ART MATTERS

ART MATTERS

Just how is art linked to social justice? I mean, it’s nice to have something colourful on the wall and pretty things to look at, and certainly not everyone can afford beautiful things, but is that all it is?

I have been giving this question a fair amount of consideration of late, because I believe there is a very close link. And others believe it too. Leland Ryken, in the Liberated Imagination, writes, “Many social problems have arisen precisely because our society has not taken the time and expended the energy to be truly artistic and to value beauty.... some inner city problems will be solved only on an aesthetic basis.” Indeed, beauty is something we ought to consider before we build more box stores and Super Centers, and stuff our prime agricultural land with row after row of cookie cutter houses. These realities matter a great deal to our souls and the world. But there is more to this than aesthetics. It has to do, I believe, with our very identities.

Have you read Ephesians lately? It is a great place to go to get a sense of who you really are, who we really are. We are sons. Daughters. Redeemed. Purchased. Adopted. We have an inheritance. As Paul says, “I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, ¹⁸so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, ¹⁹and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power.” And then of course there is Genesis where we are created in God’s image. That is a fairly rich identity. I think that the problems, the injustice, arise when we don’t really claim these truths for ourselves or believe them about others.

I think everyone would agree that God Is creative, an artist. Yet many of us are so quick to say of ourselves, “oh, I’m not an artist, I’m not creative” Don’t buy it, it’s a lie! I think it’s more that we have lost touch with our creativity, stopped practicing. Imagine going to a Yoga class for the first time- of course you wouldn’t expect to be able to wrap your legs around the back of your head on the first go. We are God’s image; we are God’s sons and daughters. We are creative. It’s in our blood. And we need to embrace this part of ourselves, because I think it directly affects how we see and treat others. I think that if we, the church, could live out of our true, creative identity, could see ourselves for who we really are-in God’s eyes- and understand the grace meted out to us, than the gifts of God’s people would be overflowing. And recognizing it in ourselves we would come to see this same sacredness in ‘the other’. We would be compelled to live in such a way that our choices redeem rather than repress the creative potential and opportunities of others.

Art Matters

-Bill Hall and Robert Cooper, Arts and Recreation

This summer I spent 10 weeks enrolled in a business course. It was a self employment course sponsored by the government of Ontario- the Ontario Self Employment Benefits Program, to be precise. Now, I have never thought of myself as much interested in business, but found I it quite engaging. And I am indeed quite interested in matters pertaining to business. We covered mission statements, sales and marketing, finances, accounting, operations, cash flow and sales projections for the next 2 years, all the things one needs to be aware of, allegedly, to operate a successful business. I think that the most helpful part for me was that it forced me to define myself; what I really want to be doing, and how I want to market myself, to be perceived. The end result was a 60 page business plan. Did you know that 50% of small businesses fail within the first 2 years? Most of these, I'm told, didn't have a business plan. We shall see. It is the first month of operations, and I have not yet made a sale. I've definitely got some good potentials, and if they don't come through, I'll be turning to my pages of qualified prospects. But I'm not worried. I have a plan.

So, you may be asking, what is my business? Well, there are 2 facets. Firstly, to work as an independent visual artist, developing, promoting and selling my own artwork. Currently I am working on my portfolio and building a coherent body of work so that I can approach galleries and have some shows. I am passionate about this, and grateful for the chance to pursue art as a career. The other side is to work with churches/church organizations- such as Weston Park and the BCOQ etc, to facilitate the incorporation of the arts into the context of worship. Initially my focus will be visual arts, and I will do this through the display of current works as well as creating site specific commissions. I am also offering workshops and seminars on fostering individual creativity, the value of creativity, art and beauty to the whole community and art as a vehicle of awareness.

I feel so fortunate to have been a part of Weston Park for the past 18 or so years. (Yes, it has been that long!) When I came to the church, I was neither playing music nor doing anything artistic. Wow, I can't even imagine that reality now. I suppose it was all in there someplace, but it was latent. And I feel very strongly that it was in the context of this community that my gifts and identity were called out and enabled.

I realize that, for some, the connection between faith and art and worship and art may not be so clear cut. But I believe that the arts and creativity are not simply a nice addition or decoration to worship. No, I would propose that they are a mandate. We need the arts- all forms of creative expression. And we need to embrace and foster the inherent creative potential that lies within each one of us. We are each one created in the image of a God who is nothing if not creative. It is our identity.

