Hill Country priest draws acclaim for mosaics

MARBLE FALLS, Texas (AP) — The cases of empty Shiner beer bottles are stacked in the Rev. Jairo Lopez's garage. The trash from someone's party is now treasured material — he will hand cut the glass bottles into small pieces that he will use for his art.

Perhaps it will be used in a large image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mexico's patron saint, that will grace a church wall or maybe a peacock that will brighten a porch.

Lopez, 42, is a mosaic artist who creates images by assembling small pieces of colored glass or tile. In Marble Falls, his work can be found in his St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church and on Main Street. In Horseshoe Bay, it is on display in the home of Cheryl Klein.

"I've seen it," Klein's friend, Don Reed, said of a piece called "Son of Suns," a brilliant sun shining down on a field of sunflowers. "It will just take your breath away. It's just gorgeous."

In Austin, his work is on display at the Chancery chapel at the Catholic Diocese of Austin. The Woodland Garden at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center has two sculptures, one of two peacocks and another of bluebonnets.

Back in his garage studio on the property of St. John's, Lopez says the empty beer and wine bottles are gifts from the community. People know about the Catholic priest's affinity for recycling glass into art. "I have too many bottles now," he said with a smile. Although his work can be seen in other Central Texas churches, St. John's is the unofficial gallery for his work.

Outside the church is a water fountain surrounded by a granite-tiled circular pathway that is Lopez's work. Inside, over the back entrance, is a Lopez mosaic of the Coat of Arms of the Holy Cross community. At the altar, two mosaic angels flank a large cross on the back wall.

Along with glass, Lopez works with marble, granite and tile. He buys some of his material, such as smalti (glass mosaic tile), from Italy. His mosaics take hundreds of hours to make. A piece in progress of Our Lady of Guadalupe will entail 300 hours of work. A big project at St. Paul the Apostle Catholic Church in Horseshoe Bay took three months to complete. A colorful mosaic flanks three tall windows overlooking Lake LBJ and covers a big section of the ceiling.

Lopez, who attended seminary in Colombia, completed his master's degree in theology at the St. Vincent de Paul Seminary in Florida. He was ordained in 1994, and his first assignment was San Jose Catholic Church in Austin. He also worked in Killeen, Round Rock and Mexia before he landed in Marble Falls in 2000.

He has been doing mosaic art since 1999, when he was at St. Mary's Catholic Church in Mexia.

"Since I attended seminary, I'd visited churches in Mexico and Italy that had all this beautiful mosaic art. I was interested because the art lasts forever," he said. He studied art at St. Edward's University and the Mosaic Art School in Ravenna, Italy.

Eventually, his art and his work meshed. "It's become part of my prayer life, my spirituality," he said. "Sometimes it's best being almost in the dark and looking at something you've created. What can you change to improve it?

"When you meditate, you see the beauty of God in the materials, the colors and textures."

He compares a mosaic to his church community. "The colors, textures and materials of a mosaic, that's my parishioners. They are all of different styles, sizes and cultures. The community is one big mosaic. Without one piece, the image isn't finished," he said.

To do what he loves, he spends Tuesdays — his day off — in his garage, which he has turned into a studio. On weekdays before his morning church duties, Lopez can sometimes be found very early working on a piece.

While some priests take a vow of poverty, the church allows diocesan priests — those who go into the seminary with the intention of doing their pastoral work in a diocese — to pursue a for-profit hobby such as Lopez's.

"Nothing bars a priest from pursuing a hobby," said Christian Gonzalez, spokesman for the Austin diocese. "We have a couple of other priests who do woodwork. It's only the priests who belong to an order who take a vow of poverty."

In a typical year, Lopez says he sells only a few pieces because his day job takes up most of his time. And not everything sells. In his garage is a large recycled glass mosaic called "Mustangs" that depicts three galloping stallions. "As you can see, the economy is not too good for art," he said.

Lopez has also turned his passion into a big family project, and that is another story.His family was still living in Colombia when, in 2002, Lopez's brother Jaime was kidnapped for ransom and then released after two days. After more threats that other family members would be abducted, the family — Lopez's parents, Enrique and Hilda, and a brother and sister and their children — left in the middle of the night in July 2004 and moved to Florida.

"They left everything behind. Home, belongings, pictures, everything," Lopez said. "When you build your life around ranching, and suddenly one day it's all gone, it's hard."

Lopez quickly decided to bring his parents to Texas. Lopez said he saw the need to help his family assimilate into life in the U.S.

"The hardest part was starting over," said Jaime Lopez, 50, who works in housekeeping in a local hotel. "We all miss our home country."

"It's like waking up in the morning and being drunk," Hilda said in her native Spanish. "Which way do you go? Where do I work? You don't know what to do."

Mosaic art helped fix all that. Lopez got everyone to join him in the studio. Enrique excelled at cutting glass and stone. Hilda, who is now retired, and Jaime got more involved in the assemblage of materials to create an image.

"The art is good therapy for everyone," said Jairo Lopez. "It keeps everyone busy. I know that when my father and I deliver a piece to someone, he gets great joy of seeing a finished piece. He's very proud."

Lopez's family is also the extra pairs of eyes that he needs for his mosaics. The priest is colorblind, especially to green and red.

In St. Paul the Apostle Catholic Church in nearby Horseshoe Bay, priest Ruben Patino is tinkering with a new camera, attempting to find the right buttons to push to get a picture that does justice to the brilliant colors of the "Tree of Life" mosaic in the middle of a row of windows overlooking the church's spectacular view of Lake LBJ.

"That is the tree of life, signifying that Jesus was crucified on wood. And those are passion flowers related to the wounds of Jesus," Lopez explained.

"And what are those?" Patino asked, pointing to red birds.

"Cardinals, because we're in Texas," Lopez said.

"They look like prairie chickens," said Patino, teasing his friend.

"No, cardinals," said a smiling Lopez, who pointed out another mosaic on the church's ceiling.

"The grapes and the wheat are elements of the Eucharist. The blue is the sky. There's some green and red in there, too, but I can't tell where. I'm colorblind to those colors," he said.

"What?" asked a surprised Patino. "I didn't know. Then how are you able to distinguish colors for your art?"

"I ask my family," said Lopez.

That drew a laugh from both.