Annual art exhibition accepting submissions showcases ‘invisible realities,’ exemplifies goodness, truth and beauty

Maura Baker

Staff Writer

The Angelico Project’s annual Juried Art Exhibition comes to St. Francis Xavier Church, Cincinnati, Jan. 24 — and artwork submissions are open now through the new year.

The exhibition, which will run Jan. 24–April 6, is open for entries from local artists around the Greater Cincinnati area — accepting many mediums, including painting, illumination, sculpture, printmaking, drawing, photography; work in precious metals, enamel, glass, liturgical textiles; forms of digital media, graphic design and digital illustration.

The juror, whose responsibility will be to curate submissions for the gallery, is Emma Cassani, graphic designer for the Archdiocese of Cincinnati’s magazine, The Catholic Telegraph. Next in a chain of “excellent jurors,” according to Angelico Project founder and trustee Nancy-Carolyn Smith, the juried show “keeps the standard high,” for what the organization shows as a Catholic organization.

“Our mission is to evangelize through beauty,” said Ms. Smith, about both the exhibition and the mission of the Angelico Project as a whole. “Part of the Angelico Project has always been the Angelico Catholic Arts Guild and our outreach is to artists, because you’ve got to engage artists in goodness, truth and beauty in order to have an impact on our culture.”

After the first exhibition in January of 2020 was exceptionally well received, the Angelico Project saw the response as a sign that they were “moving in the right direction,” she said.

The goal of the exhibition is to showcase visual representations of “invisible realities,” according to the official call for entry. Such themes include love, hope, the Creator’s imagination and the created world — artwork that moves the viewer to prayer, whether it is of an explicitly religious nature of not. As such, submissions should demonstrate evidence of the elements of “goodness, truth, beauty; witness to the dignity of the human person; attest to the reality of the spiritual life; and demonstrate mastery of the artist’s medium.”

“That’s our mission,” Ms. Smith concluded. “We’re going to change the world, starting with changing our own hearts … That’s where it starts.”

For more information on the Angelico Project, including how to submit to the 2026 Juried Exhibition, visit https://angelicoproject.org.