Tom Baker

I painted a canvas for a child to commemorate her birth. She cherished this painting and kept it with her whenever she moved. As an adult, she became involved with an abusive man, but did not realize how co-dependant she was upon him. Just before the stage of physical abuse was about to begin, she escaped. She had to leave her painting behind. I assured her that her safety was much more important than my painting.

Arranging  to pick up a few things for this person, I was told the abuser would have to be informed first. Upon entering the house, I noticed the painting had been maliciously cut out from the frame and discarded, not to be found. Only the edges of the canvas remained. I knew I was dealing with a soul-sick, broken man, living in denial. I brought the frame and canvas pieces home.

This year I felt a prompt to transform the remaining pieces of the painting. I further cut and attached the pieces from the destroyed canvas on a smaller canvas board, creating a new image. This is my first, true image of the Spirit of “Resurrection.” What was meant for evil, has been turned into good. What was meant to destroy has been raised up in a new image to bring hope.

Tom Baker is an artist and teaches art at Gonzaga College High School.

La Storta is the place where St. Ignatius had a spiritual experience that was to shape the Society of Jesus in a significant way. He saw a vision of our Lord carrying the cross, and he himself with Him, overshadowed by God the Father.

For the past six years, the students of Georgetown University have asked me to provide a piece of art work that is inspired by Jesuit spirituality for the school’s Jesuit Heritage Week. Since I have a brother who is a Jesuit, Robert C. Thul, SJ, I have ready access to Jesuit themes and “The Vision at La Storta” is one example of this cooperative effort. It is a scratchboard image, the original was given to Georgetown University.

We all belong to the Church Militant and want to associate ourselves with Christ bearing His cross. St. Ignatius leads the way in a spirituality that draws me into this concept. No suffering is too great to bear or too small to offer in order that it may have tremendous significance, if it is associated with Christ bearing His cross. May St. Ignatius and his band of companions down through the ages continue to inspire in us a willingness to associate ourselves with the cross of Jesus.

Sister Mary Grace Thul, OP, creates religious and Ignatian-inspried art in Bronx, N.Y.

Sister Mary Grace Thul, OP

Dennis McNally, SJ

This is an image of a partially realized stained glass window.  The two sides rise eight feet from the floor. The images, read left to right, go through three of the principal meditations of the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius: The Principle and Foundation is depicted on the left as abstracted wheat and grapes cascading from heaven with two hands holding a terrestrial globe on which is planted the cross of Christ, with the Lord Crucified. All is gift to be seen against the backdrop of God’s purpose. The Two Standards are the central window’s story, with the Satan figure in gold bearing a banner on which are depicted plenty, power and prestige in the images of a bag of gold coins, a group of guns and a parade car. The Christ figure is in white bearing a cross which bleeds (poor, powerless and humiliated), the antithesis of the gifts promised by the Evil One. In the center of this window is the yin and yang, representing the constant interaction of motivations toward opposites, which are part of our everyday living of the Exercises.  Finding a way for our gifts to be means to loving rather than ends for living is the central gift for each of us. The Sume et Suscipe or the Contemplation to Attain Divine Love, is depicted on the right. A priestly or angelic winged figure, bearing the Eucharistic bread and wine, raises a heavenly Jerusalem, centered with a cross, symbolized in a bee hive. So gift is depicted in each window, bearing the work of each figure. The Father on the left bears the earth and the Christ crucified, Satan and the Son bear their Standards in the center, and the person making the Spiritural Exercises on the right, lifted by the wings of the Spirit, bears the new Jerusalem, the work of his or her life.

Dennis McNally, SJ, is chair and professor of fine arts at Saint Joseph’s University.

