Trying to follow

Inspired by Jake, I’m going to pull some stuff from old writings, journals, papers, etc that I’ve done and post them here. Below is some rambling thoughts from my journal after my first Art Appreciation class at Wheaton College with Jeff Thompson. But before that, an explanation of my history with art.
Though my mom painted all over our house (literally), I’d never been a big fan of ‘formal’ art. One particular event scarred my art appreciation. Sometime during middle school my parents got a membership to The Art Institute of Chicago, and in doing so, received tickets to view the Monet exhibit when it came through one summer. They dragged us along and I had the terrible experience of waiting for nearly three hours in a line as we wove in and out of exhibit halls waiting to see Monet’s work. Some of the art while we waited was cool, like a painting that nearly looked like a photograph of a man’s face, but others where ridiculous like a massive black canvas with a random digital clock time painted on it. There where also drawings and sculptures that my kid brother could have easily done. When we finally arrived at the famous Monet (sarcasm, but remember, I was a middle schooler), I walked through the 50+ paintings of haystacks in less then a half hour and a fell asleep on a bench at the end of the exhibit. That experience forever scarred my appreciation of art… now back to Thompson’s class.

Here are my notes after my first evening of class:

So artist are people who try to express, communicate, through language, not just words, but body and audible and written and more. They try to communicate the perfect embodiment of human kind. God is an artist. He perfectly embodied his divine nature in the person of Jesus Christ. Thompson is a crazy guy, truly an artist in the stereo typical sense. He’s off the wall with his comments, and yet was quite linear in what he talked about today. He gave some bible verse today, about the rocks crying out and things like that. I appreciated it a lot. The goal is to develop more my appreciation for art and so far so good. Though we haven’t really looked at very much art. His advice to us is when we see an artist encourage them. Listen to them, look at them. But are we all artist? Do we all in some way embody artistry? Or has God put this desire for expression in only a few of us? That is a question worth contemplating for a while I think. But I wonder, what benefit is it for the kingdom to spend hours and hours practicing to play a small part in a ballet that is attended by the very rich? The rich need Jesus too, don’t get me wrong. And I certainly believe God can use all things to bring people to himself, like the worshipful communication that one might see in a ballet, but isn’t there other ways? More direct, or applicable ways to bring people to Christ? I wonder. What would the world be like with out art? God is certainly an artist, with words, with creation, with people, with everything. Are we to be like him in that attribute and create our own artistic expression? Are we to encourage extravagantly expensive artistic activities and individuals spending countless hours expressing themselves in this way? Then again can you draw a line down the middle and decide which art is worshipful expression and which art is superfluous? Can you? I think maybe we just can’t. Well that’s all for now.

Those were real questions, and though I had some of them answered during the course of the class, a lot our still floating out there. Any thoughts?

Dove and Palm Oil (ht. Corporate Babysitter)

Condoleezza Rice (ht. Thom)

Liberia needs clean water (ht. twotp)

Old School Poision- Something to Believe In (ht. Gavin)

3 Trillion Dollar Shopping Spree (ht. Thom, Mike, MOA)

Here are a few stories of creativity I’ve read recently…

1. With all the foreclosures there are a lot of neighborhoods with houses with rather unpleasant plywood covering the doors and windows. An artist in Chicago took advantage of the opportunity and began offering his boarding contract services with a twist. Basically he puts boards on windows, but he paints the boards to look like windows and doors, rather then just boring plywood. He’s done it to a few houses in my part of the city and is hoping to get a big city contract. I’d sure like to see more art in the neighborhood. -Star Tribune
2. There’s this guy Steve Lambert, who is pretty awesome. He runs the Anti-Advertising Agency. They are responsible for stuff like PeopleProducts123, and this video (which I’ve shown before)
   
   There’s a great interview with Steve in Gelf mag.
3. And the last one is this pastor from Detroit named Harvey Carey. He spoke at Sanctuary Covenant recently and he mentioned one of their creative activities. The men of the church go camping every summer. They get their tents and lanterns and they set up in front of the drug houses in the neighborhood. They hangout, cook s’mores and basically keep any business from happening. And when they drug dealers move out to a new location, the church camp out moves with them. He said they’ve shut down 15 drug houses that way in the past few years.

We need more creative stories.

Okay, this will be a terribly undeep discussion. Aaron sent me a link to WorldNetDaily the other day and I read the article, commented and then browsed a couple of the links. From what I gather, WorldNetDaily is a christian news website (I think it used to be a magazine?), so one of it’s article titles struck me: “Obama aide says he didn’t mean to blaspheme Jesus”

The title doesn’t strike me because it has anything to do with politics, but that it seems to imply that they think this guy blasphemed Jesus. I clicked the article to see what they considered blasphemy; wouldn’t want to show up in one of their articles myself. Here’s what they said:

(Subtitle of article) Stopped using ‘gay’ video piece after Christian confronted him

[Larry Lessig] denies he had blasphemous intent by including in his lectures a video of a ‘gay’ Jesus Christ sashaying nearly naked down a city street to the tune of Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive,” only to get run over by a bus.”

From what I gather what’s blasphemous is:

1. The writer at WorldNet finds the way Jesus is depicted in the video as ‘gay’.
2. Lessig’s showed the video (not made by him) to others.

But, here’s what’s crazy about this to me:

1. From what I can see in the video and the article, the only person insisting Jesus is ‘gay’ is the WorldNet author. The character in the video is certainly expressive, but it is quite simply reinforcing a stereotype to say that his personality in the video is ‘gay’.
2. WorldNet news actually shows the video on their website article! They have a concise youtube video embedded in the article, available for you to see the whole thing. If Lessig’s blaspheme was in showing the video to others, then WorldNet is just as blasphemous.

So, I guess the decision is up to you. Is the video blasphemous? And if so, are Lessig’s and WorldNet news both guilty? (And I guess I might be guilty as well in suggesting you should go watch the video)

Conveniently for my weekly book reading, I got hooked up with the Ooze blogger program, and now I get books shipped to my door every once in a while to read, enjoy and review. The first, My Beautiful Idol, by Pete Gall, I received last week and finished in a few days.
The book was basically a memoir, sort of like Blue Like Jazz in style. It sort of seemed like I was reading a series of blog post from a really good writer. Gall is brutally honest about his mindset and his experience, something I know must have been difficult to do. I appreciated it though, because I think it lent insight, and in a small way, opened the door to honesty for those in the ‘Church’ who are living with the facade that they have it all together.

There where two sections I really liked. The first is his analogy for Evangelicalism as a high school track meet. Its a long quote which I don’t have time to reproduce here, but I think it’s brilliant.

The second section was about a friend of his mother’s dying from cancer. Also a heart wrenching piece, that you’ll have to read the book to hear.

I really appreciate Pete and Zondervan for giving me the opportunity to review the book.