Never really hit me like it has in this last month, these heart pieces are often autobiographical, which is scary if you actually think about it.

This piece, “Who’s there?” is a dark musing upon a very familiar and popular verse from the book of Revelation, maybe only second to John 3:16 as an example of the Gospel…

“Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.”

Rev3:20

This piece, like others I have done before, is my own version of Catholic “shrine art,” what I remember from visiting historic cathedrals as a child with my family, mixed with folk art I saw in art history classes.

It captures the other side of the Savior’s promise, the fearful and lost soul standing on the other side of that door, not full of faith, not full of hope, scared to open the door, scared not to.

Not the image you want to see of yourself and it wasn’t planned as a self portrait in any way but  I realized, “hey, that’s kinda like me.”  It’s been a depressing couple of days wrestling with that thought.

But late last night reflecting on it once more, I was reminded of Bill Mallonee’s amazing song “Knocking At Your Door,” and a quiet hope began to grow.  I am more fearful and mistrusting than I care to admit, far worse than I know actually, but by grace, Jesus seeks US out, he is at our door, and by his grace we are enabled to answer and open…hopeful indeed.

all doubts and depression

born of guilt and separation

push your boat aho from the shore

but like a lighthouse beacon

his heart is always seeking

and then He comes a-knocking at your door

 

amid the problems and the pain

of ambition and sordid gain

this grinding of the face of the poor

He will lift up the lowly

the humble and not slowly

and then He comes a-knocking at your door

 

when He comes knocking at your door

we’ll understand what this all meant

when He comes knocking at your door

you won’t be disappointed

 

amid the conflict and confusion

of winning and then losing

brother against terror for oil

He was heaven sent

even for our president

and then He comes a-knocking at your door

 

amid the fears and frustrations

tumults and tribulations

of all of the whys and wherefores

it’ll all flee as the night

vanishes with morning light

and then He comes a-knocking at your door

…Come Lord Jesus

I made a series of ornaments recently, utilizing only supplies I had, themed around oddities and curiosities.  They were intended to be kinda Tim Burtonesque. One was definitely creepy but also compelling to me, the porcelain baby doll arm.  It’s reach downward reminded me of God’s reach to us, in the form of a baby, remembered at this time of year.

“For to us a child is born, to us a son is given” Isaiah 9:6

There is also the longing we have, maybe not heavenward, as I don’t believe in our unredeemed hearts we actually desire God, but we desire something.  Some resolution or retribution, mercy or justice.  Something is amiss and we know it, we can’t name it and can’t affect it, but something is required.

“And I will shake all nations, and the desire of all nations shall come: and I will fill this house with glory, says the LORD” Haggai 2:7

And that is the beauty of Advent, the time of year the Christian Church remembers Christ’s coming in His incarnation, into our darkness.  And we are reminded of and look forward to His return as well.

Longing, unnamed desire and the most unlikely gift.

“Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will keep it.” Luke 17:33

So many thoughts about art and life right now.  This new piece, made for a recent Day of the Dead show is an appropriate piece for this post.  I don’t know all the story of the Latin American holiday, just that it was based on All Saints day and the Day of the Innocents , mixed with native beliefs and celebrations.  Dia de los Muertos seems to incorporate a more festive and also commemorative feel to it then the European Memento Mori motif.  Remembering and honoring deceased loved ones and celebrating their lives.

Recently a couple of changes for my wife and I, all good, have shifted my focus, at least for a season, away from art.  The time and energy required to pursue other things that are more important and pressing, and progress on those fronts will make my continued work in art more enjoyable eventually. But of course I was reluctant.  It meant not doing any shows in the Spring and even possibly the Summer or Fall. And I feel like I am just getting my work out there so that is not the direction I wanted to take. But I also am not pursuing art as a career, so I had to trust I would be able to keep my hand in it and God would be faithful to keep His purposes for me and art making on track (He’s big like that).

