Mario Laplante is a Quebec-born, San Francisco-based artist whose work has never been content to decorate walls. For three decades, he has used printmaking, ceramics, installation, and artist books to confront some of the most charged intersections of identity, faith, and culture: the gay experience, the Catholic Church's sexual abuse scandals, dual national identity, and the sacred weight of objects we no longer know what to do with.

In this conversation with Hugh Leeman, Mario speaks with remarkable candor about growing up gay and Catholic in Montreal — and what it meant when his parents' faith collapsed overnight. He traces the origins of his landmark project Illuminae, in which he created three hundred ceramic priest figures in response to the Boston clergy abuse crisis, and explains his ongoing series of disc sculptures made from decon ...