Category Archives: Art

Mountain In the Chancel

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This is the set for children’s musical on Sunday.  It is on the prophet Elijah from 1 Kings.  To the right you see Mt Carmel, which is the pulpit covered by a brown canvas tarp.  To the left is the throne room where Ahab and Jezebel will sit, no doubt.  This will be the background for our Ash Wednesday service tonight.  The mountain in the chancel is an apt symbol for the beginning of Lent.  Speaking of which, I finally settled on a Lenten discipline: reading Alexander Schmemann’s For the Life of the World as we move through the season.  This from the preface caught my attention today:

I do not believe in, nor am I capable of, rewriting that which was written once, however imperfectly, with the whole heart.

It struck me that Lent is a time to admit that you cannot rewrite your past, but you can resolve to write future chapters differently.

Vitruvian Man

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The point was to fit the human form inside a circle and a square:

Ancient thinkers had long invested the circle and the square with symbolic powers. The circle represented the cosmic and the divine; the square, the earthly and the secular. Anyone proposing that a man could be made to fit inside both shapes was making a metaphysical proposition: The human body wasn’t just designed according to the principles that governed the world; it was the world, in miniature. This was the theory of the microcosm, and Leonardo hitched himself to it early in his career. “By the ancients,” he wrote around 1492, “man was termed a lesser world, and certainly the use of this name is well bestowed, because …his body is an analogue for the world.”

But what should this microcosmic man look like? Vitruvius hadn’t provided illustrations. Artists in medieval Europe, loosely echoing Vitruvius, had come up with visions of their ideal man: Christ on the cross, representing both the human and the divine. But until the late 1400s, nobody had tried to work out exactly how a man with Vitruvian proportions might be inscribed inside a circle and a square. This was the challenge that prompted Leonardo to draw Vitruvian Man.

Vitruvius was a Roman architect who proposed the idea.  Leonardo wasn’t the first to try.

I drew a picture of myself, naked, in the pose above.  I call it Flabuvian Man.  But it is too scary to look at, so I won’t post it.

Use Your Tall Mouth

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At 8:15 on Sunday mornings I rehearse with our choir, in preparation for the 9:30 service.  Behind our fine director this image of an open mouth hangs on the bulletin board.  I suppose it is intended to remind us to open our mouths widely as we sing.  This is only my second year in the choir, but I have enjoyed my time very much.  Different voices in a choir blend together in harmony to create beauty that touches the heart.  It always helps, though, if you use your tall mouth.

Simplify Life a Little

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Last Thursday I visited with a woman who is giving away all her art.  She has painted thousands of landscapes, still lifes and portraits in her years, but now they have become an encumbrance, and she is giving them away, with or without frames.  Her body is failing, as all bodies do in the end, and she feels an urge to simplify her life.  I took a framed still life of bananas and oranges in a blue bowl.  On Friday I donated two bags of clothing to Goodwill and two boxes of books to the Adrian Public Library.  It seems like a small gesture, but I felt a sudden need to simplify my life a little and own a few less things.  We all will leave this life as naked as the bare trees that look out over the water.

(image: Lad Strayer)

Detroit, Haven for Artists

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Detroit is becoming a haven for artists:

A map by Art Detroit Now highlights dozens of farther-flung art sites. One is the Russell Industrial Center, which at first glance looks like yet another abandoned factory. At its height in the 1940s, the 20-acre, 2.2-million-square-foot site accommodated 13,000 workers building Ford auto bodies and World War II airplane parts.

Now, though, artists pay $600 to $700 a month for 1,000-plus square feet of studio space. “You name it, we have it,” said Chris Mihailovich, Russell’s manager: The 150 tenants include painters, sculptors, photographers, glass blowers, print makers, furniture builders, makers of custom concrete countertops and even a gym opened by a former SWAT officer. His rule for tenants: “Respect the other artists, and don’t wreck the place.” Some have decorated studios and hallways, such as Dale Teachout’s colorful assemblages of found objects. Wander around and an artist may well invite you in.

The author also mentions visiting the Heidelberg Project above, which our church saw last summer on its mission trip to Detroit.

Sicut Cervus

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I love the rising and falling lines in this music.  A small choir performed it at our wedding.  (Sicut Cervus is the Latin text for Psalm 42:1, As the deer longs for streams of water, so my soul longs for you, O God.)

