History of the Catholic Artist Connection

The Catholic Artist Connection (CAC) began in May 2016 when actor/producer Cole Matson, Ph.D., and playwright/director Emily C.A. Snyder came together to create a weekly email newsletter sharing opportunities and events for Catholic artists.

The purpose of the newsletter was to help the Catholic artists Cole and Emily had met in the city become aware of each other and each other's work, so that no one would feel that they were working in isolation as a Catholic artist. Cole also started organizing day and weekend retreats for artists so they could meet and pray in person.

After a year of sharing news via email and hosting occasional artist retreats, several more artists joined the work with the idea to create a permanent website listing Catholic arts organizations and artist-friendly parishes in the greater NYC area, so that artists new to the city could immediately hook into the Catholic artist community upon arrival. After the creation of CatholicArtistsNYC.com, that founding group - visual artist/architect Timothy Matthew Collins, filmmaker Deniz Demirer, musical theatre performer Melissa Maricich, playwright/novelist Laura Pittenger, and writer/game designer Alexi Sargeant - formed the founding Board of Directors of the Catholic Artist Connection, which became a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization in order to provide a stable foundation for further initiatives to serve the professional and spiritual needs of artists.

CAC was incorporated in the State of New York on Feb. 18, 2018, and brought on its first paid staff member, Newsletter Editor and current Executive Director Renée Darline Roden, in Dec. 2018. Since then, the newsletter, retreats, and website have continued (with a brief halt to in-person events for the pandemic), with the addition of new services and activities, such as the first NYC Catholic Arts Leaders Meeting (hosting 50 artists representing 24 arts organizations and parishes); artist socials co-hosted with Catholic Creatives, the Sheen Center, and Catholic NYC; and, during the pandemic, weekly Artist Office Hours and Happy Hour, individual artist coaching, and an Emergency Fund which has distributed approximately $10,000 to artists in financial need.

Over the past 3 years, the CAC's membership has moved from a largely NYC-based community to a regional community spread throughout the United States and across the world. Currently, we have more members outside New York City than in it, with 44% in the greater NYC area, 44% elsewhere in the U.S. (in almost every state, most notably California and Texas), and 12% in other countries (including the UK, Canada, Argentina, Mexico, Australia, Hong Kong, Ireland, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Colombia, Germany, India, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, and Spain).

We are now embarking on a wider mission to highlight local Catholic artist communities across the country and across the world, connecting them to each other in order to ease the loneliness often felt by Catholic artists and to help them encourage and inspire each other in their work and vocation to serve God through the arts.