Joe Maki spent his working life in manufacturing—grinding, cutting, and polishing fake bones on a production floor—until his brother Mike told him to quit dreaming about laser-engraved tabletops and learn how to hold a tape measure. Two years later the table was finished. Six years ago, after his first child was born, he picked up clay for the first time since high school, and his first commission now hangs as the main altar crucifix in a church in Cleveland. In this conversation with Jason Craig, Joe argues that craft is a virtue before it is a skill, that artificial intelligence inverts the sacramental nature of the world, and that a man's vocation as husband and father has to outrank his vocation as an artist.
In This Episode, We Cover:
Why the medievals saw almost no difference between building a table and painting an icon, and what was lost when "fine art" arrived in the eighteenth century
What two weeks at a Benedictine monastery with no deadlines does to a workaholic, and why farmers keep the same clock the monks do
The difference between making a beautiful cup and making a chalice, and why AI-generated art and AI-generated prayer fail on the same grounds
Jacques Maritain's rope between the artist and God, and why pulling on it is supposed to hurt
The warning a German priest gave Joe about liturgical art, and the practice of doing clay with his kids that came out of it
Podden och tillhörande omslagsbild på den här sidan tillhör
Jason Craig. Innehållet i podden är skapat av Jason Craig och inte av,
eller tillsammans med, Poddtoppen.
