Nancy-Carolyn Smith says one of her favorite aspects of The Angelico Project is the silent energy that settles over a monthly drawing workshop, as artists hone their attention between their work and a live model in the center of the studio. 

For painter Holly Schapker, it was perhaps an evening featuring the ethereal music of St. Hildegard von Bingen — one of those moments, she said, when “the line between heaven and earth gets very thin.” 

For Jesuit Father Jacob Boddicker, it was a gala last summer filled with Catholics passionate about creating and supporting beautiful art. “It was like I was able to see the future of the Church right there in one crowded and joyful room,” he said.  

All three events were made possible by The Angelico Project, a Catholic arts and culture nonprofit in Cincinnati with a mission to “lead with beauty” in its efforts to evangelize. 

While still young — The Angelico Project celebrated its fifth year throughout 2024 — the organization has achieved some important milestones. It’s brought on three full-time staff members and bestowed an inaugural artist’s award (Schapker was the recipient). So far, the group has hosted 200 events, enrolled 100-plus local artists in its Catholic Arts Guild and garnered grassroots support from around 500 sustaining donors.

Evangelization is at the heart of The Angelico Project. 

Whether a film screening, a juried sacred art exhibit in the middle of a college campus, or a rollicking bluegrass concert featuring Dominican friars, The Angelico Project’s approach to providing welcoming spaces to encounter beauty is “ingenious,” Schapker said. 

“It’s a safe space for Catholics to bring non-Catholics,” she explained. “It’s just a celebration of beauty, with God being the source.” 

 

To Win, Build and Send Through Beauty

A Christendom College student studying abroad, Brad Torline was standing in front of Blessed Fra Angelico’s 15th-century frescoes in Florence, Italy, as the seeds for a future Catholic arts organization began burrowing in his mind. 

“Man, wouldn’t the ‘Angelico Project’ be a great name?” he remembers thinking. Little did he know that three home-schooling mothers were beginning that very same project back home.

Not long after graduating and returning to the Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky region, Torline connected with sculptor Smith and her friends, Loraine Muldoon and Maureen Teller. They’d recently formed — and named — The Angelico Project and had seed money from the Archdiocese of Cincinnati to begin.

“Loraine and Maureen and I kind of took it in our teeth and ran,” said Smith. “We all have a heart for education, and we all have a passion to spread the faith.”

Torline began consulting with them to develop a strategic plan; two years ago, he came on full time as executive director. He names theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar, Pope Benedict XVI and Bishop Robert Barron as inspirations for The Angelico Project’s “lead with beauty” mentality and says the group also looks to FOCUS’ “win-build-send” model of evangelization.  

When it comes to programming, this looks like three tiers of events. 

First, there are the events that serve as a threshold — those invitational spaces meant to open the door “to experience beauty with us,” Torline said, regardless of attendees’ religious background.  

“In our experience,” he continued, this opens people up to the second tier’s purpose: “to seek the sacred.” These are more explicitly Catholic events like formational talks or a Mass filled with candlelight and sacred music.  

Finally, third tier events are meant to “send” artists and supporters out and “transform the culture.” The Angelico Project’s annual gala is a major example of this type of event, as well as retreats and artists’ workshops.

Smith acknowledges that with “a lot of what we do, we won’t see the fruit.” But she knows people are being impacted.

Take Jaye Bissemayer, whose mother invited her to a sacred architecture tour. Bissemayer, a baptized Catholic, had been away from Mass for years with “no plans to return,” as she put it.

Still, she loved history and architecture and appreciated that Angelico Project events weren’t preachy.

“[It was] a very low stakes, ‘Hey, come learn and tour this beautiful church that’s in your city!’ — not a ‘We’re going to convert you!’” she said. And something began to change, as she went from attending tours, to coming to more events, to feeling a desire to return to Mass. She was confirmed at Easter 2024.

“They were the key that unlocked my faith,” she said.   

 

Raising Artists and Audiences to ‘Higher Things’

Then there are the artists, whom Smith serves as director of The Angelico Catholic Arts Guild. 

“Being a Catholic artist, I’ve felt quite alone for much of my career,” she said. “My mission is to nurture artists in their faith and work.”

The guild is divided by discipline into subgroups, which means the Newman Center parish at the University of Cincinnati is buzzing with artists throughout each month. Come to St. Monica-St. George on any Monday evening, for example, and depending on the week, you’re likely to run into the guild’s musicians, dramatists, writers or — if it’s open studio night — visual artists.

Smith speaks with affection when describing the “silence and work and thought” that comes over the studio, even if only for a few minutes of shared creative energy. 

“Those moments are very personal and very intimate,” she said. “At the end of the evening, we walk around and look at each other’s work and, invariably, someone gives a gasp, or an, ‘Ah!’ … and it’s so constructive to appreciate each other’s work that way.” 

Schapker has paintings in numerous churches and campuses in the Cincinnati region, as well as around the world, but she didn’t realize her desire for a Catholic artists’ community until she stumbled upon it. She’s leading a portraiture workshop for The Angelico Project this winter.

In Schapker’s experience, the secular world of art “stopped short at the ego. … It was about which artist was the most talented or clever.”

Among artists seeking to give glory to God, she said, “my soul is able to be so much more free and alive.” 

Echoing Schapker, Torline agrees that beauty lifts people’s gaze “to higher things.”

He’s noticed audience members crave chances to dialogue after talks or film screenings. Event organizers try to build in time for those conversations and chances to socialize, “whether you’re a hardcore traditional Catholic or just a college kid trying to figure things out,” he said. 

“We live in a very divided, polarized nation, and everyone feels that very heavily,” Torline continued. At Angelico Project events, “people of varying backgrounds and ideologies can come and experience something beautiful together. It’s unifying.” 

He’s also been struck by the clergy’s enthusiasm for The Angelico Project. The Archdiocese of Cincinnati and Diocese of Covington both donate to the group, but Torline said that support extends among parish priests. 

Father Boddicker — the priest who was moved by the gala last summer — gave a sacred art tour of St. Xavier Church in downtown Cincinnati, where he’s an associate pastor.  

Seeing laypeople take the lead in The Angelico Project’s mission “is incredibly encouraging for me as a priest,” he said. “[It] gives me hope that things like this will begin popping up all over the place … This is a tremendous way in which Jesus can make things new.”   

 Looking Forward

Smith would love to see a network of similar groups across the country. 

“It will make the Church richer, and it will make the artist richer,” she said.

From his front-row seat on the business side, Torline acknowledged that running The Angelico Project can feel “very entrepreneurial” and is a sometimes-nerve-wracking lesson in trusting God — “to work as hard as you possibly can and then commend it as intensely as you can to the Lord.”

One of his most immediate challenges is growing The Angelico Project’s budget beyond year-to-year funding. Committed membership and ticket sales are an important form of revenue, and the group offers tiered options for member donors, from $10 a month to major gifts. Someday, Torline hopes, there will be an endowment. 

Another long-term goal: a physical, permanent Catholic cultural arts center, where people who wouldn’t typically go to Mass would feel comfortable attending an event. Whatever form that takes, Torline said, “we all feel it’s pretty crucial to our mission that we have a home that can be that neutral space.” 

Torline feels such immersion in beautiful Catholic culture as a balm to his own faith — which is why he’s so earnest to bring others into it. The Angelico Project seeks to invite people into a new way of seeing the world, a place where faith is “a viable possibility,” Torline said — “a beautiful, intelligent, possible choice they can make.” 

But first, that possibility needs to be made visible — and it’s the job of the artists to bring it to life.