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 centuryWhat two weeks at a Benedictine monastery with no deadlines does to a workaholic, and why farmers keep the same clock the monks doThe difference between making a beautiful cup and making a chalice, and why AI-generated art and AI-generated prayer fail on the same groundsJacques Maritain's rope between the artist and God, and why pulling on it is supposed to hurtThe warning a German priest gave Joe about liturgical art, and the practice of doing clay with his kids that came out of itResources Mentioned: Joe Maki's studio and shopThe Way of the Rood: The Stations of the Cross, Composed in the Tradition of the Medieval Poem, The Dream of the Rood by Joe MakiJoe's SubstackThe Spiritual Combat and a Treatise on Peace of Soul by Dom Lorenzo ScupoliThe Liturgy of the Land: Cultivating a Catholic Homestead by Jason Craig and Thomas Van HornFraternusChapters: 00:00: The vocation that comes first03:07: Fake bones, a giant laser, and a tape measure07:35: The first crucifix, and a church made entirely custom15:42: Art is a virtue, and a virtue is a habit21:03: Monks, farmers, and the death of the deadline27:29: A cup, a chalice, and a prayer written by a machine32:06: Pulling on the rope: the tension of the artist36:00: Artificial intelligence and the artificial world44:51: "Don't do it"—a priest's warning to a young artist01:08:53: The joy of building something togetherJOIN 2500+ MEN READING SERIOUS, YET ACCESSIBLE ESSAYS ON VIRTUE, CULTURE, AND LIVING WELL: https://fraternus.org/sword-and-spade/ Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios.
