Amanda Martinez-Beck & Julianne Miles

Looking for an additional commitment to your Lenten journey? The Ruah Storytellers are here to accompany us this season, as we walk to Love unveiled on the Cross. ⁠ Download and subscribe to the podcast to hear a different sister of faith share their story each day of Lent. 

https://www.ruahstorytellers.com/

The Catholic Artist Connection asked the creators of Ruah Storytellers, Julianne Miles and Amanda Martinez Beck, about their journeys as Catholic artists. 

Amanda Martinez-Beck

To me, a “Catholic artist” isn’t so much someone who creates specifically Catholic art. God is an artist, but he didn’t create distinctly Catholic trees; rather he created trees deeply formed by and saturated with his love. So, to be a Catholic artist to be an artist who is deeply formed by and saturated with the love of God expressed in the Church. The more mindful I am of the Spirit’s movement in the world around me, the more I learn that life is art. My calling as a Catholic artist is to draw out that art, to capture it in little moments for reflection, contemplation, meditation. 

I make stories with my head and my heart and my fingers wrapped around a marker or hammering out words on a keyboard. When I share what I have created with someone, I am sharing my life with them, in a very real sense. 

Art reflects the goodness and reality of the Incarnation and resists the gnostic impulse that says that our spirit is good but our flesh is bad. I’m not sure there is anything more Catholic than art except for the Sacraments themselves. And even then–with the metal work of the chalice, the curve of the baptismal font, and the flavor of the fermented grapes–art participates in the Sacraments. It’s not that art teaches us truth; it reveals it to us. 

And that is what Catholics can bring to art: not the arrogance of the didactic, but the humility of revelation. That’s why the Church needs art–it reaches past our relentless focus on the life of the mind and engages our heart and flesh as one incarnated reality.

Julianne Miles

For me, a Catholic artist is anyone who participates alongside God in the creative act. I’ve learned in my time working in podcasting (including interviewing artists) that there is something in the act of creating which unites us in a unique and beautiful way with our good Creator God. 

The Catholic Church today would not exist as it is without the gift of artists. Artists (through their creative works) provide the gateway to a deeper relationship and understanding of God and His plan for humanity. Without the gift of art (and beauty), we would have lost that every important necessity to stir our hearts and souls to something greater…Beauty, in other words, gives us a longing for all that we cannot see. 

Catholics, in turn, have a responsibility to use their artistic gifts to glorify God. But (praise God!) this looks different for all of us. If there is one thing I’ve learned that has united Catholic artists through the years, it is the power of the artist to tell a STORY. Art can help us reclaim the great story that we belong to, the story of salvation history in which we all have a part to play.

Jules also did an interview with Clare from The Catholic Feminist podcast a few months ago about the importance of storytelling and the mission of Ruah. You can access it here if you’re interested in learning more.

Have a blessed Lenten season, artists!