Beauty As Sacred
The Artist as Co-Creator with God

By Paul J. Stankard 

This is not a scholarly thesis on philosophy. I am not a philosopher. This essay is about sharing my spiritual journey while maturing as a studio artist craftsperson. My creative focus is to celebrate the beauty of the plant kingdom in glass with an ethereal point of view.

I’ve been sitting behind a gas-oxygen bench torch for 62 years, and much of that time has been under stress -- especially in the early years.  Much of this stress stemmed from the rigor of mastering my techniques as pathways in a search for beauty. 

Beauty is harsh taskmaster.   In my view, achieving beauty is competing with great art from the past and bringing a fresh, personal point of view to the present.  Achieving beauty is a spiritual experience, and failure is discouraging.

My obsession is and continues to be developing techniques to express what I believe is God’s universal beauty. I think of my studio as a sacred space. The personal feelings I express have become my prayer and by the grace of God, I’m advancing my vision into a creative realm. With skilled hands and a joyful heart, as I pursue excellence at times a creative high engulfs me as a sweet prayer to God. These nuanced efforts leave me blissed out with an emotional high, which Socrates referred to as “divine madness.” Inevitably these emotional highs are followed by slipping into uncomfortable lows.

Beauty is sacred and is fraught with varying degrees of mood swings. Once the work is completed I’m usually elated, believing I created a significant work of art. At times, when the work does not reach my expectations, it’s like an emotional roller coaster ride falling into depths of frustration.

At this stage of my career, I enjoy being a mentor, by sharing my hard-won experiences with the growing numbers of young people eager to learn glass-making. The essence of my attitudes is personal and seems abstract when I discuss the relationship among creativity, beauty, and the sacred. Sharing has always been a very important part of my career, both as an educator and studio artist, but it is growing in importance at this stage of my life and my current status in the artistic community.  

While I take great pride in my work, humility is, for me, one of the major aspects of creation. The spiritual must always trump your self-importance.   This is a primary ingredient in spirituality.  The endless hours, especially time spent experimenting through trial and error, is blessed by the Benedictine monks’ motto “Laborare est orare” (to labor is to pray).

Hand-work invested in crafting significant objects – laboring as prayer -- takes advantage of risk-taking and allows spontaneity to create endless variations in outcomes. The work is filtered through the lens of the spiritual relationship complemented by my artistic vision. As an artist working in glass I bring dedication and patience to my art-making without seeking perfection. What is rewarding is balancing organic spontaneity with competent hand skills.

In fact, this search for beauty pervades all sorts of creative activity.   I have been inspired by many great creators, including many who were not craftspeople.  I sought new ways to infuse significance and spirituality in my work by reading insightful books from theologians and  philosophers.  I engaged in artistic self-learning by walking through the woods and absorbing the beauty of nature – the ultimate creation and manifestation of beauty.

My prayer is to unveil the essence of nature’s beauty, infusing it with insights and visual significance. One of my emotional goals is to go beyond words and discover the hidden depths within beauty.

The concept of beauty as sacred is certainly not new; it dates back at least to the earliest Greek philosophers.  Plato, for example, believed that beauty served as a pathway to knowledge, leading to deeper understanding and wisdom. Aristotle felt beauty was a function of mathematical perfection. Aristotle went as far as to calculate a “ratio” that determined beauty, a mathematical formula that influenced much of the ancient Greek architecture. 

Theologians explored not only the concept of beauty as a path to knowledge but also to sanctity. For me, this concept means that labor and prayer are entwined in artistic pursuit. 

Saint Augustine, for example, believed that beauty is the pure manifestation of the good. It reflects divine qualities and serves as a bridge between the earthly and the transcendent. In other words, the connection between man and God. 

Saint Thomas Aquinas, known for his use of common and unpretentious language, defined beauty as, “what pleases the senses.” Aquinas considered beauty as a pathway to understanding deeper truths and, like St. Augustine, a gateway to the divine.

Immanuel Kant believed that beauty sings to our souls and is not merely a matter of personal preference but contains a universal quality that transcends individual concepts or interests. When we appreciate something beautiful, he argued, it is not because of any specific purpose or utility. Instead, it’s a purely aesthetic experience that resonates with everyone.   

Walt Whitman entwined beauty through his words. His poetry celebrates ordinary as the extraordinary. Whitman expresses beauty in the natural world, seeing the divine in the common. Here are some examples from my favorite poetic lines from Whitman:

“The morning glory by my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.” 

 “And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven.”

 “And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery.”

Pope John Paul II’s letter to artists reinforced many of these thoughts and eloquently echoed the feelings that I have experienced in my career as an artist. I been touched and inspired by Pope John Paul II’s deep appreciation for creativity, the arts, and the artist. He said, “None can sense more deeply than you artists, ingenious creators of beauty that you are, something of the pathos with which God at the dawn of creation looked upon the work of his hands,” he wrote in his 1996 Letter to Artists. “A glimmer of that feeling has shone so often in your eyes when—like the artists of every age—captivated by the hidden power of sounds and words, colors and shapes, you have admired the work of your inspiration, sensing in it some echo of the mystery of creation with which God, the sole creator of all things, has wished in some way to associate you.”

 Pope John Paul II’s words hold a special meaning for me because I have learned over my career that I link my work to the spiritual. When the object is completed, I think of it as my prayer traveling into the future, my soul connected to time, space, and beauty.

I’m not defining beauty as simply “prettiness.” True beauty is a transcendent quality, an aura, a halo, that surrounds the work and moves it to a higher, spiritual level. You can feel it, just as the ancient Greek philosophers felt. When the person confronts beauty, the Greeks argued, that man or woman feels a flutter, a joy, a realization that the soul recognizes the beauty from its existence in heaven, where it was timeless and perfect.

The more knowledgeable you are of art history, and the more you are aware of the originality of great creative accomplishments, the more likely it is that you will grow in artistic maturity.

An understanding of the sacred qualities of beauty adds to the emotional experience both on the part of the creator and the person who experiences the creation. There is a consensus that beauty is universal; people from all cultures can understand, at some level, the significance of great work.

As an artist, I’m continuing a tradition that has evolved over centuries and I take pride crafting beauty to a sympathetic audience.  My aesthetic attracts attention from all cultures and is respected as poetry in glass.

I believe beauty universally aligns with the concept that spirituality is one of the ways we attempt to understand nature and the creative spirit.  My faith has grown stronger over the last few years as my work progresses. I’ve been blessed and nourished by participating in a men’s Bible study group meeting once a week. This growing in the Lord’s words has brought into my life and studio both a renewed and energized sense of urgency while seeking beauty through color harmony, delicacy, and visual intelligence.

Being an artist requires serious sacrifices for the betterment of one’s creative journey.

Let me conclude with an attitude expressed by Pope John Paul II.  He believed that beauty is a path to God.   He went so far as to argue that the artist is actually a co-creator with God – a concept from which I derived the title of this work. 

Through beauty artists praise God and evangelize by offering creative gifts of joy to the world. Through beauty we find a glimpse of eternity.