By Francisco Valdez
What happens when you spend quality time in front of the Blessed Sacrament every day? You might become inspired to use your time, talent and treasure in unique ways. That is what happened to a retired surgeon-turned-artist. He spends an hour every morning before the Blessed Sacrament, followed by Mass. He then spends another half hour every evening in silence with Jesus in an adoration chapel at a Catholic church in Marin County. This captivating individual asked to remain anonymous for this article, and he wants what we communicate to readers to be shared for the greater glory of God.
The artist is a former physician who trained at UC San Francisco, and it was the result of this training, particularly in the use of catheters, that led him to his specialty. Catheters are thin, flexible tubes that can be inserted into a body cavity, duct or vessel to aid with functions such as diagnostics and drainage, minimally invasive surgery and medication delivery.
He and his medical team pioneered the use of small catheters throughout the body. He invented several techniques using materials never previously applied that ultimately were adopted throughout the world by radiologists. These techniques required him to have well-developed fine motor skills and above all, patience. His steady hands and surgical experience helped him enormously in his retirement years in the development of his art.
His specialty in retirement is creating mosaics. He applied the same ingenuity and creativity to processes and materials in producing mosaics as he did in his years as a surgeon and inventor. His initial approach to creating mosaics focused on secular art, and it was only after perfecting his techniques and skills that he ventured into creating religious art.
“I did not want to produce a religious image while I was learning my craft, because I believe a religious image should only be produced if it can be made at the highest level of skill,” he said. “For this reason, I made secular images in every conceivable shape and form for the first 10 years in order to learn my craft and then be capable of producing religious art that was not embarrassing.”
The Book of Kells
He traveled to Dublin nearly 40 years ago, and it was in this land of literary legends and proponents of the aesthetic movement where he first saw the original Book of Kells in the Trinity Library. The Book of Kells is a strikingly beautiful, handwritten and hand-drawn version of the four Gospels of the New Testament. It was produced around A.D. 800 by monks who were followers of St. Columba, the Irish abbot and missionary who brought Christianity to Scotland.
The book likely was initially created at the monastery of Iona off the coast of Scotland, before being moved to Kells in County Meath, Ireland, after Viking raids forced the monks inland. It became one of the national treasures of Ireland and an example of early Christian art.
The Book of Kells is a showpiece intended for ceremonial display rather than everyday reading. Monks of the Columban tradition worked on it in teams. One team would do the writing and
the other the art, painstakingly painting elaborate initials, full-page illustrations, and rich decorative motifs that spill across the margins. The art features spirals, knotwork and interlaced animals and humans, all woven into letters.
The experience of seeing the Book of Kells in person gave our surgeon-turned-artist the impulse to re-create several of the intricate images in mosaics. He started by re-creating the page representing the Four Evangelists, which took him approximately one year to complete. After that, he was hooked. He went on to create eight additional pages from the Book of Kells that took nearly eight more years to complete.
Learning his craft
Prior to this decade-long project on the Book of Kells, he said he wanted to learn the process of creating mosaics from other artists, and he started taking lessons.
“I took my first mosaic lessons from a conventional mosaic artist, Marco Berti, who learned his trade in Italy,” he said. “I did my first piece with him, and it was done ‘indirect,’ which means that the mosaic pieces are glued face down directly onto the black-and-white design image so that when you are finished you are looking at the back of the piece. You then mortar the pieces after framing it, turn it over, and soak off the paper design so that you are now looking at a perfectly flat piece of mosaic.”
He realized that the process of mosaic work was very laborious and time-consuming, and he wasn’t getting any younger. He decided to take a trip to Italy to see if he could find an easier way to create this art.
“The problem is that you mortar in all of your mistakes, which have to then be chiseled out and replaced,” he said. “It took me a year and a half by the time I finished the first piece, and I had to chisel out 500 pieces and replace them. I decided that I would never do another piece of indirect mosaic again. I stopped doing mosaic for a year and a half during which time I took a tour of the mosaic schools in Ravenna, Italy. There, I was fortunate enough to meet an experienced mosaic artist who had written a book on the various materials used in mosaic art. I read the chapter on ‘rete,’ which means mesh, net or screen in Italian. I decided then that I would invent my own system for producing mosaic art using ‘rete.’”
It ended up taking him another year of experimenting with various adhesives, meshes and other materials to develop his own ingenious system for creating mosaic art. A bedroom in his home was turned into a workshop and includes industrial tools and his own jigs to create his art in a more expedited process.
“Doing mosaic art in the traditional way took so much time that I thought I may die before completing my second piece,” he said. “There had to be a better way.”
He worked on the Book of Kells images in his free time in between producing other mosaic work. He recalls fondly all the intricacies of dealing with extremely small pieces required by the detailed imagery of the Book of Kells.
“I had to learn all sorts of techniques that I had never learned before,” he said. “As a result, the last piece I did (the Gospel of St. Luke) is a world of difference in its sophistication and beauty compared to the first one I completed some 10 years ago, which is the Four Evangelists.”
Recently the mosaics were moved from the artist’s household workshop to a permanent display at Marin Catholic College Prep High School to teach students about the transcendentals of the Catholic faith.
“What an amazing gift to our community to permanently have the Book of Kells mosaics installation here at Marin Catholic,” said Tim Navone, president of Marin Catholic. “We are always teaching our students about the transcendentals of truth, beauty and goodness. And while we do a very good job of that in spoken words, it is a far different experience when students encounter them in real life. When the art installers began placing this incredible gift of nine pieces of the Book of Kells on our walls, our campus was buzzing. Teachers and staff members stopped their work to soak it in.”
Navone also shared how he believes the mosaics may impact those who see them.
“We will have formal showings and academic visits from classes,” said Navone. “The real joy will come from the visits done one on one in the shadows; this will be a chance for students to encounter the Gospels in a whole new way.”
Call to action
The Book of Kells isn’t just a relic of the past. The original team of monks who created the Book of Kells did it for the greater glory of God, which was also the motivation for our anonymous retired surgeon-turned-artist. He wants young people to be educated on the transcendentals of beauty, goodness and truth, and he invests his time, talent and treasure in their development by creating beautiful mosaics, amplifying the importance of the Church’s rich traditions in sacred music and enhancing their understanding and appreciation for reverent liturgies.
He personally made mosaic-framed crucifixes for every classroom and distributed miraculous medals to students in virtually every Catholic school from Los Angeles to Santa Rosa. He attributes this passion to his quiet time in front of the Blessed Sacrament, and he invites you, the reader, to join him. Our Lord is waiting for you there. Come visit Him in silence to inspire you and let Him transform you into the best version He knows you can be!
See all the mosaics and learn more about the Book of Kells: https://sfarch.org/book-of-kells/
Francisco Valdez is a reporter for Catholic San Francisco and took the photos used in the article.
