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The Post I Don’t Want to Write

July 11, 2011 By 3 Comments

It’s been seven years. Seven years since my midlife meltdown twenty years too early, my life and identity crisis. I had just graduated from seminary, where I had studied to go on the mission field.

Except I didn’t go on the mission field.

I stayed in a Dallas suburb to marry Chris, a decision I’ve never regretted. I have only to look at my sexy, caring husband and our beautiful son to dispel what might encroach.

But no regrets doesn’t preclude pain and confusion, for what should I do now, in this suburban land in the middle of the Bible belt? Over the following year, I worked through this question, and I became a writer. I’ve told the story before, so I won’t rehash the details now.

Last night, the pain and confusion revisited me. What am I doing in this suburban land, lush with prosperity, glut with churches? Months of spiritual emptiness culminated after discussions last night between my husband, his sister, her husband, and myself about the possibility of opening a franchise business.

Two things scissored at the frays of my life: what does this business have to do with our pursuit of the kingdom of God? and what do I, as an artist, have to offer?

Let me leave behind the first question for now except to say that I believe business to be an important aspect to God’s kingdom work on earth. To be discussed later.

We move on to the second question, then. My husband is a brilliant businessman, an entrepreneur exuding ideas, a strategist extraordinaire. My sister-in-law knows people and knows sales. My brother-in-law can manage people and businesses like nobody’s business. Their assets form a trifecta not to be taken lightly.

Then there’s me, the trained musician and theologian, the writer, the artist who daydreams in left field as the baseball rolls by. What do I have to offer this business?

Last night, this question broadened: what do I have to offer God, our family, our church, our community? Or, more significantly, what am I offering? After years of toiling and thousands upon thousands of words, I continue to write in relative obscurity. In addition, our recent life change has limited my writing time and my publication pursuits (i.e. the business side of my writing).

Don’t get me wrong: Keegan brings a plethora of joy into my life. I adore motherhood more than I expected. Watching his fascination with life itself reminds me of the care our Creator put into forming this world for us.

But I couldn’t help but wonder what happened to the person I set out to be, and I couldn’t help but wonder what use my words are in this life.

My own writing came back to haunt me. After the tears cleared, I came to my computer this morning to find a note from Laura Boggess letting me know that The High Calling was reprinting an article I’d written for Curator Magazine about art I’d discovered at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum in Israel. This art was created by the persecuted in ghettos, hiding, and concentration camps. What use did such art have? What audience did they seek? I wrote: “They found a power in art separate from functional services.”

I chuckle at the irony. What use do my words have? Perhaps to remind me a year and a half later that the pursuit of beauty and truth is in itself a worthy task.

And so, today, I pick up pencil, I take to paper, and I return to my work while Keegan naps. Unuseful? Perhaps. But important all the same. May I glorify God with this work.

(P.S. You can read the article at The High Calling here.)

Filed Under: art, ministry Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Art House Blog: A Fondue Feast

June 30, 2011 By Leave a Comment

My post, A Fondue Feast, is up today at Art House America’s blog.

A taste:

Artists play communal fugues. We take a theme sounded by one and invert it, reverse it, transpose it. We play with this theme, echoing it and transforming it. We mark it with our unique personalities and cultures, then hand it on to the next artist.

Read the rest here.

Filed Under: aethetics, art Tagged With: , , ,

Finding the Familiar

April 5, 2011 By Leave a Comment

“Most of all the cooking in the world is comfort food. It is food designed to remind us of familiar things, to connect us with our personal histories and our communities and our families.”
- John Lanchester, “Incredible Edibles” in The New Yorker (March 21, 2011)

I came across this passage in an article the other day describing modern food. Of course, the article went on to say how modern food these days deviates from the familiar, but the point stands: we seek the familiar. It reminds us that we belong, that we are loved, that we are known.

Several years ago, my husband asked me why I write. I answered, “So that others won’t feel alone.” A year or so later, I came across the C.S. Lewis quote: “We read to know we are not alone.” Perhaps I’d read the quote before and subconsciously connected it to why I write. Perhaps it’s a common sentiment that many recognize.

As writers, we’re told to find the fresh–a fresh voice, a fresh angle, a fresh take. This is true. The world would be bored by the same old story told over and over again.

But the world also longs to hear the same old story told over and over again. We long for the comfort of the known–to know that the hero wins and how, to know that Elizabeth ends up with Darcy or that it is in Romeo and Juliet’s death that their families reconcile. How many times can I watch When Harry Met Sally? Or read Anne of Green Gables? Yesterday, I read “Childhood Lost,” a poem by blogging friend Eric Swalberg. It broke my heart because I sensed the familiar–an emotion of fleeting time on which I’ve been meditating since Keegan’s birth.

