The picture on the left is a self-portrait by a seminarian — who clearly has a talent for things besides praying.

The unusual story of his artwork and his vocation comes to us courtesy of The Michigan Catholic:

Craig Giera’s painting and sculpting helped lead him to consider becoming a priest.

Working out of an open-air loft in Hamtramck, with no television and the only other major commitment a part-time job, he found himself doing a lot of reading and a lot of praying — and hearing God a bit more.

“It was a time to be quiet, and a time to learn a lot about myself,” he said.

Among the things he learned was that although he is artistically talented, his vocation is that of a priest. Now as a second-year theology student at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit, with an expected ordination date of 2010, 29-year-old Giera is able to work on his art in a tiny room that was a student dormitory before it became a storage room.

Giera, who says he gets his artistic talent from his mother, Sylvia Ann, a ceramic artist, started getting involved in art during high school. After seeing the movie “Wall Street” he wanted to be a stockbroker, but he changed his mind after taking a few accounting classes. Instead, he started getting involved in artwork and graphic design, which he figured would be a more lucrative career than fine arts. He attended the then-Center for Creative Studies for a year and a half before deciding graphic design wasn’t for him, either.

“I didn’t like sitting in front of a computer all day long,” he said.

So, he transferred to Wayne State University, where he got a bachelor’s degree in fine art, concentrating on painting and sculpture. He didn’t know if he’d be able to make a career out of his art, but he knew he wouldn’t be happy doing anything else, he said.

“I trusted that things would work out,” he said.

While in art school, he started working at the Robert Kidd Gallery in Birmingham, where with the gradual increase in responsibility there also came a chance to display — and sometimes sell — his artwork. He decided to apply to graduate school, but he didn’t research the process very well, he said, and was turned down. That’s when he turned to his Hamtramck studio, dedicating himself to creating a new body of work, about 20 pieces, to apply again.

And it was in that time of steady work and silence he started hearing God a bit more, too. That time creating artwork became a meditative form of prayer, he said.

Becoming a priest had been on the back burner, but he didn’t give the idea serious thought until he had that quiet time alone with his artwork. In fact, his mother had told him from when he was in college that he was going to be a priest, but he would brush her off.

“Maybe she knew something — mother’s intuition,” he said.

You can read the rest of his vocation story right here, (and see what he really looks like!) and check out an article about him in the seminary paper here. Craig also has his own website, where you can see more of his work.