This week on The Open Door we will discuss the vocation of the Christian artist. We will consider, as well, the place of the beautiful in art and life. Our special guest, joining us once again, is the renowned sculptor Timothy Schmalz. He is currently at work on a series of pieces inspired by Dante’s The Divine Comedy. Among the questions we will ask are the following. As always, please feel free to add to our list!

1. You have described yourself as a visual translator of the Bible. Why is such a translation especially critical today?

2. At what stage are you now in the sculpting of figures and scenes from Dante’s epic poem?

3. What have been some of the trials and triumphs in the process so far?

4. Are you pleased with Daniel Fitzpatrick’s ongoing new translation of Dante’s masterpiece?

5. Should we share with our auditors the most recent of Fitzpatrick’s efforts, Purgatorio, Canto 14?

6. This Monday we in the United States celebrated Labor Day. You’ve sculpted a well-received tribute to the miners of Canada. How is it that Christianity honors laborers in a way that would never occur to the sculptors of classical Greek or Rome?

7. One of your works is titled “The Homeless Christ.” Its immediate impact is strikingly different from that of, say, Raphael’s “The Transfiguration.” And yet many Christians would judge both to be works of beauty. How do you understand beauty?

8. St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that when we encounter beauty we find it pleasing. He contends, as well, that beauty exhibits integrity, proportion, and clarity. Does Thomas’s account ring true to you?

9. Many Christian thinkers see beauty as a transcendental, that is a dimension of all that is, of the whole of Creation as a participation in the Beauty of the Creator. If this is so, might it be a truth that gives direction to the artist and, indeed, to everyone who seeks the good?

10. One of Dostoevsky’s fictional characters asks whether the world will be saved by beauty. Is there a sense in which we should answer this question in the affirmative?