by Gordon Nary
Gordon: Where did you attend college, who was your favorite teacher, and why was that teacher your favorite?
Father Frank: I attended UCLA, College of Fine Arts. My favorite professor was Elliot Elgart who taught life painting. While working intensely on a painting I was sure would impress anyone who encountered it, Mr. Elgart came up to my easel, asked me for my brush and then smeared my work. “Loosen up!” he said, as he handed me my brush. It was exactly what I needed to hear and I have never forgotten him.
Gordon: Where did you attend seminary, what was your favorite course, and why was that course your favorite?
Father Frank: While at the Paulist House of Studies in Washington, DC, I attended The Catholic University of America, the MA program in Sacred Theology. It was a wonderful time to be there and I had many outstanding professors. My favorite course was on Luke and Acts by Fr. Joseph Fitzmyer, SJ, one of the world’s great scripture scholars. He made Luke come alive.
Gordon: Why did you decide to be a Paulist?
Father Frank: I had thought of being a priest since childhood but never thought I was “good enough”. I met the Paulists at the Newman Center at UCLA and was immediately impressed by how authentically human they were. I had also never heard preaching like that before. I became involved in peer ministry with other students at Newman, got to know the priests and was also drawn to their promise that my talents would be used not subjugated. Many years have demonstrated that they kept that promise.
Gordon: What initially interested you in becoming an artist?
Father Frank: I discovered I had a gift for drawing when I was twelve. I kept drawing and became the “school artist” in high school. Going to college I decided to major in art. I consider art a vocation not a hobby or pastime, the difference being: art is something I must do, like being a priest.
Gordon: Who is your favorite artist and why is that artist your favorite?
Father Frank: I have many but one who moves me profoundly is Bernini. Standing in front of his “Ecstasy of St. Teresa” at the Church of Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome I was speechless. Especially because I have carved marble myself I can see the technical mastery but also the mastery of form and subject.
Gordon: When and where did you study art?
Father Frank: I began at San Jose City College then transferred to the University of California, Los Angeles, College of Fine Art. I was in art school for four years.
Gordon: Tell us about the Openings Collective.
Father Frank: In 2006 the Paulists asked me to come to New York to start an outreach to artists. Together with artist Robert Aitchison we formed a team whose purpose was a dialogue with emerging artists focusing on MFA programs in the area. Openings is a genuine dialogue with no “hidden agenda.” In other words, to have genuine conversations where, by definition, both parties are changed. Since 2006 we have held exhibits at the Church of St. Paul the Apostle in NYC and elsewhere as well as discussion groups and a summer artist residency at the Paulist summer residence at Lake George, NY. In 2020 at the height of the pandemic (all galleries and museums were closed) we held an outdoor exhibit with 27 artists along the north side of the church and were recognized by the New York Times as one of the “10 Most Important Moments in Art in 2020.”
Gordon: Tell us something about the artists that you have interviewed/
Father Frank: In almost 20 years I have met countless artists including young MFA candidates (the MFA is the terminal degree in visual art), professors of art and artists who have now become well known. In the past our team has been asked to submit names for special recognition which we declined as we are not interested in rankings or status but in the fact that all the artists who have touched us by their vision have made Openings what I always hoped it would be, a conversation that makes our world, our lives and our God bigger.
Gordon: Can some art bring us closer to God? If so, please explain how.
Father Frank: Definitely. I have asked many of the artists I have met if, when they work do they loose a sense of themselves. They always say yes. I then tell them that is what they have in common with contemplatives: liminality, time out of time. One artist told me “when I work it feels like prayer.” “It is prayer” I told her. Countless works have been written on this subject by Etienne Gilson, Jacques Maritain, Wassily Kandinsky and others. Great art undoes our attempt to control and control, not doubt, is the opposite of faith.
Gordon: Please provide an overview of your parish Saint Paul the Apostle.
Father Frank: The Church of St. Paul the Apostle in Manhattan is the Mother Church of the Paulist Fathers and is the vision of our founder, Servant of God Isaac Thomas Hecker (1819-1888). In designing it Father Hecker wanted the interior to be a “democracy of art” and as such contains works by many of the premiere American artists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is the third largest Christian church in New York City after St. Patrick’s Cathedral and St. John the Divine.
Gordon: Please provide an overview of Saint Catherine, the patron saint of artists.
Father Frank: The patron saint of visual artists is St. Catherine of Bologna (1413-1463). Daughter of an upper class family she was raised as a lady in waiting to the wife of the Marquis of Ferrara. She received some education in music and also studied illuminated manuscripts. Eventually she became a Poor Clare and spent most of her life at the convent of Corpus Domini in Ferrara as Mistress of Novices. In 1456 she became abbess of Corpus Domini in Bologna.
Catherine was an artist whose artworks are preserved in her personal breviary. She depicts Christ and a number of saints. “Some saints images, interwoven with text and rubrics, display an idiosyncratic, inventive iconography also found in German nuns’ artworks.”1 She explained that “although it took precious time, the purpose of her religious art was ‘to increase devotion for herself and others.’”2
Gordon: Thank you for an exceptional Interview.
1 Arthur, Kathleen G, Women, Art and Observant Franciscan Piety, pp. 86–118.
2 Arthur, Kathleen G, Women, Art and Observant Franciscan Piety. Caterina Vigri and the Poor Clares in Early Modern Ferrara. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.