God-Shaped Hole
“Discerning 3” by Casey Murano
God-Shaped Hole
By Casey Murano
“God-shaped Hole” Sculpture by Edward Steffanni, Photo by Casey Murano
It delights me when I encounter contemporary art that openly and intentionally explores questions of spirituality and religion. Right before Lent began, I encountered the work of interdisciplinary artist Edward Steffanni. The exhibition God-Shaped Hole explores themes of woundedness and healing through a wide range of media. There are digital collages, a fabric installation, pulp paper winter landscape paintings, etchings inspired by the rural scenes where he grew up…
In the center of the room is a saggar-fired white stoneware deer, lying on the ground nursing a painful spot, lovingly and rigorously crafted. While you can see layers of earthy colors glazing the creature, these don’t even begin to reveal the complex scaffolding within this ambitious ceramic sculpture. Everywhere you turn in the room, there is so much richness, care, and transparency, paralleling the nuanced, extensive research in his conceptual framework. Steffani’s work is labor intensive and technically impressive–the way he becomes immersed in the process, listening and responding to the materials is very much a spiritual practice. With this contemplatively active posture, he brings the religious concept of a “God-shaped hole” into dialogue with pop culture, art history, and his personal experience as a gay man, inviting the viewer to reflect on where they’ve experienced the void needing to be filled in their own lives, whatever your identity and story may be.
I was excited by how intimately the work engages with the Catholic-Christian tradition. In the art talk, Steffanni shared about a research trip to La Verna, the site of St. Francis’ stigmata, where he was attentive to the way grief has historically shown up in religious art. References to this moment of St. Francis receiving the wound show up across works in the exhibition, both explicitly through imagery in the collages and also implicitly, like the deer attentive to her pain.
From St. Francis and Steffanni, we have examples of what it means to enter into the Sorrowful Passion alongside Christ; that is, to be with the wound that needs healing until it transforms into something new, and to recognize how the particulars of our lived experience open us to what is universal. As I stand beholding imagery of one work spilling into one another, paintings and ideas continuously revisited and expanded upon, all in this one room - I’m reminded: the passion is not finished; it continues when I get back from the gallery, as a deer peers solemnly from the darkness of my backyard.
Casey Murano is a visual artist based in the Blue Ridge Mountains of southwest Virginia who creates drawings and practices of pilgrimage. Learn more about her work here: www.caseymurano.com