San José State University and the surrounding community are home to many artists who explore themes that are derivative from different aspects of their lives such as religious and spiritual beliefs.
Religious and spiritual art are expressions of desire for connection, according to an article by Loyola University, a private Jesuit Catholic University in Chicago, Illinois.
Art plays a spiritual role in people’s lives, articulating the relationships people have with divine beings, themselves and the world around them, according to the same article.
Marisa Avila, pictorial fine art senior, local artist and ceramics-maker, said she does not include religious context in her art, but interacts with different artistic mediums.
Avila said she creates art in a spiritual headspace and draws influence from divinity in the natural world.
She said human eyes are one of the biggest influences in her work and she believes them to be a symbol of repelling bad energy.
“I have a really big connection to eyes,” Avila said. “My art also sometimes resembles cells and tiny microscopic looking things, and I put all these things into a bigger format.”
Avila said some of her favorite art mediums to use for her work are pottery and ceramics using clay, and painting and drawing using oil or charcoal.
She said these types of art tools can be messy, but she feels very intune with them.
Avila said she believes this is important when she is using her art to embody her spiritual beliefs in relation to the natural world.
“I have a tattoo of an eye on the back of my neck and I kind of feel like I'm being protected by it,” Avila said. “It’s like all these eyes in my art are protective entities in a way.”
Avila said she loves using methods of abstraction in her art because of how intuitive it is to her.
She said every stroke she paints places her in her own spiritual zone, where all her influences meet to produce a creation.
“With every stroke I paint, it’s like I’m in my own spiritual world as I’m making my art,” Avila said.
Pictorial fine arts senior Megan Huddlestun said her art contains spirituality through the way she interacts with it in its different versions, from the process of brainstorming ideas to putting them on a canvas.
Huddlestun said she prefers painting and drawing as her mediums for her work.
She said she tends to extract fictional characters from classic western folklore and fairy tales, aspects of natural history and living organisms in nature as inspiration.
Huddlestun said these parts of her inspiration intricately fit together like webs to make what she likes to call a functioning and living document of her art.
One of her recent art exhibits called “Beyond,” was displayed at a gallery in the SJSU Art and Art History Department building on campus.
Huddlestun said in the exhibit she included depictions of large creatures, born of fictional lore, that were long and slender that had an ominous and domineering physical appearance but had warmer symbolism.
“When they (the skeletal-like figures) first came into my work, they were really protectors, and they came out of these ideas that I had about empathy and protection,” Huddlestun said. “They have that ominous quality because I think they are looking out for these worlds in a lot of ways, they appear fearsome, but it really comes from a place of care.”
Huddlestun said her time spent outside in her backyard in nature because it is a very fruitful site for inspiration for her art and has always been a space of comfort for her.
“I can go out into my backyard and just take a walk and spend time with these spaces that I've known since I was little,” Huddlestun said. “I was always fascinated by resin that would come out of these old trees and so I would go find these areas where the tree opens up, and there's this whole other world inside of it of resin and cobwebs.”
Huddlestun said the tiny moments she has out in nature are what bring her into these larger spaces like art galleries.
She said the importance of spirituality in her art comes from the small beginnings in the concepts and ideas she gets from her influences that transform into paint splatters and sketching on a large canvas.
Rosario Muñoz, a nun at Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish church in San José, said religious art to her is an expression of faith and feeling that people carry in their minds and hearts.
Muñoz said religious art brings biblical stories to life, such as Exodus or the creation story from the book of Genesis.
She said some of the most important and prolific themes in Catholic art are iconography.
“Icons are the imaginations painted as an expression from churches and have stemmed from Christian Orthodox and Catholic religion,” Muñoz said.
Muñoz said that iconography expresses faith and devotion to religion, but also expresses pride in culture.
She said stained glass is one form of art where people often see iconography in religious settings.
“Most stained glass have a painted image of a saint or some sort of religious figure of significance,” Muñoz said. “Usually it’s an image of the Virgin Mary, Saint Joseph or an archangel.”
Muñoz also said iconography can have different variations in appearance on stained glass depending on the artist.
She said an example would be an image of the Virgin Mary with a bigger body or a longer face.
Muñoz said religious art can transcend the physical aspects of spirituality.
“Art is like a root, a source of seeing the past and helps to transport us to a spiritual life beyond,” Muñoz said.