The “Pillar of Fire by Night” is a vivid sign of how God traveled with His holy people at night.  I wanted to reiterate that sign as I attempted to describe how Jesus travels with us in the darkness of our lives. He is with us as “food for our journey.”  He is our Way and our Light. He is our new Pillar of Fire, always with us.
I made this tabernacle lamp for the Church of the Blessed Sacrament in Columbus, Ohio. It is actually a brass cylinder enclosed within a brushed stainless steel cylinder. Flames have been cut out through the two plies of shiny metal to reveal the candle light burning within. 
The cylinders are cut vertically and hinged at the rear so that, like a clam shell, the cylinder can be opened and the candle can be set within. 

Eugene Geinzer, SJ, teaches art and studies Chinese at The Beijing Center for Chinese Studies in China.

The cross image came about after reading an interview titled Beuys on Christ, A Dialogue between German Artist Joseph Beuys and Fr. Friedhelm Mennekes, SJ.  
The cross is a collage of industrial textures produced from a reprographic technique. Within the shapes, a form is evident as a cross. There is a metaphysical quality in the total dynamic of the shape. It enabled me to clarify the strength of the form and the protective, loving aspect of finding Christ in all things.
To me, it contains the fury and pain of modern living. The collage contains fragments, which may be read as tracks or incisions made by heavy wheels in a soft material. The cross has a resemblance to several found objects. The significance is poetic and at times a frugal message. It shows me to look in the unlikely places to discern the energy and impulse of Christ within me.

David Cunningham is an artist, muralist, art teacher and member of St. Ignatius Church in Baltimore, Md.

The religiosity of mark making is a noble task. The artist’s chosen surface is a venerable place, as his/her studio is a sacred space. The engagement of that attentive creative process is prayerful. For more than twenty years I have attempted to bridge sacred and secular in my art products. This task is daunting, mysterious, and it keeps me whole.

Even as a young boy I was obsessed by the sensuality of faith. I was immersed in my Eastern Orthodox Church amid icons glowing near pulsing candles. Incense burning placed me in heightened spiritual realms. Rhythmic movements of priests, deacons, altar boys and congregants captivated me in ritual. The Word of God, the lives of the saints, the monastic tradition enthralled me. Drones of chanting, singing and praising vaulted me further in this beautiful place. Light piercing stained glass windows and sending prismatic color throughout the narthex mesmerized me. Taste of Communion, bread and wine/body and blood, gave me great nourishment and strength. These are the seeds of creativity and my artistic essence.

I have been steeped in Christian sacred imagery all my life. Specifically, I have academically investigated Byzantine images, techniques and methods as a need. I write traditional Orthodox icons. They are important in my spiritual life Also, I spring-board from the traditional iconographic image, in itself an abstraction. As a contemporary abstract artist I address gilded panels with knowledge of sacred tradition in a new way.

For four years I have been working specifically with gold on panel in my secular work. I call this series of works XPYSO (Greek, for the word gold). I have been experimenting with the corpus of the panel as “body.” I work to find the panel’s soul. This lies in, and below, the prepared surfaces, or the strata of wood, glue, gesso, bole, gold, paint and varnish. Starting with a gilded surface I carve, stamp, incise and paint thousands of marks on each individual panel. The process is the art. The art is the expression of the gift. One becomes lost and found in that journey.

Symbolic meanings of gold are many. The works are about light, real, reflective and divine. Light is the beacon of creativity, for without light, visual perception ceases. Light is the knowledge (enlightenment) and the way. To make thousands of impressions on a gilded wood panel, where few are remembered, brings me great joy. The whole journey culminates in an exponentially powerful visual statement. Additionally, these works strive to communicate intuitively and honestly. Marks with chisel or brush are the mantra of The Jesus Prayer, over and over again. This experience brings one great peace and satisfaction. Beauty comes in the message and the dialogue. Conversation is important because these works visually engage our humanity and divinity simultaneously. The artist marks signify humanity and the gold signifies divinity. The dualism is a constant.

My attempts to bridge the sacred and secular genres in art process and product are difficult. Hope comes in the ongoing conversation about humanity, community, world, cosmos and our ultimate unification with God.