Part of the job of the artist is to reveal humanity, and this requires creating things in such a way that the audience sees things from a different perspective. But even as we do this, we invoke the familiar so that the audience says, yes, I know this house, this family, that girl. And in knowing our characters, the audience knows that they, too, are known.

In this familiarity is life itself. It is more than Google stats or page counts or number of comments. These may tell us we are popular (or not so popular) for a moment, but they’re ecclesiastical. It is not a belonging that lasts. When we write words to page, paint oils to canvas, strike keys on piano, the timelessness of our creations is not in the masses, in the bestsellers or high bids. It is how we resonate with one another, connect, communicate, commune, if only with an individual. And in this type of familiarity, we find the unique, the fresh–how my mom wields spices for her pumpkin pie recipe, how my neighbor cares for his roses, how my son sleeps with the same expression his father sleeps with. Hollywood’s bland worlds and practiced anti-accents ultimately fail us. Mass marketed fruit paintings may look pretty on our walls, but they don’t touch us. Commercial jingles may move us to consume, but they don’t move us to create.

So today, I write about the rose-tender in my neighborhood, the cloves in my mother’s pumpkin pie, the sleep of my son, offering my familiar that you might find yours. And in this way, art again creates community.

Filed Under: art, writing Tagged With: , , ,

Forging Yourself

March 23, 2011 By Leave a Comment

“Modigliani might have done stronger work in painting if he weren’t driven to forge a signature look–to make a name for himself, as his time ran short.”

- Peter Schjeldahl, “Long Faces” in The New Yorker

As I read this bit in a an article about Modigliani a couple of weeks ago, two questions came to mind:

  1. Are we more concerned with our legacy than with the work itself?
  2. Are we more concerned with our brand than with taking risks?

This speaks to the relationship of the artist with his audience and how much the artist is concerned with or writes for a particular audience.

(Side note, just this morning, I read in Amy Inspired by Bethany Pierce a section where the protagonist–also a writer–asks this question.)

I don’t mean to say that we should ignore the good people in the marketing department or fight editors (who, most likely, want to help you write the best story you can). It doesn’t mean becoming obscure for the sake of obscurity and weirdness. After all, if art is the revelation of truth, then on some level, it is a communication; it is communal.

But art is dangerous.

Later in the article, Mr. Schjedahl writes that Modigliani is one of the most forged artists in the world. His style and “stock-in-trade imagery” (or “logo-like motif”) gives us a series of works in which Modigliani “practically faked himself.”

I’ve come across this in artists and authors–one work is exactly like all of their others. At some point, they stop taking risks. They stop delving into humanity. They stop asking questions because they found something that worked. But is it wrong when they’ve found something that resonated with a particular audience? Or has the audience merely become complacent with the artist?

At the heart of this may be the question of pride (at least for the artist–I won’t deal with the possible complacency of the audience here). If I write in order to make a name for myself, if I write for my own glory (or legacy), then that limits my art. Fear of disapproval may keep me from exploring truth in my art. But the other side can step in as well. If, in order to protect ourselves–our pride–we use obscurity and esoterism (it’s okay; I can make up words–I’m a writer) to purposefully distance ourselves from audiences (or a particular audience) so that we reject the audience before the audience can reject us (I broke up with you first!), then that, too, can limit our art.

As we all suspected, no one answer exists to these questions. The relationship of art, the artist, and the audience changes from artist to artist and even within an artist’s own oeuvre. I believe my Christianity informs how I practice this and even frees me to explore more deeply without concern as to my own legacy. After all, it’s about God’s glory, not mine. As I focus on the questions in my art, I can trust God to do with the end product what he will. (I’m not saying I do a good job of this. I’m saying I can trust him with that. The ability to do something and the practice of that ability are two different subjects.)

While many within and without the Christian faith critique how Christianity limits our art, in this area, we can look to how it gives us more freedom.

Filed Under: art, writing Tagged With: , , , , ,

The Master’s Artist: The Communication and Community of Art

January 18, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Recently I’ve become fascinated with the etymological link between communication and community, specifically with how this plays out in the realm of art.

Why do I write? Why do I offer up my writings into the world-at-large?

I explore these questions in my latest Master’s Artist post:

Through art, I respond to God and his movement in his creation at large and in me specifically.

And then I set this response, this discovery, out into the world.

Isn’t this part of the human existence, too? This vulnerability, this desire to be known and to know others through my art. Tertullian said that the essence of personhood is the ability to communicate. The art we create is not a dead artifact upon its completion. It invites the response and engagement of others.

