By REY FLORES
If there is any Heaven-like beauty in this world, aside from human life and nature, it is found in the timeless sacred art within many older traditional Catholic churches everywhere. Starting from the tabernacles and monstrances holding the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and then going to the frescos, statues, and crucifixes, all remind us of the eternal destination we must strive to attain.
While most of us within the Church can and do appreciate traditional sacred art, most religious art from the last fifty years or so tends to be modern and with subject matter that is much less reverent. Many of today’s newer Catholic parishes incorporate a bland and neutral combination of open spaces with sparse statuary and art.
Statues of Mary and Joseph are often one color, that either being plain white, or a dreaded beige. They evoke little more in us than what we already bring to these places, which is our faith itself. We do know that Jesus is present in the tabernacle, regardless of how uninspiring the modernist art and architecture may be.
Enter Dino Carbetta. Dino is a humble man whom I recently had the pleasure to meet. I sought him out after seeing much of his art and photography on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram.
While what I’ve shared thus far with you sings the praises of traditional sacred art from the past, the very talented Dino Carbetta has taken much of this beauty out of the past and into today’s reality.
The Atlanta-based artist has been a commercial photographer since the late 1980s. He attended the University of Tennessee and pursued his love of photography there, but he took it to the next level to hone and fine tune his craft by attending the Brooks Institute in California. Brooks is considered one of the nation’s most respected schools of art and photography.
Dino’s roots are in Italy, as if his name didn’t already give that away. He is a man who values the Old World traditions of his Italian heritage and, in 2012, he made a trip to Italy to visit his grandparents. A cradle Catholic, Carbetta also has a great devotion to our faith.
As visiting his grandparents was the main purpose of his trip, he wasn’t sure what else he was going to do during his stay in Italy. It was right then and there that Carbetta’s talents begin to take form in the love of his Catholic faith, and in his profession of photography.
Carbetta told me that he decided to go visit some of the local churches to both pray and maybe to take some pictures. While some of the churches he visited appeared like ordinary and unassuming edifices from their exterior, the interior was a whole different story.
“Some of the churches I visited looked plain on the outside, but once inside, I was blown away.”
This experience is what led Carbetta to evangelize by taking some of his photographs and reworking some of the images with different mediums to create a whole new work of art. He will take a photograph of a saint’s statue or a landscape image of a small Italian seaside village and transform it through color enhancements and other graphic wizardry.
I could go on and on about Carbetta’s work and how big a fan of his I am, but the art must be seen to be appreciated.
I have dabbled in graphic arts since my first-grade teacher, a very beautiful and kind nun, encouraged me and doted on my artistic abilities as a child. I have always been a very visual person and a huge fan of both sacred and traditional classic art, but I also love modern pop culture art. But when I laid eyes on Carbetta’s work, I knew he was on to something much greater than any other artist I had ever looked up to before.
Carbetta does not modernize the old, but he does give it new life in a grander way. His devotion to God and His angels and saints is unmistakable. It comes through in the same way as does the devotion of the great masters Michelangelo, Raphael, and Da Vinci.
Dino Carbetta has been blessed with a very special gift. His work is inspiring to me, to say the very least, but, most important, it reminds me of the absolute, awesome, and timeless beauty of God and of His creations. Carbetta’s work is a visual and spiritual symphony which brings great comfort and joy to my heart and to my soul.
My hope is that by my introducing you to this very talented but humble man, you will seek his work out at DinoCarbetta.com, and share it with all of your Catholic family and friends. His prints would make beautiful Christmas gifts for the upcoming holidays. You can get a taste of his work by following him on Instagram at @DinoCarbetta.
One of Carbetta’s prints raised $5,000 during a silent auction to benefit a pro-life program in Atlanta during its recent fundraising gala. Perhaps you can have Mr. Carbetta at your next event too.
Carbetta is also hosting an Italian pilgrimage in spring of 2019. For more information on this, visit www.pilgrimages.com/dino/.
Let’s offer many prayers for Mr. Carbetta to continue his craft with God’s protection, and that it be God’s will that He inspire future generations of Catholic artists for many years to come.
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(Rey Flores writes opinion and book and movie reviews for The Wanderer. Contact Rey at reyfloresusa@gmail.com.)
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