Art Matters

-T. Betts

Sometimes, when I begin a piece, I have a very clear ‘vision’ of what I want it to be in the end- and often it is. In these instances inspiration strikes almost as revelation- I have a sudden clarity about an issue or a question I have been wrestling with and how I want to portray it. And I feel driven to work at it until it is completed. I have trouble getting to sleep and I wake up at night because I just want to paint! But these days, my advancing age and an energetic, chattery toddler compel me to pursue sleep. Other times, more often, my work is a sort of following: of materials, or colour or of a fragment of an idea. Sometimes it may come alive to me as I am working on it. Or I may not really know what the piece is about until after it is finished. And I am often quite surprised by what is revealed to me in these instances. Theological insight. Woundedness. Healing. Creative work is truly my most self- abandoning experience of prayer- oh, the bliss of losing myself in a painting or in forming a piece from clay, or practicing Bach- and the place where God is most tangible to me.

Inspiration can come from many places: a photograph, some rusty hardware, a piece of wood, peeling paint, grief, humour, an old window frame, something I am reading, a sermon, nature, beauty, curiosity.... Really, it is endlessly varied.

I thought that over the next few weeks, I would go through some of the paintings in the Sanctuary, and discuss where they came from.

Bird is currently located on the north wall of the Sanctuary. It has a green/brown background and a large black raven. It is acrylic, charcoal and ink on canvas. The painting started with a large can of light green latex paint: the background, into which I added some other colours for depth and interest. I didn’t use a brush for this one, but painted it with my finger. There is some text in the background, a quote, actually, that I came across in Philip Yancey’s ‘Searching for an Invisible God’. It says, “God knows the sparrows fall, but they keep falling. Ain’t life just one dead bird after another.” Sounds a bit serious, I know, but context is everything. He was talking about God’s presence with us in all things, and I found it enormously exciting. He was referring to the passage in the bile that is often translated, “nothing happens apart from the will of the father”. According to Yancey, this is not an accurate translation, but rather the actual text is, “ nothing happens apart from the Father”. These are worlds apart! A Father who is with us in all things, even death, is very different from the father who wills it.

And here there was a happy mistake. I spent hours with small rubber stamps of individual letters putting on words for the background- you will have to look closely if you want to actually read them, there’s even a couple of jokes in there. It’s a bit ‘stream of consciousness’, but it’s all related. Anyhow, when I was finished, I just didn’t like how it looked. So I decided I would remove the words and do it over- this is where love of process comes in! But they wouldn’t come off. At first it was frustrating, but then I began to like the subtle ‘negative’ effect better than what I had had. So I ‘followed the painting’ and worked from there.

Art Matters

Christ came to redeem and transform human life, not just affirm what he saw- no artists work has fulfilled it’s purpose to simply record the misery of human life. Their calling is to wrest beauty and meaning from a fallen world and to help others to do so.
- Leland Ryken

Image Coming

Last week I wrote a bit about the process and inspiration for “Bird”, an acrylic painting that is on the north wall of the Sanctuary. This week, continuing my discussion of various works, I will look at “Bread”. It is a mixed media work on masonite (acrylic paint, charcoal, photocopies, paper, ink, varathane, texture mediums). Like “Bird”, part of the inspiration came from my large can of light green paint. Sometimes I like to just start with a colour and see how far I can go with that. I was also playing with textures and the idea of decay in laying down the background. Sometimes scraping paint off is as, or more, effective as adding it to a canvas. In working with the paper, I was ‘playing’ with the idea of peeling wallpaper, and exposed the layers.

The initial inspiration for the content of the piece came from conversation I had with a young woman at Sanctuary about the centrality, or not, of Christ to the Christian faith. I can’t quite recall the details but it got me to thinking about whether or not the postmodern church is watering Him down somewhat to make it more comfortable and less offensive for everyone. And then I found a tract in an old King James Bible. At first glance, I found the tract quite laughable: it is not a method of presentation that I find terribly appealing. However I decided to include it in the piece not to mock it, but rather because in spite of it’s shortcomings it contains some truth.

This was definitely a piece that I followed. I had no idea where it was going to end up, but continued to work on it and make associations as it went along. There is some text in this painting as well. In the tope left corner there is a copy of a painting of Christ’s body. I added a toe tag with the word ‘bread’ on it, and the words ‘does this offend you’. That is a theme that is repeated throughout. Beneath it there is a sketch of a church- with the designation ‘breadbox’. The pair of pears were inspired by the question, “Are we paring down the faith?”. The 2 ‘articles’ at the bottom (I wrote them for the piece) were musings on the nature of bread in our culture. The one was inspired by my own long tenure with food sensitivities. I was not able to digest wheat or yeast, and so for several years I didn’t take communion. I didn’t think too much of it, but my online research revealed that there are entire movements and societies dedicated to the implementation of ‘gluten free host’. It was primarily a Catholic issue, and so, somewhat tongue in cheek, I mused on whether it would really matter given their belief in transubstantiation- that the bread actually transforms miraculously into the body of Jesus. If this is indeed so, then it would essentially be gluten free, as it would be protein by the time it made it to the digestive tract. Hmmm… At any rate, I won’t go through every element, but I invite you to take a closer look.

