What makes a church beautiful? What helps people enter deeply into Mass, Adoration, or devotional prayer?
For many parishioners, their answer might be the artwork, statues, or cohesive beauty of their favorite church throughout the 11 counties that make up the Diocese of Madison.
Whether it’s located rurally or in the hustle-and-bustle of city life, a beautiful church brings the intrinsic, quiet beauty of God and His sacrifice to the forefront of the mind.
Peter Auger, a local artist in Jefferson, is helping make diocesan churches more beautiful.
Auger, who graduated from the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, obtained a degree in Painting and Sculpture in 1996.
He has been restoring religious statues and paintings “on and off since college,” because “people, either at the church or family members, would ask me, ‘Hey, could you fix this? This thing fell down, this thing broke,’ or [one time] there was a family portrait that had been ripped in movement,” he said.
For a time, Auger was restoring artwork as a peripheral hobby and “never thought much about it.”
That was until a few years ago when he “started in earnest with a larger project,” Auger elaborated.
That project was for St. Mary Church in Marshall, which needed 10 statues restored.
Auger said he had the time to take on the large project and that, because he was working on his own, his bid was competitive with other potential options. In the end, he won the contract.
Restoring statues for St. Mary Church took place in 2021 and since then, Auger has been proactive in looking for ways to help beautify diocesan churches.
Bringing statues ‘back to life’
Two years later, at the end of 2023, Auger was actively restoring a Marian statue for St. John the Baptist Church in Jefferson. Auger has also restored a statue of St. Joseph, as well as a statue of the Sacred Heart, for the church.
In his work, Auger aims to bring “life and beauty” back to the statues he works on, and this was particularly true for the statue of the Sacred Heart, which had been abused.
After being removed from the church, the statue was kept in a garage.
Auger said that the statue had been vandalized, that “Some boys had gouged out the eyes and then taken baseball bats to the arms, nose, and beard.”
Fortunately, after re-casting and painting the statue, Auger was able to give the parish a statue that “had been brought back to life.”
Auger said that after his work, the church received a “basically brand new statue that had church history, had family history, and one that fit really well.”
He continued, saying that the statue “was probably purchased by a family, and — for many families over the years — that would have been the statue they prayed to in hard times and good.”
The history a statue has with a parish cannot be overlooked, emphasized Auger, and that’s why there’s value in restoring statues, instead of buying completely new ones.
Because his studio is at home, Auger is able to invite his six children into the restoration process. Recently, he invited them to work on a Pietà.
He said, “They spent half a day cleaning it then painting. I mixed their colors and said where to put them, but that was all the direction I gave them. It was interesting for me to see just how careful they were — there wasn’t a timidness either — just a reverence.
“It was interesting to see the empathy these children had for what they were doing.”
Statues help facilitate deep prayer
He said his work with restoring statues “has been nice because although the level of artwork is demanding, it’s sort of clear cut. It isn’t like staring at a blank canvas; you have somewhere to start from and you have a clear destination.
“It’s a very nice way to get from ‘here’ to ‘there’ and do something that I think is hopefully as beautiful, if not more beautiful than what was there before. A lot of times, what was there before was just a mass-produced, quick piece of art.”
Auger intends that there is a sense of “realism” in the restored statues or other pieces of artwork he works on, and Auger specifically wants his art to be something that “disappears from the atmosphere.”
He emphasized, “I want to see something just a little bit better than what was there before, something you can meditate with easily because you won’t be distracted.”
Auger went on to talk about the masterworks he’s seen and prayed with, specifically talking about Bernini’s sculptures.
He said, “Bernini’s sculptures are head and shoulders above anyone else’s — it’s not that they’re gaudy or have flair — there’s something more beautiful about them.
“Because they’re more beautiful, you almost lose yourself in prayer or thought because they’re so real. [The statue has] become such a real person, it’s easy to meditate on the life of the saints because the marble has become like flesh and blood.”
He added, “You’re taken to this other place of prayer instead of being distracted by mediocre statues or pieces of artwork,” which is precisely the balance Auger aims to create — a task difficult to do but something he is well qualified to accomplish.
Peter Auger lives in Jefferson with his wife and six children. As an independent contractor, he has completed numerous private and Church art commissions. He specializes in church statue refurbishment as well as new artwork commissions. He has completed projects for St. Mary, Elm Grove; St. Jerome, Oconomowoc; St. George Melkite, Milwaukee; St. Matthew, Shullsburg; St. John the Baptist, Jefferson; Holy Family, Marshall; and St. Francis de Sales Seminary, Milwaukee; as well as for private art patrons.
He may be contacted at [email protected] or 920-212-0016.