art

A Disciplined Disciple Artist from Diary of an Arts Pastor--the "Christian artist" v. the "Disciple Artist." Good thoughts here about spiritual formation and art, living wholistically, and the daily rhythm and vision that keeps us from burn-out. Some quotes:

"A disciple artist is fundamentally a disciplined artist, and such an artist is integrated and fully alive."

We've had some lovely conversations here about the idea of the objective-ness in art. I've pushed that there's more to art than our preference, that there is some standard of good art and bad art. I've done this for a couple of reasons:

On my blog, I've championed the idea that Christians have the permission, and indeed duty, to critique art so that as we embody Christ in art, we present something beautiful, redemptive, and excellent.

So today, I want to take a moment to look at the spiritual discipline of being creative--a discipline everyone, artist or not, can (and should) participate in. I want to show you the difference in my life between being creative and being an artist.

This is my first video blog. It runs approximately 8 min.

It's rare to come upon an original musician these days. Perhaps it's not any rarer than before, but with the millions of songs coming out per day, it takes time to work through the dredge.

To be honest, most of it seems uninventive, as if the singers/song-writers/bands settled at mimicking their favorite bands without moving on (or taking the time?) to discover their own sound.

Perhaps I'm too critical. But the truth is, I can tell exactly who some of these musicians grew up listening to.

For those interested in photography (capturing or viewing):

Souvenirs, a set on flickr--this guy takes souvenirs to their homeland and snap fun photographs 

Exposure: A Photography Competition--pretty major deal with big prizes 

If N.T. Wright and music had a child, it would be Jeremy Begbie.

I'm pretty sure neither Wright nor Jeremy would endorse that statement, but there it is. 

Arts Alive! A conference of arts in ministry and missions--if you're in Nashville, I'd recommend checking this one out.

The Christian Vision Project, a collective of creative Christian thinkers addressing what we must learn and unlearn to be agents of God's mission in the world

Continuing on our artist's journey, specifically in Barbara Nicolosi's session in the Transforming Culture symposium...

Barbara talked about the terrain of the artist, namely what is beautiful. She relied on Aristotle's definition of beauty, which has three parts: wholeness (meaning nothing's missing), harmony (meaning related to one another in complementary ways), and radiance (meaning something is communicated that is profound, beyond language--I understood this to mean beyond language used in propositions and explanations--and personal).