The Midwest Grotto Tradition

"Art, in order to remain art, insists that we seek its ever-receding edge, that we ply the darknesses and brave the turbulence in order to wrest new ideas and forms from it. This may be equally true of faith. Turn once again to grotto become grotesque, and to grotesque as monstrous. Monster begins life in the notion of warning, finding relationships with words like admonition and premonition. Perhaps, while the Midwest grottoes are calls to worship, their role as calls to wonder, to dream and to imagine, are equally important in an age where we just might hand art — and all products of imagination — over to the machine."