July 2023 Print

By Abigael Quain

On Contemplation and Work at the Heart of the SMA Art Program

Some acts are basically human: to work, to contemplate, and to make beautiful things are among them. By “basically,” we here mean foundationally, fundamentally, radically—at the roots of what it means to be human.

We attempt to live in an ever-newly-organized temporal world where man seeks to get out of himself, but not in the way meant by the term “education,” a leading out of self. Man has been seeking more and more since the Revolutions to “get out of” being man.

We have come to the point where even spiritual men laugh at the man who works by the sweat of his brow; men who work by the sweat of their brow scorn the men who “do nothing but” contemplate; and both parties ridicule those who would use their time to contemplate truth, and then work, to bring forth something true, well-made and therefore good, and beautiful.

Some unpredictable weekend in St. Marys, KS, as you are visiting the new Immaculata, built by men who believe both in work and contemplation, you might also get to visit the SMA Art Show, featuring each year several hundred works the students of St. Mary’s Academy have contemplated and worked on throughout the previous year.

The artworks, as art ought, encourage many reflections. How do these treasures come to be? Has SMA just been blessed with a school filled with artists? Perhaps only the work of the artists is chosen for the show? Of course, the answer to these last two questions is no! In fact, the school does not require one to be “good at art” in order to enroll. And for every student in grades 6-12, boys and girls, it is mandatory to enter at least one piece in the year’s show, though some students excitedly enter seven!

So how does this school contemplate, and make, such beauty—ever ancient, ever new—year after year?

The works are the children—or in the spirit of Dante, the great-great-grandchildren—of a vision, of principles distilled from the studies of many interested Catholics and other thinkers (Mother Janet Erskine Stuart, Joseph Pieper, Fr. Edward Leen, G. K. Chesterton, Alice von Hildebrand, Emile Male, Brian Keeble, Daniel Mitsui, the popes, etc.) by a group of educators (Fr. John Fullerton, Fr. de la Tour, Mrs. Becky Quain) into a program. Conversations with teachers and do-ers of art, Brother Marcel, Miss Dolores Hughes, Mrs. Mary Bourbeau, as well as the doing of art and living its daily demands with their own children and students of the program have for many years honed and continue to inform and enliven it.

The ultimate end of this program is, of course, the ultimate end of man: contemplatio. But toward that end, the teachers of the art program aim for some tangible goals, and teach a graded curriculum.

The students see the artwork made by their fellow men throughout history, and learn practically (chemically, botanically, etc.) about the materials used. They learn why Egyptian artists always drew in profile, or why medieval man painted his people in such “unrealistic” postures, and why the thistle is on the Scottish crest. They learn that it is false that it was not until the Renaissance that we glorious humans finally figured out perspective and were talented enough to paint “realistically.” They are given a taste in the lower grades, and then directly in junior and senior year, of the philosophy of the time period they study. Then they are given opportunities to try their own hands at contemplating and making like unto what they have seen.

Overview of curriculum for each grade level

K-5: At SMA, this currently consists in nature study and various projects the individual class teachers are able to offer with help from the Art Department upon request. A fuller art curriculum is available, but not able to be taught at this time.

6th: Beasts, their stories, and how their symbolic sense derives from their nature.

7th: Light and dark and their use as a natural revealer of sensible truths and the revealer and quickener of Truth.

8th: The Hand of God and how to draw something you can’t even see.

9th: The Ancient World—shadows yearning for Revelation.

10th: The Monastic Idea and the synthesis of the Ancient into the Catholic Church

11th: Medieval: All these hidden Mirrors. Videmus nunc in speculum.

12th: Modern Art: The rupture with the past. How we have come to the state we are in: ignorance of our catholic (universal, eternal, narrative) treasury and where kitsch is “Catholic.”

“[E]ach one who sets value upon faith and hope and resolution and courage in art is a unit adding strength to the line of defense against the invasions of sadness and dejection of spirit.”—Mother Stuart

Real contact, with real things, seems to be therapeutic. Working with one’s hands, with tools, on material which itself obeys its nature and natural laws, perhaps provides a certain stability for students.

The Art Program aims to lead the students:

1) To appreciate their Catholic heritage, the heritage of Western Civilization. One cannot love what one does not know, and the spirit of the age is to scoff at what one does not know. But if one begins to know these treasures, then one cannot help but love them. Vere tu es Deus absconditus. Verily, thou art a God who hast hidden in the wonderful works of men!

