmc/etext/resart1.htm.
- Eve L. Ewing, “Why Authoritarians Attack the Arts,” New York Times, April 6, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/06/opinion/why-authoritarians-attack-the-arts.html.