And that is still my intention, but God IS faithful.  I had been pursuing a few things recently, trying to promote my work, and while there were a few things in process before my decision, all of sudden I am having more exposure, more opportunities and more feedback since laying down my own plans and interest to pursue things I have neglected for too long.  I was approached recently by a local pastor to do a commission piece for his church’s location.  My work was not just featured in a magazine I had submitted to, but made the centerfold calendar piece.  I was asked to submit an two extra pieces for use in devotional covers, I had only planned on one. That recent exposure led to another sell…it just seems like after letting go, more is opening up than when I was completely consumed with trying to make stuff happen.

I also had decided and then had a few circumstances that kinda confirmed it, to get back to leaving a few small pieces around like I used to, I had been too busy to do that, but there is a joy in giving it away to be found and enjoyed by others as a gift, a grace.  And from time to time, remarkably, I hear from someone or about someone who picked up a piece and how much they appreciated it or how much it meant to them, and that’s pretty cool. So as I have time I’ll have that to work on, even if it isn’t for a big show or goal, it is an enjoyable part of my art making.

So for now, I will put my own plans on hold and work slower on stuff as I can, at least for a season.  I’ll avoid the obvious reference to death, transformation and butterflies, but it would totally fit.

I know I have done a lot of pieces that are themed around death, specifically Memento Mori themes, such as the above, “Only A Shadow” based upon “Our days on earth are like a shadow”  in 1 Chronicles 29:15, but also some art that is meant to not only reflect our physical mortality, but also our dead spiritual state separated from Christ as in Ephesians 2:5, “we were dead in our trespasses.”

I of course don’t feel like a morbid, macabre person, just that maybe I have some dark humor or interests in my art, but there is a theological rationale for this.

However, as an assemblage artist, my medium requires I use objects. Certainly I tackle other themes or ideas that don’t revolve around death and mortality, but I would rather not use only drawings or photos of some objects if I can access those objects.  Case in point, if I had used small paper cut outs of seahorses in the earrings below, they would lose their interest, their wonder, and as one enthusiastic patron told me, their “magic.”

Photo by Mickie Winters

I bring this up because recently someone inquired about where I sourced these objects.  I was concerned because 1) I didn’t know and 2) I didn’t care.  I mean I know where I got them, but I could not say if they were humanely raised and harvested (I mean they are still dead at a young age and I guess if I thought about it I would feel…yeah, no I am still not feeling bad).  But it did get me thinking, while I am not a vegetarian or vegan, I am not opposed to those lifestyles, and respect them from creation care perspective.  In moderation.

But art’s history is tied to the dead things.  I am not making that up.  If you consider the earliest cave paintings, which even if they don’t depict the animals the artist did kill or wanted to kill, the artists most certainly did hunt the animals depicted to feed themselves. The earliest extant archeological artifacts are art that were made in commemoration of or preparation for burials.  Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece.

Surely, one might argue we are more enlightened then that.  But in the Renaissance Da Vinci and Michelangelo studied and dissected corpses to learn anatomy and prefect their drawings and paintings of the human form. New World cochineal beetles and Mediterranean sea snails were processed and ground up to make pigments for oil paints.

John James Audubon, celebrated painter, ornithologist, and naturalist is estimated to have killed 1,000’s of birds in his studies.  He hunted, collected and arranged the birds in the poses he needed to paint such beautiful life like images.  He discovered over 25 new species, painted them and killed them.

So the point of this rare diatribe?

Animals should not be inhumanely treated, not wastefully collected, but if my images use bones, bugs, specimens, etc. I am keeping in a long tradition of art making.

I have also started to ask or research the sources of the specimens I buy, for what’s worth.

10:56 pm

Steve Jobs died today.  It is sad to me.  I am very moved by his words at a 2005 Stanford Commencement.

