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 ski...
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
Resources Mentioned:
- Joe Maki's studio and shop
- The Way of the Rood: The Stations of the Cross, Composed in the Tradition of the Medieval Poem, The Dream of the Rood by Joe Maki
- Joe's Substack
- The Spiritual Combat and a Treatise on Peace of Soul by Dom Lorenzo Scupoli
- The Liturgy of the Land: Cultivating a Catholic Homestead by Jason Craig and Thomas Van Horn
- Fraternus
Chapters:
- 00:00: The vocation that comes first
- 03:07: Fake bones, a giant laser, and a tape measure
- 07:35: The first crucifix, and a church made entirely custom
- 15:42: Art is a virtue, and a virtue is a habit
- 21:03: Monks, farmers, and the death of the deadline
- 27:29: A cup, a chalice, and a prayer written by a machine
- 32:06: Pulling on the rope: the tension of the artist
- 36:00: Artificial intelligence and the artificial world
- 44:51: "Don't do it"—a priest's warning to a young artist
- 01:08:53: The joy of building something together
JOIN 2500+ MEN READING SERIOUS, YET ACCESSIBLE ESSAYS ON VIRTUE, CULTURE, AND LIVING WELL: https://fraternus.org/sword-and-spade/
Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios.
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