Art and Faith: Alliance Creates Artist-In-Residence Program
Gerry Lantague outside her studio.

By Candace Krebs
For the Sooner Catholic

In his classic book on Liturgy and the Arts, French bishop Albert Rouet outlines ways the arts are essential for worship. They help us to savor the sacred in the ordinary and to express mystery and beauty, he says. Sacred space, music, and dance can celebrate the glory of God. And in the context of worship, the creative and fine arts are given an amplitude and meaning that enriches them.

This interwoven dance between the arts and spirituality is far too often underemphasized in Christian circles, he adds.

A new grant-funded project by the Oklahoma Alliance for Liturgy and the Arts aims to help change that by fostering closer working relationships between artists and religious communities.

The interfaith arts alliance - formed in 2000 - has been awarded a grant to create religious artists-in-residencies around the state.

“We are taking a group of artists who have thought about the theological implications of their work and linking them up to help churches develop their own artisans and crafts-members and create arts ministries,” says Paul Hammond, the organization’s director. “In the next year, we are going to concentrate on fostering the visual arts. Our surveys have shown that is where we have the most need in the state of Oklahoma.”

The alliance will organize the project this summer with related activities starting in the fall.

An arts ministry can include (but is not limited to) architecture, music, sculpture, stained glass, literature, weaving, painting, dancing and singing.

“Any kind of art is a spiritual experience,” says Gerry Lantague, a local visual and commercial artist. “It opens a channel.”

For the 100-year anniversary at Immaculate Heart parish in Oklahoma City, she served as artist-in-residence, helping about 20 students sketch and paint a mural on big mobile canvases.

“The little ones did the simple things and the older kids did the harder things. We did it in layers and it got more detailed as we got further into it. The kids learned about the history by doing this hands-on thing,” she describes. “It stretched me too because I’m really picky, and I had to let go of that.”

She also taught second grade arts and crafts.

Lantague has spent most of her life working in paste-up, graphic design and drafting, but has always explored ways to bring a spiritual dimension to her work.

Currently a novitiate at the Red Plains Monastery, she says one thing she would like to do is paint portraits that show “the spiritual side of a person.” That idea doesn’t come with an easy definition. “I don’t really know how to put it into words,” she says. “I look at eyes a lot, and facial features.”

She also does interior painting, faux finishing, murals and furniture refinishing.

The Benedictines - the religious community she might eventually join - have a long history of combining art and religion, says Sister Jan Futrell, the community’s prioress. “Now we’re seeing a more expansive approach among all religions,” she says.

During the 1920s and 1930s, the liturgical arts were re-enlivened within the Catholic tradition, she says. Lliturgical changes were also prompted by the influence of the Eastern religions, which never seemed to lose their close relationship to the arts.

The community’s chapel built 10 years ago testifies to the interplay of nature, art and spirituality at the monastery. It’s in a rounded shape overlooking the lake and wooded grounds, which the community insisted on. “We had a deep sense somehow of the significance of the circular,” Futrell says. “My sense is that we as God’s creatures - and this goes back to the thinking of Teilhard de Chardin and others - we are all in unity with all that is.”

Art objects are numerous at the monastery. Futrell points to several canvases of traditional Gregorian chant written in Latin which she brought back from Barcelona, Spain.

“I recognized that would have great meaning for us,” she says. “That mode of music is a liturgical art. When the arts are incorporated within the worship, you don’t have to define it. It communicates, it nurtures, it sustains.”

Mary Diane Steltenkamp, director of the parish nursing program housed at Catholic Charities, often invokes art - sculptures, paintings, literature - in her training, talks and retreats. She likes to quote an anonymous source who said, “The arts are not a luxury in the spiritual journey. They are a mandate.”

        “I think they get us in touch with our hearts. If art is a mandate, then it behooves churches to look at that in a more assertive way in terms of how to introduce that back in,” she says. “I think the whole idea of understanding what a particular piece of artwork says to me has such enormous power.”

        Creating and looking at art can be an amazing vehicle for emotional, spiritual and physical healing, she says. She cites one example of a woman who drew pictures before she went into surgery and appeared remarkably relaxed and peaceful to her attending physician. She also notes a special alter, built in Germany, that was placed in the chapel of a hospital devoted solely to victims of a fatal disease during the middle centuries. A sculpture of Jesus with the same sorts of lesions on his body was accompanied by a depiction of his resurrection, and it seemed to give patients more hope than the pain medication.

“We’ve not tapped into the full wealth of what that approach could offer,” Steltenkamp says.

Father Stephen Bird has a master of arts in liturgy and a personal interest in theatre. The pastor at Holy Trinity parish in Okarche is also a board member for the Alliance for Liturgy and the Arts.

“Stained glass, the design of chalices, the way churches are built all falls into the category of liturgical arts,” he says.

Earlier this year, the alliance hosted an exhibit for visual artists. “We recently had a sacred art exhibit at the First Methodist Church in Oklahoma City called ‘The Search for God: Visual Expressions of Faith,’” he says. “We had 56 pieces of art, and it was juried. There were awards given.”

He said the degree of participation came as something of a surprise, indicating an unexpected wellspring of interest. “We had no idea when we were planning it whether we would get 10 or 20 pieces to exhibit,” he adds. “We were worried. But the artists came through.”

A recent workshop sponsored by the alliance featuring author, theologian and musician Dr. Marva Dawn drew 300 participants.

Respected Princeton University sociologist Robert Wuthnow - author of the book, All in Sync: How Music and Art Are Revitalizing American Religion - is a leading researcher into the connection between art and religion. His work reveals that people with more exposure to art show greater interest in a serious commitment to spiritual growth. People with artistic interests are more likely to pray. Many respondents to his studies recall early childhood religious experiences associated with hearing hymns and seeing stained-glass windows or art objects that anchor their religious imaginations more than the sermons.

He also concludes that congregations that focus on the arts are more likely to have members who say spiritual growth is extremely important, who devote a great deal of effort to their spiritual development and who say their spirituality is increasing.

Despite what he describes as “a morality problem in the nexus between art and religion” - caused by the fact that art stresses creativity, paradox and fluidity while religion often demands reinforcement of an existing belief system - Wuthnow’s data indicates that programs that stress serious artistic growth and discipline tend to bolster rather than undermine church growth. Linking art and spirituality also broadens church outreach, he says, especially with members of the younger generation.