18 Oct Art in the House (RFQ 5:1)
Art in the House: Br. Howard Tu, SJ
Jesuit Brother Howard Tu was already an artist and a vowed religious when he arrived in Toronto to study theology at Regis College. But as he recalls the clay busts of St. Ignatius and Mary he produced in 2012, he remembers that he was then still an unfinished project as both a Jesuit and an artist.
“They (the busts) speak to me like old, faithful friends – reminders of how far I have travelled, both as an artist and as a Jesuit brother,” Tu wrote to RFQ in an email from Taiwan, where he exercises a wide-ranging, arts-based retreat ministry. “My time in Toronto was never merely about academic study. It was a crucible of self-discovery, where I slowly came to embrace my identity as a religious and a creator.”
The busts, which occupy a quiet space in the new study hall of Regis College, were the product of prayer.
“Prayer was not merely a companion to the making – it was the very soil from which these forms grew,” said Tu.
While Tu has worked in just about every medium over the years, sculpting in clay was not an easy choice.
“I used to find it messy, almost chaotic,” said Tu.
For a young man raised in an environment that prized order, cleanliness and control, it wasn’t easy to muck around with what amounts to congealed dirt.
“I came to see that true creativity often lies beyond the boundaries of comfort,” he said. “Choosing clay was, for me, an intentional act of courage – a decision to embrace imperfection, to get my hands dirty.”
This was not course work, and no professor ever issued Tu a mark on his sculpture. He sculpted out of prayer, in the tradition of Ignatian contemplation. His image of Mary came to Tu during his experience of the 30-day Spiritual Exercises. In the fourth week of the Exercises, St. Ignatius urges retreatants to contemplate the risen Christ appearing before his mother.
“That single prayer transformed my entire image of Mary,” said Tu. “I saw Mary, not as a grand, distant figure, but as a humble, simple woman – small in stature, yet radiant with joy.”
In sculpting St. Ignatius, Tu wasn’t trying to depict the heroic founder of his order, but the man he knew in prayer.
“I found myself in an ongoing, intimate conversation with him, as if he were standing beside me in the studio,” said Tu.
Tu’s work in the studio, while the usual academic pressures of exams and deadlines loomed, was never an additional task.
“As a foreigner navigating a new country and culture, I faced numerous challenges – loneliness, language barriers, and the quiet ache of displacement,” he said. “Yet Regis College became an unexpected sanctuary. The community there was warm, welcoming and genuinely invested in me – not as a student or a statistic but as a person.”