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CASEY MURANO is an interdisciplinary teaching artist based in the Appalachian Mountains whose artwork flows from practices of pilgrimage.
Casey Murano grew up in the Roanoke Valley of Southwest Virginia and currently lives at Bethlehem Farm, an intentional Catholic community in the Greenbrier Valley Watershed. Her daily work includes running service retreats, low-income home repair projects, and non-profit administration, and her art-making is in dialogue with these rhythms and processes. After earning a B.A. in Visual and Media Arts Practice from the University of Richmond, she completed a year of service with the St. Joseph Worker Program in St. Paul, Minnesota. Since then, she has been sharing her work regionally, including with Bower Center for the Arts, Love Hope Center for the Arts, Riverviews Art Space, MidMountain, POWHR, Clean Valley Council, Roanoke Interfaith Network, Art on 1st, the Alderson Artisans Gallery, and the Catholic Committee of Appalachia as well as with national faith-based networks such as Catholic Artist Connection, Francesco Collaborative, Women's Ordination Conference, Catholic Mobilizing Network, Ignatian Solidarity Network, and the Catholic Committee of Appalachia.
Artist Statement
I primarily create works with paper (drawings, pulp paintings, book arts, prints, collages, ephemera, installations) that flow from contemplative practices and a mindset of pilgrimage. Contemplation is cultivating spaciousness and intentionally engaging each moment with deep awareness, which for me includes walking, writing, swimming, and drawing; listening, looking, and reflecting. Pilgrimage is intentionally embarking on a journey of transformation, often connected to a place or process that holds significant meaning. The drawings that emerge from these practices, catalyzed by daily experiences of pilgrimage, are generally fragmentary, cyclical, and playing with the relationship between spirituality and abstraction.
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Starting from my particular position within the Catholic tradition and expanding beyond, I explore concepts and practices related to religion and spirituality such as pilgrimage and contemplation. I want to know the possibilities and limits of such concepts in responding to the complex, systemic challenges of our time. I also want to know how contemplative creative practices and a posture of pilgrimage can enable the personal and collective transformation necessary for dismantling systems of oppression and recovering a posture of care, reverence, and wonder in the particular spaces we inhabit.
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Interdisciplinary artist and writer Deborah J. Hayne’s “theology of the arts” is a conceptual framework that resonates with my creative practice. Like Haynes, who is trained as both a studio artist and theologian, I am drawn to “the revelatory, the prophetic, and sacramental potential of the arts.” Grounded in this framework, I look to artists within my religious lineage who model an integration of art and spirituality, such as Corita Kent, Ade Bethune, and Hildegarde of Bingen. I also look to artists like Hilma af Klint, Dorothea Rockburne, Georgia O’Keeffe, Loie Hollowell, Howardena Pindell and Agnes Martin who explore spirituality through abstraction. And I seek out communities that embody creativity, care, and restorative practices.
Commitment to a theology of the arts, contemplative practices, and spirit of pilgrimage leads me across disciplines and methodologies, through theory and praxis; and towards an embeddedness in place, participation in community, and practice of presence. The journey increasingly reveals parallels between the creative process and contemplative life—being comfortable with unknowing, paradox, and letting go.