Home / News & Publications / Michigan Catholic News / 2007 / Seminarian says creating artwork helped him hear the call to priesthood
Seminarian says creating artwork helped him hear the call to priesthood
Kristin Lukowski of The Michigan Catholic
Published October 19, 2007
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Seminarian Craig Giera has a small workspace at Sacred Heart Major Seminary for painting. |
Detroit — Craig Giera's painting and sculpting helped lead him to consider becoming a priest.
Working out of an open-air loft in Hamtramck, with no television and the only other major commitment a part-time job, he found himself doing a lot of reading and a lot of praying — and hearing God a bit more.
"It was a time to be quiet, and a time to learn a lot about myself," he said.
Among the things he learned was that although he is artistically talented, his vocation is that of a priest. Now as a second-year theology student at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit, with an expected ordination date of 2010, 29-year-old Giera is able to work on his art in a tiny room that was a student dormitory before it became a storage room.
Giera, who says he gets his artistic talent from his mother, Sylvia Ann, a ceramic artist, started getting involved in art during high school. After seeing the movie "Wall Street" he wanted to be a stockbroker, but he changed his mind after taking a few accounting classes. Instead, he started getting involved in artwork and graphic design, which he figured would be a more lucrative career than fine arts. He attended the then-Center for Creative Studies for a year and a half before deciding graphic design wasn't for him, either.
"I didn't like sitting in front of a computer all day long," he said.
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Small abstract forms come together to form Giera's self-portrait. |
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"Blue, Necktie, You, and Missing Squares Too" allowed Giera to experiment with foam blocks. |
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The bronze cows - similar to golden calves - representing things in life that may not seem like serious vices at first in 'Procession of the Profuse.' | So, he transferred to Wayne State University, where he got a bachelor's degree in fine art, concentrating on painting and sculpture. He didn't know if he'd be able to make a career out of his art, but he knew he wouldn't be happy doing anything else, he said.
"I trusted that things would work out," he said.
While in art school, he started working at the Robert Kidd Gallery in Birmingham, where with the gradual increase in responsibility there also came a chance to display — and sometimes sell — his artwork. He decided to apply to graduate school, but he didn't research the process very well, he said, and was turned down. That's when he turned to his Hamtramck studio, dedicating himself to creating a new body of work, about 20 pieces, to apply again.
And it was in that time of steady work and silence he started hearing God a bit more, too. That time creating artwork became a meditative form of prayer, he said.
Becoming a priest had been on the back burner, but he didn't give the idea serious thought until he had that quiet time alone with his artwork. In fact, his mother had told him from when he was in college that he was going to be a priest, but he would brush her off.
"Maybe she knew something — mother's intuition," he said.
So Giera, a Sterling Heights native whose home parish is SS. Cyril and Methodius there, made applying to the seminary a priority, and was accepted. His lifestyle drastically changed — from creating artwork when he wanted around his part-time hours to a structured day of prayer, Mass, class and meetings — but now he finds it a "great stability," he said.
He missed having a space to create art, he said, but it didn't matter much — he didn't have much free time, anyway. Now, he's had his small studio for about two years, and does work there when he can find the time, usually about once a week for a couple of hours.
Giera's learned to live with his art in a different way, to see it as a way to relax and rejuvenate instead of being his paycheck — because his call first and foremost, is to be a priest, he said. He hopes when he becomes a priest, he can continue to create art as a source of energy, prayer and stabilization, as well as an outlet more constructive than watching television.
He's expecting that the life of a priest will put him in different situations, some of extreme joy, some of extreme sadness — and tapping into that through his art will hopefully make him more of a human person, he said.
Some of his earlier works include large pieces made up of smaller squares, painting clothes on the canvas as a part of the work, and sculptures of oak and bronze. Some invoke a lot of thought — "Procession of the Profuse" features small gold bulls and suggests that a vice may not seem so bad one time, but an obvious problem after it happens many times — and some are more whimsical, incorporating bronze frogs, for example.
His newer work is more three-dimensional, and also often incorporates clothing. Giera explained that one idea behind making art out of clothing is that he's taking something that isn't considered a piece of artwork and making it so.
The ideas he has for future pieces include more realistic pieces, working with different images and experiences from his summer break from studies, he said.
Visit Craig Giera's Web page at http://homepage.mac.com/cagiera.
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