Art Matters

-Madeline L’Engle

Encaustic is painting using wax (beeswax) and pigment or oil paint. The painting is done in layers, and each new layer must be adhered to the last using heat: a heat gun, or an iron, or even a torch. The heat can have really interesting effects on the wax, boiling it and blending the colours in wild, unpredictable ways making it a fun medium for experimentation. Encaustic can be very painterly or extremely textural and sculptural. Beeswax is quite soft, but if you add a touch of dammar varnish to it, it dries very hard and you can buff it to a lovely shine. Encaustic is very durable, lasting for centuries if it is done and preserved properly. In fact the Egyptians used it to decorate the death masks of royalty (think King Tut). It shouldn’t be hung in extreme heat or direct sunlight though.

Currently I have 2 encaustic paintings on display. The “Untitled” Somali camel herder at the back, and on the south side the piece entitled “Who Was That Masked Man”. A photograph Ron Ward took in Kenya when I was last there in 2002 inspired the former piece. It depicts a typical Somali boy with his camels. Traditionally Somali people have been nomadic camel herders. Of course some live in cities, but they all have camels out in the ‘badia’, or bush. The herders and their families move from place to place grazing their herds, and moving on when the food runs out or the water dries up. However, since the civil war in the late 80’s it has become increasingly difficult and dangerous to live this traditional life due to roaming ‘shifta’, or bandits who kill the herders and steal the animals.

In this piece, the choice of media is very much tied to the subject of the work. Instead of canvas, I chose to work on a decaying board I found discarded behind the house we were renting at the time, symbolizing the decay of culture and tradition. The work is made up of 4 pieces, suggesting the fragmentation of Somali society: so many have been forced to flee the country over the past 20 plus years of unrest. Wax is a preservative, and so doing the painting in encaustic was, perhaps, my prayer for the Somali people. Most Somalis are Muslim. The children go to religious schools, or Duqsi, where they learn to write and recite the Koran. In Africa they write on wood tablets with burned coal bits from the cooking fires. This is what I was thinking of when I painted the herdsman at the front.

Art Matters

- Leland Ryken, The Liberated Imagination

In my last entry, I discussed the process of Encaustic, and talked about the ‘Untitled’ painting of the Somali Camel herder on the back wall. The other Encaustic piece, “Who Was That Masked Man”, is located on the south side of the Sanctuary. It is encaustic and mixed media on birch plywood. I like to work on wood because I love the grain and softness of it, and the potential to carve into it. This painting began as an exercise in a painting class I was taking, but became an extremely personal and cathartic work. It’s significance and symbolism was not apparent to me while I was working on it, but gradually has revealed itself to me over time. In fact it began as quite a light-hearted study, but really became much more.

As I mentioned last time, because of the use of heat in encaustic painting, it can be a fun medium to experiment with. My original concept was simply to divide my surface into 3 sections and try 3 different approaches to the medium. I began on the right side with white under blue, and a layer of clear. The heat made the white bubble up from underneath, and I liked the ‘stormy sea’ look that it created.

Encaustic is great to stick things in, so I decided I would do some collage work in the middle. Because of the suggestion of water, and my own fetish for them ( :, I chose a picture of a fish head I found and then drew in the body. I continued to add other elements that seemed associated- the boat etc. The left panel has layers of fish and hooks and the words, “Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea, Joy to you and me.” And it all is quite joyful…uh… except for those hooks. Soooo here’s what I think….

A month or so before I did the painting, my father had passed away. Sadly we had not had a good relationship for many years, and I hadn’t actually seen him in the past three years. I hadn’t even felt it appropriate to invite him to my wedding the summer before. The thing my father loved best was fishing. It is all he ever wanted to do on vacation. The song was one he used to sing when we were kids. Oh, where do relationships and lives go so very wrong? He also drank rather excessively, and life with an alcoholic is quite crazy making- hence the hooks. So many times over the years he throw out his bait and hooks and try to reel us into his darkness- until we stopped taking the bait. And the fish and boat- an homage to him, I suppose, as well as very significant symbolism in my life- arguments because instead of the much needed new something or other, there was a new boat in the driveway, all the family vacations that ended up on a pier someplace… and all the empty words. And, of course, the stormy seas are self-explanatory.

A simple, unassuming exercise turned into a gift of revelation and the beginnings of healing.