It seemed appropriate in light of the title being Art and Death to post this here, Steve Jobs was an artist too.  ”Real artists ship”

Thank you Steve

It gets weird, in my life, office and art.  The subject matter, medium, and direction I choose to work in means I am picking up strange items; a shipment in the mail recently included coyote teeth and claws, miniature dried seahorses, snake ribs, pieces from an original 1935 edition of Monopoly, a facsimile of a 1928 $2 bill, and dental x-rays films.  It was a good day, at least to me. My poor wife often shivers at my collections. Though she seems supportive of the ideas I pursue, she always seems a bit concerned about being in the same room with my supplies.

But as funny (or not) as those issues are, I have been reflecting on some of the decisions I make about my art’s content.  The above image is from a Tarot card. As a Christian, I see much of the classic Rider-Waite deck steeped in Old and New Testament imagery and symbols.  It’s largely unknown to the public that the tarot decks originated from French, Spanish, and Italian playing cards, and were only later reinterpreted into mystic and occultic tools for divination in the late 18th century.  And while the images best known from Tarot are the reinterpretations by mystic Arthur Edward Waite and artist Pamela Colman Smith, they reference biblical material, symbolism and passages.

So as a visual artist, whose main work process is to take old images and objects and compose them together to form new pieces that often point in different direction than the original materials might themselves, what am I to do with these images?  What can I do?  What am I allowed to do? What should I avoid, detest, embrace, repent of and pursue?

Harold Best in Unceasing Worship writes that a believer artist is free in Christ to create, explore and make art.  His incredibly insightful writing has informed and served as a back drop to how I think through this issue.  I will quote him at length, because I can’t improve how he said it…

Christian artists have true artistic freedom, not on the basis of something as simplistic as right, wrong and so called artistic license, but on the basis of intent and direction.  Here’s what I mean.  Christian artists first of all understand that making art is indistinguishable from worshiping Jesus. In this sense, their art joins up and is made common with everything else in their daily round for which they are responsible as continuous outpourers (the term Best developed to describe the idea of a living sacrifice).  Their art may be their specialty, and its quality may be—should be—of the highest, but it has no greater standing before God than an honestly prepared income tax return.

Furthermore, artistic intent and direction are fully known only to God through Christ, while content is known both to God and to people.  This does not mean that Christian artists must limit themselves to so-called Christian content, especially the all too prevalent kind that is little more than spiritualized gingerbread. It means that every aspect of life is open to aesthetic inquiry, both as to the sinfulness of sin and the grandeur of holy living. Thus, to the Christian artists there are no off-limits subjects even though there are off-limits intentions and directions…Thus, no person has a right to lay an accusing hand, even if it means that artists, along with Christ, may be accused of consorting with sinners, gluttons and winebibbers.

Artistic freedom, however, is not artistic license. There is a twofold danger in what I have said in the preceding paragraph. First unwise or giddy Christian artists will be tempted to take up the badge of artistic freedom in itself (a much flawed and idolatrous badge) instead of being thrust forward in the freedom that is in Christ alone.  Also the public, especially the theologically pinched-up kind, will confuse artistic content and the artist’s intent and arbitrarily accept or reject both art and artist on that ground. Ultimately the artist must stand before Christ and answer for every artistic action taken.

So, the uniformed public be damned, I can use the images I want to!  Right? Maybe, but what this passage sets before me is not just an affirmation of our liberty, but also the wise counsel to consider my heart attitudes, my intentions.

My intentions were easy to ascertain in this regard.  I concluded that my interest in a few of these pieces was simply aesthetic, but by and large I wanted to make some pieces I felt confident would sell, because the images have a certain currency in particular audiences. Maybe I should be more ashamed of that admission, but it is just a fact of my heart.

Also instructive to me was my own review of the New Testament passages regarding witchcraft or divination. Reading the book of Acts, it is Apostles “4″ Occult “0″.  Jesus in his ministry among the Jews in Palestine never really confronts the issue, but as his disciples fan out in to the larger Gentile world, idolatry and witchcraft are constantly encountered.  And of the four times it is encountered in the book of Acts, money and power are linked to it.  The other two mentions are that witchcraft is a work of the flesh and that outside the heavenly city are those who practice magic. Not the company I want to keep.

