An artistic stairway to Heaven

By Michael Patrick O’Brien–

The English critic Clive Bell described art and religion as “two roads by which men escape from circumstance to ecstasy.” This keen insight explains my strong joyful feelings during a recent visit to the 12th International Art Competition, now on display at the Church History Museum of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City.

According to the museum website, every three years Latter-day Saint artists from all over the world participate in a theme-based competition. This year, the competition explored the gospel message “all are alike unto God” from 2 Nephi 26:33 in the Book of Mormon.

I stumbled on the lovely display during a meeting at the museum with my friend, former law partner, and the Church Historian Elder LeGrand R. Curtis. After our meeting, Elder Curtis told me about the display, and we briefly walked though it together. I went back later on my own to explore further.

Over 800 artists from all around the world submitted art in various sizes and formats. Organizers chose 148 works to showcase. Curator Laura Paulsen Howe told The Church News that the competition “seeks to broadcast the lived faith of members of the Church.” She said, “We hope to encourage the creation of quality art, showcase the breadth and diversity of Latter-day Saint cultural production and purchase art for the Church History Museum collection that helps to represent who we are as a people.”

The artwork will be on display at the Church History Museum from March 17, 2022 through April 1, 2023, and through an online gallery. Visitors can vote for their favorites through January 2023 at Art competition website.

During my recent visit, I thought of the words written by famous Kentucky Trappist monk and writer Thomas Merton: “Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.” I found and lost myself in several of the artistic works.

I loved the colorful painting that illustrates this blog post—Jesus walking under a flowered arch and emerging from a cactus garden. Competition jurists agreed, and gave a prize to artist Michelle Franzoni Thorley for Making Space for Us. 

The jurists also recognized Megan Knobloch Geilman’s unique photograph Pietà, featuring a grieving mother Mary mourning the death of the Lamb of God, this time in the form of an actual sheep. The artist explained, “There has been so much to mourn over this past year, but I still have hope that through the great and last sacrifice we all can be made whole.”

Others of my favorite works won no award except perhaps the dubious distinction of this obscure blog mention. 

Painter K. Ray Johnson portrayed himself helping his wheelchair-bound brother Stuart put on a shoe, recalling when Jesus washed the feet of his disciples. Naming his touching work I had Myself a Wound Concealed, Johnson explained that both brothers serve… “one gives temporal service, and the other offers spiritual strength.”

Using colored pencils, Melanie Dugan drew a delightful scene of a hen’s wide wings sheltering a porcupine, skunk, shrew, spider, snake, rat, mole, and cockroach. She noted that her work Gathering under His Wings represents “those who are sometimes rejected by the world but are loved by God.”

Finally, reminding us that divine creation was/is not strictly a male endeavor, artist Kwani Povi Winder created an oil painting of the first woman Eve emerging from Avanyu—living water. This lovely Southwestern Pueblo depiction is titled The Mother of All Living.

I write about religious art from time to time in this blog. 

Sometimes this art reveals important truths about both divine and human nature (see: The Pieta and the curse of parenthood). 

Other times it helps us decipher the mystery of creation, death, and resurrection (see: The Guadalupe Tiles Mystery). 

And sometimes religious art just captures the simple but important essence and values of a place where good people searched for the meaning of life (see: The old monk in the foothills).

You need not rely on my work alone, however, for the purpose and meaning of religious art. Michelangelo—someone who knew a lot more about the subject than I ever will—once said, “My soul can find no staircase to Heaven unless it be through Earth’s loveliness.” 

I now know and appreciate another lovely earthly route to Heaven…up the northside stairs at the Church History Museum in Salt Lake City and just off to the left.

*Mike O’Brien (author website here: https://michaelpobrien.com/) is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. His book Monastery Mornings (https://www.amazon.com/Monastery-Mornings-Unusual-Boyhood-Saints/dp/1640606491), about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, was published by Paraclete Press in August 2021.