I recently went to a group exhibition put on by New York City’s Arthouse 2B, a Catholic artist collective. Now I need to admit that, as a Catholic, I have reservations about self-consciously Catholic art. I do not object to it per se; it just seems that whenever we get together like this the results are… lame. So I was delighted and surprised when my favorite work in the exhibit was a piece of straightforward devotional art: Yukiyo Nagata’s Offering.

Nagata creates her images out of fabric scraps. Offering is an image of a heart bleeding on an altar. Two candles burning blue flank it, while a deep maroon backdrop hangs behind. Entering the top of the frame is a golden sunburst, like a floating monstrance. Its devotional subject is clearly Christ’s heart, offered up for us once and forever at the altar in the Eucharist. The artist loves the piece so dearly that she will not sell it. I wandered back to it several different times during the evening.

So, obviously this piece challenges my aversion to self-consciously Catholic art. Maybe I can get at what draws me to it by praising its virtues. I find the dramatic color of the backdrop nicely balanced by the simplicity of the linen. Both elements draw me towards the heart, which takes up both of their colors and remakes them. The blue flames are appropriately ghostly, given that this is a picture of the Spirit as much as of the flesh. But it really is the material and the evident care and skill with which it is used that make this piece captivating. Textiles evoke the home, comfort, ordinary life. Like any craft, they can be put to use in purely artistic ways, but are primarily associated with objects that are used, such as a quilt to warm up under or clothing to wear. The Eucharist, on the other hand, is set apart; that is, the Mass is celebrated in such a way that we understand it as set apart from ordinary life. That creates a fruitful contrast between Offering’s subject (Christ’s heart) and its medium (fabric). Fabric is also a material we associate with love and care. In that way it is the perfect material to express devotion.

Because Nagata works in fabric, I find it helpful to think about how she draws on the craft tradition. I think a craftsman is best understood as being skillful rather than artistic. When I say a craftsman, I mean a person who works in any form that creates objects for use. Woodworkers, potters, fabric designers, for instance, all initially exist to create useful objects. We see virtue in their work to the extent that it is skillfully executed. Their virtue is found in the hands, whereas we might praise artists for their vision and originality, which we locate in the mind. These are false distinctions, as an artist clearly masters rote skills, and a craftsman can create objects of beauty and vision, but making this distinction helps me understand what is significant about Nagata’s choice of material in Offering.

Craft becomes uniquely beautiful through the cultivation of skill. It is not in originality and spontaneity, reinvention with each piece, but in persistent repetition of technique. The craftsman’s hands become accustomed to a set of gestures such that each gesture speaks of mastery. I also notice that, as they gain mastery, craftspeople settle on specific gestures, as if they are pruning away all the other branching paths their practice could have taken. I see this most clearly with ceramics. There is an entire universe of forms, clay bodies, glazes, and hand building techniques, but the accomplished potter settles on a very narrow set of techniques. I never pursued pottery to the point that I found these for myself, but from the outside it looks as though each craftsperson searches until they find the techniques that satisfy them—and then prune the rest away. It’s a bit like falling in love and then getting married. A lifelong devotion follows.

I think of all of this when I look at Offering because Nagata works in a functional material. I think of the aesthetics, but I also think about the evident mastery of craft present in this piece. I can see a pair of hands executing complex gestures with grace, placing each stitch where it should be placed, folding the fabric exactly as it is meant to be folded. I can nearly hear it or feel it as a physical sensation in my mind. While the hands work at gestures lovingly practiced over the course of years, I also see Nagata’s mind fixed on the object of devotion. She reaches towards Jesus with her craft, just stitches and fabric scraps. Then Jesus pulls that physical labor up into something more than it could be on its own. I said earlier that Offering is about the Eucharist. It is just as easily an image of the artist offering herself to the divine mystery. Offering is a remarkable piece because it embodies what it represents.

Jack Bouchard lives in Brooklyn, NY with his wife. He has written for Education Week and The Republic of Letters. He also writes his newsletter In the Wild, which he claims is a “Catholic newsletter about literature,” on Substack.

Close Reading is now available on Substack, where you can sign up to receive all posts directly to your inbox. To learn more, click here.