About clement

Clement of Columbus, better known as Dustin James Hudgins, was born in Columbus, Georgia near the turn of the millennium. The grandson of the "colorful" and "combative" Senator Floyd Hudgins, Dustin's formative years were spent predominantly in his grandmother's home, where he received an upbringing from his grandmother, mother, and aunt which emphasized the importance of art and culture.

As a child, some of his fondest memories revolved around a gargantuan—or so it seemed at the time—box filled with crayons: a childhood which was a veritable sea of colors. Between the crayon box, an obsession with paints and colored pencils and markers (Oh, my!), and trips to the museum with his mother, Dustin's artistic spirit was nurtured by a household of compassion which encouraged critical thinking and the pursuit of education.

"... a childhood which was a veritable sea of colors ..."

Throughout grade school, Dustin continued to flourish in art classes, his works periodically being featured in the Columbus Museum. As he waxed in age, his childlike love for creating art soon waned and became more of a distanced admiration—though never disconnected from his creativity—but, in high school, his life was enriched, and he was deeply influenced by visiting an exhibit of Andy Warhol's art which had come to town, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

His soul was vivified. His world was filled with colors like he had never seen before. This was something both old and new: a primal love of color and a chromatic new outlook on what life and art really are and can be.

"His soul was vivified. His world was filled with colors like he had never seen before. This was something both old and new: a primal love of color and a chromatic new outlook on what life and art really are and can be."

Throughout high school, Dustin acquired a fondness for art from an historical perspective. Though he did not often create art during this time, he very much longed to do so, and his creativity would sometimes come out in flamboyant presentations of school projects, sometimes quite transgressive, impish, and witty in nature. He focused mainly on his historical studies, winning many state and national awards in Academic Decathlon, being recognized by the Governor of the State of Georgia for winning the Georgia History Day competition, delving into a little bit of rocket science and ecology, reading too much transatlantic modernist literature, admiring a lot of impressionist and expressionist art and music, laughing ... a lot (maybe a bit too much), running for student government offices, relishing in his "fifteen minutes" as prom king, and studying the art of politics, finding the ways humans organized themselves into societies to be a captivating artistic drama. It helped that politics ran in his blood, but politics was not his calling.

In his first year of university, Dustin experienced a radical calling to monastic life. He changed his major from political science to history and immersed himself into the study of Antiquity and the Middle Ages (and a whole lot of theology!) to aid him in his conversion to Catholicism. It was his grandmother's dream for him to finish his university studies, and she prepared him well, being his closest companion until her death that same summer, becoming even closer to him in death than in life.

In his junior year, he was received into full communion with the Catholic Church—taking the Confirmation name Clement, after St. Clement of Rome, his patron saint—and was elected to serve on the Parish Council of the Church of the Holy Family, being appointed the Chair of the Committee on Religious Education, the youngest person in recent memory to serve in such a capacity. In his senior year, he began discerning with the Monastery of Our Lady of the Holy Spirit, just outside Atlanta. With the most gracious support of his mother and stepfather, after four and a half years of studies at Columbus State University, tutoring his fellow students, learning five languages (only one in which he is fluent!), kindling new friendships while learning to let go of old ones, purchasing far too many books about ancient Near Eastern history, marching in the streets for racial justice, and surviving a global pandemic, he graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in History, a Minor in Philosophy, and a Certificate of Medieval and Renaissance Studies. In his graduation address, broadcast virtually to his family and friends, he remarked that, though he had already learned so much in such a short time on Earth, the most important thing he had learned was to love the lowly and to find the greatest joy in the ordinary, obscure, and laborious life which Cistercian monasticism offers.

"[T]he most important thing he had learned was to love the lowly and to find the greatest joy in the ordinary, obscure, and laborious life which Cistercian monasticism offers."

The greatest form of love, he has learned, is κένωσις (kénōsis), or self-emptying, among the most important tenets of his faith. With this ever-augmenting desire to be little, to be childlike, to empty himself of ego, to be filled with grace, and to be an icon of mercy to his brothers and sisters, art—in combination with horticulture and contributing to a Bible study with an audience of around 200,000 people—has been one of the most significant vehicles of contemplative kénōsis for Clement.

"... κένωσις ..."

Art is an activity of his soul, a way to empty himself onto a canvas, a way of love which aids his monastic journey and his pilgrimage through life. He hopes his footsteps leave a colorful path of joy in his wake, showing the world the way of abundant and generative love, a love which flourishes like flowers in a well-watered and well-sunned garden. Clement's art is not iconography in the traditional sense, but his works are windows into his own soul and into the world as he perceives it and contemplates it: a world of living color, continually renewed by the spirit of kenotic love.

On January 19, 2022, almost five years to the date after his initial call to monastic life, Clement entered the Monastery of Our Lady of the Holy Spirit.