Students showcase artwork in third annual Catholic School Visual Arts Exhibition
Thirty-two students representing 16 schools of the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis were finalists in the Catholic School Visual Arts Exhibition May 1 at the Hoedeman Gallery of Sacred Art at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul. The students’ artwork depicted the theme “Wondrous Creation: The Beauty of God’s Work in the World,” inspired by the poem “Pied Beauty” by 19th century Jesuit priest Gerard Manley Hopkins.
Pied Beauty
By Gerard Manley Hopkins
Glory be to God for dappled things –
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.
Independent artists Ali Benda and Bernadette Gockowski, and iconographer Nicholas Markell served as judges and selected winning pieces from 13 Catholic school students:
The students received certificates and monetary prizes, and their artwork will be displayed at in the Hoedeman Gallery of Sacred Art through August. Then in September, it will be the featured exhibit in the John XXIII Gallery at the Basilica of Saint Mary in Minneapolis.
The visual arts exhibition for 7th-12th grade students is sponsored by the Archdiocesan Office for the Mission of Catholic Education. This year, OMCE received more than 100 submissions, all of which were displayed in Minneapolis April 7-9 at the National Catholic Educational Association’s annual convention. The finalists and their families, friends, art teachers, school leaders and pastors gathered at the Hoedeman Gallery May 1 for the exhibition with Archbishop Bernard Hebda and emcee Dr. Jacob Benda, director of sacred music, liturgy and sacred arts in UST’s Office for Mission. All the finalists’ artwork will be displayed at the Archdiocesan Catholic Center in St. Paul during an October open house.
Saint Pier Giorgio Frassati, pray for us!