A Day Devoted to Food

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Monday I ate lunch at the Adrian Senior Center after delivering 16 meals on wheels.  Volunteer drivers enjoy a free meal.  It took an hour and a half to finish my route; public radio was playing mostly Mozart, which made the time pass.  Lunch was ham, peas and sweet potatoes.  One wall in the dining room displays a mural of the history of Adrian; this picture shows a portion.  At the bottom is old city hall, now gone, and the old city library and fire house, both still standing but devoted to other uses.  The sister of the man who built the outdoor altar painted the mural.  Later in the afternoon I made dinner for a family whose mother is on bed rest till her baby is born.  I fixed two pans of meatloaf, with sweetcorn and tomatoes from the Tillotson stand on North Main.  If I were more practiced in making meals for families, it would have taken less time, but it all came together in the end.  So yesterday was devoted to food.

Why I Love Harry Potter

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A parishioner and I shared lunch at Millers.  We both chose the chef’s salad with ranch dressing.  At one point in our conversation, she asked me if I liked Harry Potter.  I launched into an uncharacteristically long monologue about why I love the stories of Hogwarts.  “J.K. Rowling is a genius,” I said.

I thought little about Harry Potter until leading a mission trip to South Carolina in 2005.  The Half-Blood Prince, the sixth in the series, had just come out, and three of the youth read it all the way through on our 18-hour trip.  Later in the week I was talking to one of the youth, and her excitement about Harry Potter intrigued me.  After returning home, I bought the sixth book and read it.  The world of Harry Potter captured me.  I went back in the story and read the first three books.  I stalled midway through the fourth, The Goblet of Fire, and I never read the fifth.  But when the last book came out, Deathly Hallows, I devoured it, reading the last 200 pages at a picnic table at the Lenawee County Fair.

Why do I love Harry Potter?  First, they are grand stories, well conceived and well told. They hold your interest hour after hour.  You grow connected to the characters; and the world they inhabit, though fantastic, is wholly believable.  Second, the stories focus on young people who do serious things.  Adults are present, but mostly on the sidelines to provide support and guidance.  Our society often does not believe the young can do important things, but in the universe of Harry Potter, they literally save the day.  I think this is a big part of their appeal.  Third, evil is real and palpable in these stories.  Some churches condemn the witches, wizards, and sorcery in the Harry Potter stories — this is silly.  In a sense, the Harry Potter saga recapitulates the worldview of the New Testament, where believers struggle against ‘spiritual forces of wickedness.’

My wife and I saw the last movie on Thursday.  We were not disappointed.  On the way home, she told me the stories of Harry Potter will never die because people are writing all sorts of sequels and prequels on the Internet.  It made me smile to know that ‘the boy who lived’ will continue to live in this way.

Outdoor Altar

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Saturday we attended an event at the West Adrian United Church of Christ, celebrating the congregation’s 175th anniversary.  It was founded in 1836.  Its pastor, JK, constructed this altar for outdoor worship; his church members donated the stones, and his nephew made the cross, which leans back and looks up to the sky.  The celebration featured games for children and dulcimer music.  This morning the congregation worshiped here.

Heidelberg Project

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This evening a group from our church will drive up to Detroit for a three-day mission trip to Cass Community Social Services.  Monday evening, the folks at Cass will take us to see the Heidelberg Project, an outdoor art display in Detroit.  This video explains more about it.  Later in the week I’ll have some pictures and thoughts about our trip.

Pretzel Crosses

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Group produces the Vacation Bible School curriculum we use, and on Thursday of VBS week they usually plan for us to talk about the cross. “Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures.” (1 Cor. 15.3)  Since the snacks typically match the day’s theme, the children will eat these pretzel crosses today — here being made on Wednesday.  I wonder if the white glazing on the cross is symbolic: “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.” (Is 1.18)  There is something similar to holy communion in eating food that connects you to the dying of Jesus.

PandaMania

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The set for this year’s PandaMania Vacation Bible School:

Yesterday’s Bible lesson for the older children focused on the creation story, but I couldn’t take part because of a funeral.  Today, it’s Elijah on Mt Carmel.  The children will build an altar.  They will put something precious on it for sacrifice — chocolate bars — and they will learn that God listens to us.

