Craig Goodworth

It’s mostly been the same direction for me—from the inside and center to the edges and margins. I was raised in Arizona, and both the desert and my uncle’s farm west of Pittsburgh held deep meaning for me. I grew up with a dozen foster children, which meant I grew up in proximity to human pain I could not ignore. Because of this, I learned early to pay attention. I listened hard to those older than me. I went to college on a football scholarship but was preoccupied with books and art as well as cast-off horses on my uncle’s farm.

After art school I returned to the desert, though my family had moved back east. I took my vows as an artist in my mid 20s. I made a promise to follow the work. This led me to graduate school in Northern Arizona, then to a small Orthodox Monastery in Northern New Mexico where I lived with several monks for a year and wrote a master’s thesis. Instead of monasticism I married a cross-cultural PhD candidate in counseling psychology. The thesis written in the desert led to the Earlham School of Religion (ESR) in Richmond, Indiana where I began to journey with Quakers. Then Newberg, Oregon where my son and daughter were born.

I did farm labor and adjunct teaching, but mostly gave myself to art-making. Amid intense debate and protest in Arizona over the Senate Bill 1070 (a controversial anti-immigration law), I collaborated with a Phoenix non-profit on a place-based art installation that included elements of immigrant narrative, agriculture and liturgy. From this community, I learned to read the Bible upside down from the perspective of the marginalized and poor. I began to understand my art practice as a form of public ministry. I continued with farm labor and teaching locally, and did art exhibitions and residencies regionally and nationally.

Compelled by my family’s fragmented stories on the farm, I received a Fulbright (in 2014) to work in the place of my maternal Slovak ancestry. With my young family, we lived for a year at the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains in an empty parsonage several miles from the Slovak village my grandfather left when he was a boy. I researched the environmental subjects of wind, hunting and beekeeping.

Just before COVID happened to the world, I returned to Earlham School of Religion and finished my Masters of Divinity. Then, we returned to the desert. I served as an artist in residence with the nonprofit in Phoenix (Neighborhood Ministries). Most recently, I’ve shifted to working with men as a prison chaplain. Following the work has repeatedly led me outside the center to the margins, the edges, where I’ve come to feel I belong. We are making querencia (a Spanish term for a place where one feels safe, secure, and at home) on 2.5 acres at the edge of the city and the desert. We envision it increasingly as a place of hospitality and grounding for ourselves and others.