Imagine strolling through an art gallery where you linger over sketches of St. Paul’s Catholic churches. On other visits, you ponder paintings by a monk from St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville, or artwork inspired by the story of the prodigal son. Several months later, you walk through the gallery’s doors and are struck by some of the best Catholic student art in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. On another occasion, you find yourself upstairs attending a concert of musical selections based on the gallery’s artwork.
This is the rich, eclectic world of religious art found at the Hoedeman Gallery of Sacred Art at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul (UST). The gallery, which features three exhibits per year, consists of a hallway in UST’s Iversen Center for Faith. Broad shafts of natural light from above illuminate the gallery walls, and nearby is a glassed-in area for receptions related to the art displayed.
Father Larry Snyder, UST’s former vice president of the Office for Mission, founded the Hoedeman Gallery in 2020 as a home for sacred artwork. In 2022, he passed oversight of the gallery to Jacob Benda, the current gallery director and UST’s director of Sacred Music, Liturgy and the Sacred Arts. “My goal for the gallery,” Benda explained, “is for people to experience art in a way that will elevate them to a place ‘outside themselves’ and that will ultimately lead toward God, the creator of all beauty, goodness and truth.”
Benda cited Diocese of Winona-Rochester Bishop Robert Barron’s meditation on beauty as a guide to encountering art at the Hoedeman Gallery: “The beautiful does not merely entertain; rather, it invades, chooses, and changes the one to whom it deigns to appear. It opens the mind to a consideration of ever higher forms of the beautiful, conducing finally to the transcendent source of beauty itself.”
The gallery has become an oasis of spiritual contemplation for students because of its location in an otherwise busy hallway, according to Jesuit Father Christopher Collins, UST’s current vice president for mission. As a result, he believes the gallery is much more than a collection of “nice things.”
“Many young people today are experiencing significant stress in their daily lives, but when students pause at the gallery for a quiet moment of spiritual reflection, there is an opportunity to find a moment of peace that may begin to serve as a salve on their challenges,” Father Collins said.
The gallery’s current exhibit is A Pilgrimage on Paper, (Drawn to Saint Paul Catholic Churches). It features the sketch journals of James Kevin Byrne, a former professor at the Minnesota College of Art and Design. “Sketching allows me to really ‘see’,” explained Byrne. “It is a deeper, slower look than what a camera can capture.”
The exhibit is the result of Byrne’s seven-year effort to sketch every active Catholic church and chapel in St. Paul, including the Cathedral of St. Paul. Twenty-nine of the sketches are on display at the Hoedeman Gallery, along with a photograph of each church and a “mood board” the artist prepared for one church. Byrne’s mood boards are digital aggregations of several sketches of the same church, along with adjectives he’s chosen to capture the church’s character.
Byrne begins his sketches of church interiors by first making notes of the “moods” he sees around him. “I worship with words — jotting down adjectives to reflect the feelings the church evokes in me.” Then, he makes quick sketches in a process he describes as “visual contemplation —recording line, shape, value and hue by way of gestural drawing.” He does not render complex backgrounds while in the church, but instead captures highlights and shadows on toned paper (brown or black). Back in his home studio, he might add color and more detail, capturing how his sketches were felt, seen and drawn.
Byrne drew inspiration for the title of his exhibit from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ National Eucharistic Pilgrimage, which ended in July in Indianapolis. A portion of Byrne’s exhibit features sketches of churches to which he walked from his home in St. Paul for seven years, on paths he thought of as his own personal pilgrimage.
The Hoedeman Gallery has several additional exhibits planned for the near future.
After Byrne’s Pilgrimage on Paper exhibit closes Sept. 29, the gallery will present an exhibition of paintings by Father Jerome Tupa, a Benedictine monk, priest and professor of French at St. John’s Abbey and St. John’s University in Collegeville. In the spring of 2025, it will host an exhibit of artwork inspired by the biblical story of the prodigal son.
After that, it will for the first time collaborate with the archdiocese’s Office for the Mission of Catholic Education in the annual Catholic School Visual Arts Exhibition. This exhibit will feature the artwork of seventh through 12th grade Catholic students under the theme “The Saints.” (See related article on page 6.)
In addition to the visual arts, the Hoedeman Gallery collaborates with the UST Chapel Arts Series, which Benda — an internationally renowned organist—also oversees. All events in the music series occur upstairs from the Hoedeman Gallery in the St. Thomas Aquinas Chapel. “Many concert-goers enjoy the gallery’s art as a visual complement to the music,” said Benda, “and we are working to merge visual art and music more intentionally.” To that end, the Chapel Arts Series recently presented a music program that was inspired by artwork on display immediately adjacent to the Hoedeman Gallery.
Benda is optimistic about the Hoedeman Gallery’s future. “If we are to see a renewal of our young people, the culture and our faith,” he said, “the path to that renewal will likely pass through beauty. We believe that the Hoedeman Gallery can play some role in illuminating that path.”
Hoedeman Gallery of Sacred Art
Located: 102 Cleveland Ave. N., St. Paul, in the Iverson Center for Faith at the University of St. Thomas
Parking: Frey Hall Parking Garage
Hours: 7 a.m.-10 p.m., seven days a week
Admission: Free; all tours are self-guided
Website: Hoedeman Gallery of Sacred Art
Exhibits:
- A Pilgrimage on Paper, Drawn to St. Paul Catholic Churches, ends Sept. 29
- Artwork by Benedictine Father Jerome Tupa from Oct. 1 through the end of January 2025
- Run dates have yet to be set for a spring exhibition of artwork inspired by the story of the prodigal son. Check the Hoedeman Gallery website for updates
The deadline to submit entries for the Catholic School Visual Arts Exhibition will be in April 2025. Finalists will be invited to participate in the exhibit and reception at the Hoedeman Gallery on May
