In 2025, St. Mary Parish in Farmington, NM launched a new program, “Art for the Soul”, aimed at local homeschooling families. It all started when Bonnie Gallegos, St. Mary’s director of religious education, noticed that she would only engage with certain parish children when they came for sacrament preparation.
Art for the Soul, she says, was “specifically designed to engage homeschool students and help them feel a sense of belonging within our church community. I thought, well, what can I offer? Well, I know how to do art, so we can do an art class.”
Gallegos approached the parish priest, Fr. Frank Chacon, who was immediately on board with the idea.
“He actually brought up St. John Paul II, and told me how his vision was for artists to reflect the image of God,” Gallegos recalls. “He viewed artists as co-creators with God, sharing their talent and to be able to bring visible the invisible.”
It didn’t take long for the class, which meets once a month, to fill up with local students, and Gallegos often receives calls from non-Catholic homeschooling families. She hopes to grow the program in the future, but for now has her hands full with 26 kids.
“We start off with prayer. I let them know that art is a beautiful way to encounter God, and it’s a way to remind the children that God is the ultimate creator, the ultimate artist, and that He created everything from nothing” she said. “And that’s kind of what we do – we will do some kind of art or craft and create something from nothing.”
The first medium the students studied was painting, followed by collage. During Advent, the class learned to sew a table runner. The collage project was a particular favorite.
“We took a picture that they liked, whether it was from a greeting card or a magazine or something that they printed out or even drew themselves. And we put it on a canvas, and we just added onto that, and we let them use their imagination.”
Gallegos hopes that the art classes will bring a greater sense of community to the parish, especially for families.
“I think that socializing with other children is very important to help you grow in your faith. That’s why I started also the Young Adult Group, so that they could get together, socialize, learn together in the faith,” she said. “We’re all on different levels in our faith, and I think it helps to get all of them get together – you know, learn from each other.”
In his Letter to Artists, Pope St. John Paul II wrote: “It is in living and acting that man establishes his relationship with being, with the truth and with the good,”
By living and acting together, even in a once-per-month class, Gallegos and Fr. Chacon hope that the students in St. Mary’s “Art for the Soul” program will continue to flourish in their community and with one another.