I don't do promotions much at all on this blog, but I felt called to share an organization that is run by a friend's cousin up in Chicago out of St. John Cantius called the Catholic Art Institute. Her name is Kathleen Carr, and she is an amazingly talented realist painter. Her personal artist's website is here if you want to check out her body of work. This is just one example from her website:
Supporting the arts has traditionally been confined to the patronage of the wealthy, but I think our family is going to try to support them as well even with our modest means. As an artist and writer myself, it can be exhausting and grind you down that our society puts little monetary value on the arts, which adds so much to our lives, and that it can be pilfered and chewed up/spit out by a society bent on content consumption. It can also feel "frivolous" in a utilitarian, STEM-oriented culture which has little regard for beauty or nuance and gorges on a diet of pop-culture. I make almost non-existent money from my years of writing, but I don't do it full-time either, and I consider it a kind of vocation that God has charged me with and so I'm okay with that.
Most artists feel called (compelled?) to create (which is a gift from God) but are not compensated in proportion to what they offer the world. But imagine a world in which beautiful Catholic art did not exist. It would be a barren existence. Beauty is food for the soul, and beautiful art also attempts to communicate it's sisters--truth and goodness. The transcendentals of what it means to be human.
I realize many people are struggling in this economy, but if you are a person of means who wants to see more beauty in the world and support the artists training to bring it into existence, consider supporting Kathleen's organization, the Catholic Art Institute. It would be money well spent.
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