For this art-based research project, I created a series of reduction woodcut prints with two color tones (in addition to the white paper). The prints are 8 by 10 inch portraits of figures alongside quotes from their writings or speeches. Seeking to reflect on the religious freedom of the body to pray through creative action, I depicted various religious leaders who embodied their prayers through acts of liberation. Harriet Tubman risked her life to follow God’s call, physically leading enslaved people to freedom on the Underground Railroad. Martin Luther King Jr. marched, preached, and organized in nonviolent resistance until he was assassinated for his role in the civil rights movement. Óscar Romero used his voice and presence in the pulpit to denounce injustice and the violence of the Salvadoran Civil War, ultimately giving his life for the oppressed. Gustavo Gutiérrez founded a liberation theology rooted in the lived realities of the poor, walking alongside and advocating for marginalized communities. Judy Heumann, a Jewish Disabled civil rights leader, used her body and her wheelchair to stop buses and stage sit-ins, demanding accessibility and equal rights. Through their embodied struggles for freedom and justice, these leaders demonstrated that prayer is not only spoken but lived—manifested through movement, resistance, and creative action. In creating each print, I engaged my own body in a physical, meditative process, reflecting on their prayers for freedom through my own embodied prayer of art-making.
But what does it mean to call art an embodied act of prayer and a practice of freedom? What do we mean when we use the word prayer? Karl Barth writes that “The real basis of prayer is [our] freedom before God, the God-given permission to prayer which, because it is given by God, becomes a command and an order and therefore a necessity” (Church Dogmatics III/4, trans. A. T. Mackay et al., 92). Barth emphasizes that God gives us the freedom to participate in God’s work in the world and to respond through our prayers. It is an act of both dependence and agency—bringing our questions, griefs, and hopes before God while also stepping into the responsibility of caring for our community. Daniel L. Migliore extends Barth’s definition of prayer, writing that “it also includes the freedom to cry out and protest against the continuing presence of injustice, violence, and oppression in the world” (Freedom to Pray: Karl Barth’s Theology of Prayer, 113). This freedom to pray is not limited to our words but extends to our bodies and actions. When Martin Luther King Jr. marched for civil rights, his steps were an acknowledgment before God of the oppression of Black Americans and a prophetic call for change. His action was not separate from his prayers but an embodiment of them. In the same way, each of the religious leaders represented in these prints followed God’s call to seek justice and liberation for their communities, praying and participating in God’s work through their actions.
Art-making, too, is a creative and embodied action that engages both the artist and the community in a shared pursuit of justice, beauty, and hope. Alejandro García-Rivera emphasizes that art is never created in isolation but emerges from and alongside the community, bearing witness to their hopes and struggles. He writes that art, “insofar as it gives witness to the spiritual struggle to truly see, it also affirms the goodness of our humanity, nourishing the hope that someday human evil shall be transcended and ‘all tears will be wiped away’” (García-Rivera, A Wounded Innocence: Sketches for a Theology of Art, 71). Through the physical act of making, the artist enacts a form of prayer—one that is able to name suffering, reimagine possibilities, and affirm the sacredness of life. In carving, inking, or printing their work, the artist physically participates in prayerful reflection, creating space for both personal and collective flourishing.
The practice of praying through art has deep roots in the Christian tradition, particularly in the creation and veneration of icons. Icons are not objects of worship, but rather direct one’s prayers and invite participation in the larger body of Christ throughout history and space. Rowan Williams describes an icon as “a picture of some bit of this world, so depicted and so constructed as to open the world to the ‘energy’ of God at work in what is being shown” (Ponder These Things: Praying with Icons of the Virgin, xv). Just as an icon creates space for prayer and reflection on God’s work in the world, the process of art-making itself can become a sacred space—one that invites contemplation, connection, and transformation. The many steps of an icon’s creation provide intentional pauses for the iconographer to reflect and pray through the process. Similarly, the process of printmaking involves slow, repetitive motions—the careful marks of carving, the inking of the block before each print, the roll of the press, and the delicate placement of the drying paper—all of which create a contemplative environment for the artist to reflect and pray as they create. Like the iconographer, the printmaker's embodied process becomes an act of devotion, transforming the act of making into a form of prayer.
As I created these prints, each movement of the press became a prayer reflecting on the freedom of our bodies to pray through action. Art-making is not only an aesthetic practice but a deeply theological one—a means of bearing witness, lamenting, resisting, and imagining a new world. God has given us the freedom to explore, design, and create, inviting us into further participation with God, community, and the world. In this way, the process of making takes on a sacred role as the artist reflects on the gifts God gave them and offers their art back to God in response, bringing their joy, lament, protest, and hope to the surface. Like the leaders who embodied their prayers through their actions, I seek to use my body to pray for justice, liberation and the flourishing of our communities through the art that I create.
This presentation examines a series of woodcut prints depicting religious leaders who fought for freedom in their communities, including Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King Jr., Óscar Romero, Gustavo Gutiérrez, and Judy Heumann. Drawing on Alejandro García-Rivera’s theology of community-oriented beauty and justice, Karl Barth’s theology of prayer, and the icon tradition, this study explores the body’s religious freedom to pray through creative action. Just as these leaders embodied their prayers in the struggle for justice, artists engage their whole selves in the act of creating. Through the physical motions of making, artists reflect deeply on their materials and subject matter, expressing their lament, hope, protest, and joy. When rooted in their communities, their work becomes a reflection on and a prayer for communal flourishing. In this way, artistic practice is a lived prayer—an embodied response of hope and a witness to change.