Art & Spirituality
A Juried Exhibition

Art & Spirituality, A Juried Exhibition

The relationship between art and spirituality is riven by a profound, irreducible tension. Art in its myriad forms always possesses material qualities, even if that materiality is fleeting. Spirituality, by contrast, invariably transcends the material world. This paradox of art and spirituality has fired imaginations for countless centuries as artists have attempted to capture the divine in the mundane, the supernatural in the everyday, and the invisible in the visible. Across a wide range of beliefs, religious practices, and faith traditions, art has often embodied a touchpoint where material reality verges upon the immaterial, thus offering glimpses of soaring truths, quiet mysteries, and startling revelations all believed to exist beyond our immediate perception. Our goal as jurors was to gather together artworks that explore the expressive range of this dynamic tension between art and spirituality.

-- Kerry Boeye, Associate Professor of Art History, & Dan Schlapbach, Professor of Visual Arts, Jurors

About Our Jurors:
Kerry Boeye (he/him), an associate professor of art history at Loyola University Maryland, earned his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago with a specialization in western medieval art. Through his research, writing, and teaching, he has explored expressions of spirituality, faith, and religious practices in medieval Christian, Jewish and Islamic art as well as early modern and contemporary artworks.

Dan Schlapbach (he/him) received his MFA from Indiana University and is now a Professor of Visual Arts/Photography at Loyola University MD. His research interests include the intersection of the indexical nature of photography with the ungraspable nature of reality. His artworks merge 19th century practices like wet-plate collodion with contemporary digital imaging to create photographic koans that challenge viewers to embrace uncertainty and our interdependence. He frequently offers a course on Spirit Photography.