Sculptor shares journey from nihilism to faith at Catholic college fundraiser

By Nicholas Elbers, The B.C. Catholic

This article was originally published in The B.C. Catholic.

Michelangelo once described his artistic process by saying, “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.” World-renowned Canadian sculptor Timothy Schmalz made a similar observation in his keynote speech at this year’s Corpus Christi–St. Mark’s College fundraising breakfast.

“I look at this school, and it’s like a studio, and the clay is like the students,” he told the hundreds in attendance. “I see this beautiful environment that is so needed within our mainstream nihilistic culture,” he said. “These new creations, these new students coming up” are the Church’s best response “to fight the nihilism that is in our world today.”

Schmalz spoke about his transition from being a student steeped in the avant-garde of the modern art world to becoming the deeply Catholic artist who, in 2019, had the privilege of having one of his statues, Angels Unaware, installed at St. Peter’s Square in Rome—the first sculpture to be installed there in four centuries.