Michael R. Kapetan, Sculptor and Master Wood Carver


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An artist runs the risk of over-interpreting his work when he writes about it. Yet, I have written and try to write a little bit about each of my projects. I do so in the belief that while words can never encompass the true and complete meaning of an artwork—we can understand art only through the experience of it—words can help to tell the story of the making, to illuminate the times, the trials, the personalities, and perhaps the intents that bred the artifacts.

Each of these essays, like the works of art that they discuss, has its own story of birth.

Please click on an article from the list below to read about it, and download an Adobe Acrobat (PDF) or Microsoft Word version of the essay.
(download Adobe Acrobat Reader)

Carving for the Saints
Reflections on the Cathedral
When Can We See Jesus?
In the Midst of the Garden
The Crow's Three Stones

“Carving for the Saints” was occasioned when I was asked to join in a series of lectures at the University of Michigan Institute for the Humanities dedicated to the theme of “Religion and the Authority of the Past.” It was published in the UMIH Bulletin in 1992.

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“Reflections on the Cathedral” was delivered as a talk to University of Michigan Alumni who gathered for their annual outing in Washington National Cathedral in the spring of 1997. Writing the essay allowed me to remember highlights of my turn as Artist-in-Residence at the Cathedral and to reflect on the spiritual nature of the place.

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“When Can We See Jesus?” is nothing more than an attempt to remember one of my life’s most moving spiritual experiences during the intense days surrounding the completion of St. Cyril & Methodius Chapel in Orchard Lake, Michigan in the late summer of 2000.

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“In the Midst of the Garden” is a homily that I delivered to three masses over the weekend of September 27 & 28 at St. Mary Magdalene Catholic Church, Waupaca, Wisconsin at the invitation of Father Jim Vennix. The subject of the homily is the Tree of Life both as an idea and as a monumental sculpture that I created for that parish.
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“The Crow’s Three Stones” came into being as the outline to a lecture that I delivered at a University of Michigan Alumni gathering in the fall of 1999, which in turn became the basis of a course that I taught four times at UM called “Science, Art, and Spirituality.” In it I explore the patterns that connect three human enterprises that sometimes seem totally separate from one another.

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