Art Is Simple, Life Is Complicated

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Historian James M. Lundberg criticizes The Civil War documentary by Ken Burns:

For all its appeal, however, The Civil War is a deeply misleading and reductive film that often loses historical reality in the mists of Burns’ sentimental vision and the romance of Foote’s anecdotes. Watching the film, you might easily forget that one side was not fighting for, but against the very things that Burns claims the war so gloriously achieved. Confederates, you might need reminding after seeing it, were fighting not for the unification of the nation, but for its dissolution. Moreover, they were fighting for their independence from the United States in the name of slavery and the racial hierarchy that underlay it. Perhaps most disingenuously, the film’s cursory treatment of Reconstruction obscures the fact that the Civil War did not exactly end in April of 1865 with a few handshakes and a mutual appreciation for a war well fought. Instead, the war’s most important outcome—emancipation—produced a terrible and violent reckoning with the legacy of slavery that continued well into the 20th century.

These are important realities to grasp about the Civil War, but addressing them head on would muddy Burns’ neat story of heroism, fraternity, reunion, and freedom.

I loved The Civil War documentary when it came out 20 years ago.  It was mesmerizing, and it seemed so realistic.  But I can see Lundberg’s point that it is a romantic view of that terrible time and its aftermath.  Art is simple — it needs to be — but life is complicated.

Sunday Reading 6-12-11

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Kate Canales on creative people:

Creative thinkers are not the rare commodities that we tend to make them out to be. If you are running a business and want the innovation, flexibility, and problem-solving power of creativity, you don’t necessarily have to hire creative people. You probably already employ them. I define a creative person as someone who has the ability to identify and deeply understand a problem, and then solve that problem by breaking the conventions of the status quo. By this definition, tortured artist or not, all of us can probably think of plenty of individuals we know who are creative.

The best teachers are usually the ones who don’t do things “by the book.” The same goes for great doctors, entrepreneurs, mail carriers, and even tax accountants. All of them are in a position to know the problem well and, when given enough leeway, can find a successful solution.

Creative people, she says, are empathetic and willing to ask for help, and to give them the space they need we may have to redefine success.

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Salim Mansur, a Canadian Muslim, on why there are no democracies among Arab nations:

For democracy to work, the prerequisite is a culture in which the people recognizes the “other” — irrespective of how the “other” is defined in terms of ethnicity or religion or gender — as equal, and their interests and aspirations as legitimate.

This recognition of the “other” is missing in Arab culture. The “other” is merely tolerated in a subordinate status and since the “other” in the modern context is unwilling to be consigned indefinitely into an inferior position, the result is the repeated cycle of rebellion and repression in Arab history.

The recognition of otherness is the definition of Christian love according to philosopher Diogenes Allen, whose writings I studied for my doctoral project.

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Presbyterian minister John Shuck on what he believes:

I believe…

  1. in evolutionary theory. This obviously includes human beings. Evolution and science in general have had major implications regarding theology that we mostly ignore or in our worse moments deny.
  2. in higher criticism of the Bible. The Bible like all other books are human products (what else could they be?) and should be read as such as opposed to special revelation from a divine being.
  3. that all religion is a human construct. Its primary purpose has been and should be an attempt to find and evoke meaning amidst life’s contingencies as opposed to speculation regarding supernaturalism.
  4. that “God” functions as a symbol. The concept of “God” is a product of myth-making and “God” is no longer credible as a personal, supernatural being. For me, “God” functions as a shorthand for the Universe and sometimes for qualities and aspirations I wish to pursue or to emulate.
  5. that human consciousness is the result of natural selection. Human beings do not have immortal souls nor will consciousness survive death. Thus there is no afterlife. There is no heaven, no hell, and no need for salvation from one realm to another.
  6. that there is no “end” in human time. Earth is four billion years old. Earth was here long before human beings. Earth will spin on its axis and revolve around the sun long, long after the last human being has breathed her last. We will have to find meaning and our “eschaton” in this life.
  7. that Jesus may have been historical but most of the stories about him in the Bible and elsewhere are legends. But he’s cool. He serves as a human ideal and a focal point for devotion (like an ishta deva).
  8. that industrial civilization is in for a long descent. Peak Oil and Overshoot should be everyday terms in our lexicon. We ought to be putting our religious energies toward spiritual, emotional, and practical preparation for this reality.

If I am tempted to see myself as progressive, John reminds me how orthodox I am.

Vivian Maier

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Vivian Maier’s photographs are tender, exhilarating, and at times unsettling. They are the product of someone who—despite her outward appearances—clearly had a profound connection with the world around her. She just connected in the one way she knew how, looking downward through the viewfinder of her Rolleiflex—and the results are piercingly honest, even revelatory. In the lives and experiences of everyday people, Maier saw a certain beauty and dignity—and through her photos, she gets us to see it, as well.

Her photos are powerful.  Additional ones here.  She lived in New York and Chicago.