Thomas Xenakis lectures on studio art and drawing at Georgetown University.

St. Katharine Drexel was the heiress to a great fortune. She gave it all away founding schools, churches and orphanages for Native-American and African-American people. In my bas-relief she is holding onto the hem of the Virgin. I have included a moth in the lower right. The Christ Child above her is holding a golden ball. These details were added to illustrate one of the great lessons of Our Lord, which St. Katharine knew so well: that we are not to lay up treasure for ourselves on earth where rust and moth consume but rather to lay up treasure in heaven. The Christ Child holds a golden ball symbolizing her treasure, now with the Lord in heaven. She worships the Lord sitting in His mothers arms. The Madonna and Child have African features. I hope this further illustrates the Lord’s saying that as we help those in need, we are in some mysterious way really helping Jesus Himself--a lesson St. Katharine learned well.

This sculpture was made in terra cotta clay. It is around 15 feet tall. I sculpted from photos I made of models who came to the studio – later a mold was made of this terra cotta. (Unusual for me--I usually work directly from the model.) This photo is of the original clay before it was cast into plaster for the parish. I am working on several other pieces for St. Peter’s in Charlotte, N.C. These include a large 15 by 15 foot painting; a jade, lapis and bronze tabernacle; and another bas-relief which is as large as this one.

Artist John Collier was commissioned to create this bas-relief
for St. Peter’s Church in Charlotte, N.C.

It is so much fun to use cartoons in catechetical workshops.  It is easy to laugh at a cartoon. It is nothing personal, but the message is clear.  I draw cartoons and use them in the various workshops I lead for Hispanic ministers in the nine parishes of the Ashville vicariate in North Carolina.  I work with Eucharistic ministers, lectors, choirs, hospitality ministers and others.  For example, I use a group of six cartoons I drew called “The Six Doñas,” to illustrate six unhealthy attitudes that ministers could easily have and how to avoid those attitudes. The ones shown here are (left to right) The Rude One – the type of person who doesn’t help anyone and shuts the door on others; The Whiner – the type of person who complains that no one ever helps and he or she has to do everything themselves; and The Star, who thinks she or he is better than everyone else.  Using the cartoons is helpful in getting participants to take the message home and put it to use.

William Ameche, SJ, serves in Hispanic ministries for the Diocese of Charlotte, N.C.

Stretching. In a word, that’s what I’ve been doing these last half dozen years in my art, in both media and subject matter. Though the final results remain quite traditional and rather unremarkable in scope or scale, the works are, nonetheless, breakthroughs for me.

I like to push myself beyond my comfort zone in terms of my chosen media, in the choice of my subject matters, and in the difficulty of my set-ups. I aim to improve my perceptual rendering techniques. This is primarily what has occupied me in these years. But whatever the subject matter or media, it is always my psyche and spirit that end up on display.

Self-Portrait, 2006 (pencil and watercolor on paper, 19.5 x 22”) follows up on an oil painting of the same subject I began in 2003 and is still unfinished. This work continues to explore watercolor and representational subject matter. Here I take a traditionally intimate subject matter, a portrait composition, and extend it to a larger than life size scale. As always in my works, I use an expressionist palette and broken strokes to build the composition and mood. Is the work still natural and appealing? Or is it cooler, more formally abstracted and detached? My hope is the former.

Studio Visitor (Wonder), 2003 (pencil on paper, 30 x 22”) is the first of five drawings in my series Interiors (Graces). Across all five works in the series I look to render Christian graces in ordinary if idiosyncratic personal objects and familiar figures. The settings are my rooms, another personalizing stamp in these meditations on our universal faith.

In all, where have these years taken me? In circles: to my psyche and my spirit. To my great desires. Into subject matters and media that forever promise me engagement, argument, hours of reflection, sidelong progress, personal integration, and delight.

Michael Tunney, SJ is a professor of fine arts at Canisius College in New York