2) To react to what they do not “get” with wonder. A common reaction to the sight of an artistic representation of the hideous Behemoth is a nervous giggle and the statement: “That’s dumb.” When the student learns a painter or sculptor from long ago would represent the strangeness of the beast because God made the “strength [of Behemoth] in his loins, and his force in the navel of his belly… His bones are like pipes of brass, his gristle like plates of iron. He is the beginning of the ways of God, who made him,” (Job: 40: 10-14) then there is room for humility.

3) To read creation and attach it to the liturgy. In their early art studies, students are taught the medieval (read: Catholic) bestiary: the stories of the unicorn and leo, why the students themselves are represented by the raven, who caws cras, cras! Tomorrow, tomorrow! instead of repenting (or doing his work) today. These animals make appearances in the psalms—the lion in compline every night! They learn how God sees Draco, based on what He told us in the scriptures and in tradition. This is always a hard lesson for the children of this age, who want so desperately for the attractive dragon to be good.

4) To think clearly. The making of art requires one to use a different language, although the students are from time to time required to write essays or commentaries on their own work or on some great work from their heritage. The seventh grade works on an illustration in white charcoal, giving light and form to black paper. They then write an essay exploring their technique and how the light conquers the darkness to highlight and clarify truths expressed by the image. The junior elective class writes a guided commentary on the September rondel from Chartres’s “calendar window,” by the end of which they start to see that the perhaps the vine-workers are telling them more than just why grapes are on sale in September.

The seniors make a study of the portrait of “The Two Ambassadors” by Hans Holbein the Younger. It is not usually till the final question that the students see the representation of the skull warped at the bottom or the crucifix half hidden in the corner, hinting that this is much more than a portrait.

But most often the students are simply challenged to think clearly enough to be able to express their idea clearly in their work. For there is no reason to make a piece of art if it can only be understood by a placard saying: “This is what I am supposed to say!” In order to express their idea clearly in picture, the students must first know what they want to say. And then they must realize how to say that, without saying it, but rather showing it, incorporating it, incarnating it, as it were.

5) To acquire a Catholic (and truly universal and discerning) taste. Mother Stuart says, “[A]s our tastes are, so are we.” The atmosphere of our age is saturated with the despairing spiritual bulimia left us from the crumbs of individualism, materialism, and hedonism. So many of us fight that, but one cannot simply fight the bad—culture is a rampart built by stones of goodness and beauty and truth. What is new is not de facto tasteless, but one develops a universal and discerning taste by drinking deeply of the tradition of civilization.

6) To approach work and materials with respect and humility. Throughout many years in the program, students work with ink and paper, paints, clay, glass, wood, resin, polyurethane, a seemingly never-ending variety of tools (to the dismay of our accounting department at times). There will be plenty that even those who have been told they are “naturally talented” do not use expertly the first time. It can be a humiliation, but taken simply, these experiences teach a deep reality: he who would live well must practice. Odd as it may seem, it is often those not so talented who have great success with their projects: when one has been told from one’s babyhood that one is an artist, it tends to distort one’s meekness, rendering one less capable of docility, and thus, of learning.

7) To provide firsthand (therefore the most powerful!) experience that things that are worth doing are not done well the first time… or the second… or the third. Each year the students are set to practice calligraphy. By graduation, they should have spent a decent number of hours over the years practicing. If they have, they will be able to write beautifully, should they choose to.

Students practice several styles of painting over the years (dark to light, in 6th; naturalistic watercolor in 7th; naturalistic acrylic in 8th; Egyptian-style inking in 9th; egg tempera in 10th), so by the time they make an illuminated manuscript in 11th grade, they have practiced quite a bit. This is a big part of why—at the Art Show—the manuscript section impresses.

8) To understand deeply that it is human to make beautiful things well.

9) To value well-made things. This is why, though much study is made, more emphasis is given to the making of things contemplated. We appreciate more what we have ourselves experienced. A human who has attempted the arduous process of writing an icon will have an intimate sense of awe when he is blessed to experience one made by another. The wondrous encounter with the mosaics in St. Peter’s after freshman forays into mosaics or even a simple watercolor of a flower will be experienced with a heightened sense by someone who has tried to paint their own.

“The main thing that we must teach our youth is to see something and not merely to say something.”—Fr. Leen

10) To begin to see what real Beauty is.

We hope that by their experiences in the Art Program, the students see the intimate relation between Truth and Goodness and Beauty. We hope that a deeper life is imparted—and love that we are human, and thus are capable of making and are in dire need of making beautiful things, by our work and contemplation.