Read the rest of The Communication and Community of Art.

Filed Under: aesthetics, art Tagged With: , , , ,

The Master's Artist: Risky Business

November 9, 2010 By 1 Comment

Today’s post at The Master’s Artist reflects on my recent completion of my rough draft and my intention and work on the revisions.

"Art is discovery. In the rough draft, I work through the characters’
emotions (as well as my own). I answer the questions: How does my
character feel about and react to all these things? How do I feel about
these ideas? In the rough draft, I discover meanings and muck through
what it means to be human. But if I stop there, my work stays in the
realm of self-expression, of emotionalism, and possibly,
horror-of-horrors, sentimentalism. I might even attempt to manipulate
or stimulate the observer so that she feels the same way I do about all
this mess."

Read the rest of Risky Business.

Filed Under: art, artists, creation, creativity, theology

Rowan Williams on the Process of Art-Making

November 2, 2010 By 3 Comments

"Art, whether Christian or not, can’t properly begin with a message and then seek for a vehicle. Its roots lie, rather, in the single story or metaphor or configuration of sound or shape which requires attention and development from the artist. In the process of that development, we find meanings we had not suspected, but if we try to begin with the meanings, they will shrink to the scale of what we already understand; whereas creative activity opens up what we did not understand and perhaps will not fully understand even when the actual work of creation is done. That is why the artist is never the sole or even the best judge of the work, which rightly and properly escapes into the interpretative field of its public."

- Rowan Williams

Filed Under: art, art-making, artists, Rowan Williams

The Master's Artist: Feast or Fallow

October 26, 2010 By 2 Comments

What does it mean that I’m an artist? Does–and how so, then–does my art define me? And if it defines me, what framework do I use when I work in obscurity and when I work in fame?

A comment Sandra McCracken made at a recent Art House Dallas lunch got me thinking about this very thing. So, of course, I blogged about it.

"Our society, still in the haze of Romantic fallout, views artists as
"other-than," as specially inspired, bohemian, eccentric. Often, we
gladly take up this mantle. And often, aspects may fit. We may have
different schedules than, say, a lawyer. We don’t mind using the
descriptor "eccentric" as an excuse to wear or do what we want.

But in all honestly, this mantle also burdens our spirituality.
Happily defined by our art, it engulfs us so that our identity, rather
than in Christ (a common identity to all believers), becomes in art.
Our hope, our persona, our self-presentation, even our view of our
meaning in the world is caught up by the success of our art. More than
this, we put ourselves into our work. Tread lightly, that’s me on the
page."

Read the rest at The Master’s Artist: Feast or Fallow.

 

Filed Under: art, artists, fame, identity, obscurity, roles, The Master's Artist, theology

The Master's Artist: The Glimmer of the Other

October 12, 2010 By Leave a Comment

I’m up at The Master’s Artist today reflecting on an artist’s work from an art festival my husband and I attended a couple of weekends ago.

A glimpse:

"The artist photographed mundane, even dead, objects–weeds, grass, dead
branches. He zoomed in until you could barely identify the original
subject. Before he printed his photographs, he prepared the canvas by
painting it with a glimmery, shining substance. When you viewed the
dead and mundane, the glimmer of the other shone through, giving the
ordinary something beautiful and extraordinary, imparting something of
the essence of life."

Read The Glimmer of the Other.

Filed Under: anthropology, art, humanity, mundane, ordinary, photography, theology

The Master's Artist: Red Wine or White?

September 14, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Today on The Master’s Artist, I get a little soap-boxy. (Sometimes you just have to get these things out of your system!)

An excerpt:

The waiter on stage rung the bell, and the action froze. The couple–on
their first date–had come to an impasse: red wine, which goes with
beef and seduction, or white wine, which pairs with chicken and
commitment? The audience, most of whom sat at tables around the stage,
voted. Numerous times during the show, the waiter stopped the action to
tally the audience. Slap him or kiss him? Should Jeffrey propose,
refuse to propose, or go to the bathroom? Occasionally, the waiter
asked for a volunteer and for a moment, an audience member would
traipse on stage and join the show.

Now, how does that get soap-boxy, you may ask? Because I then talk about how art teaches us presence, commitment, and interaction, something I fear we’re losing in our ADD Internet world.

Not that all Internet is bad (or Internet is all bad). I love my community here. But this can’t be all, and I’m still working through what it means to be here and there. So I decided to work through it a little via blog (to prove the impossibility of separating the two).

Plus, what is the Internet good for, if not a good diatribe now and then?

Read the entire rant here.

Filed Under: art, commitment, incarnation, interaction, presence, soap boxes, theater, theology
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