So here I was, intending to make pieces that included occultic related images for the sole purpose of making money.

And so rather than push through the growing conviction and do what I want because I am “free” I sought counsel from mature, fellow believer artists and creatives, to open my heart and life.  And while the safety of their advice confirmed my sense of conviction, I was also blessed and encouraged to continue, setting my sight less on the commercial opportunities I saw and more on developing at my art.

And that is how in this instance my faith, artistic liberty, scriptures and community work to inform, direct, counsel and set direction for my artmaking, and more importantly how I live all my life.

What can explain the hardships we face?

We often pass blame to our parents and grandparents gone before us.

We imagine our grandparents setting us up for failures or fortunes with the decisions they made in the early 20^th century. But a larger and older story is offered in the Christian doctrine of Original Sin, a far deeper source, much further back in our collective family tree; Adam and Eve’s sin in the garden, the curse they placed us under, and their expulsion from that paradise.   The series explores then how these two contrasting ideas would play out visually.

Another element was added as I studied curses or bad luck in folk and popular accounts, the notion of curses as shown through the lens of the African American Hoo Doo or Conjure tradition. Anthropologists describe Hoo Doo as a “sympathetic system of magic,” in which objects or actions represent reality in symbolic ways.  Running water can symbolize a river or drowning; a cross can represent crossroads and therefore decision-making.  It is a very rich palette for an assemblage artist to draw from, the use of odd numbers of objects, the botanical and zoological elements, the spices, charms, and small objects echo Hoo Doo “rootwork” but reflect imagery from Old Testament passages. Hoo Doo’s origin among slaves in America was itself an attempt to mitigate a harsh world, powerless and ineffectual as the fig leaves that were humanity’s first attempt to deal with their nakedness in the Genesis account.

Acknowledging that our attempts to alleviate the big problems and pressures in our lives often are ineffectual at best, and ruinous at worst, led to the second part of the series. Exploring the generations in the Book of Genesis after Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden, the narratives of Cain and Abel, the Tower of Babel, Noah’s Drunkenness and others formed a close parallel to the Seven Deadly Sins tradition, conceptualized here as extensions of the fig leaves.

Adam and Eve, The Roaring 20’s and the Great Depression, Hoo Doo and Conjure; the pieces try to retell a family history, older than we often assume.

This piece is based upon Jubal, Robert Johnson and the blues.  Wanted to put the image up, I’ll have more to say in a bit.

Not sure why I am fascinated with the religious iconography of Catholicism, it may be more the folk shrines and art of Latin American countries I have seen that makes it so interesting to me, but I wanted to try a few ideas and this is the first of that series.  The Catholic devotion, Sacred Heart of Jesus, is the inspiration behind the visual elements, though even after reading up on it some, I can’t say I really understand what is meant by a devotion in this context.  However, the title, while being a play on words, is also drawn from the materials, a heart encircled by barbed wire, while a prisoner of sorts, is also guarded.  Wounded and scarred, a make shift stitch job, still shows an exposed, unhealed wound.  The glory that should show from the heart is instead portrayed from distressed, dirty, fading wood.

Certainly a commentary of the condition of my own heart often, if we’ll brave a conversation, we find we are not alone in our fearful, scarred hearts.

Dictionary, letterpress wood block, pen nibs, antique German black letter page from New Testament (Johannes 1 chapter 3), letter.

A tribute I have planned on doing for Johannes Gutenberg for several years now, it only came together recently, in quite different ways than I imagined at first.

I like it, plan on doing a few more of these.

Finished this piece recently, part of work for an upcoming small show, more of an arts and craft fair.  It is a concept I happened upon while making a gift for my brother in law for Christmas.  I wrote about the small jar filled with grass and a cutout of a phrenology head drawing,

“The first little jar has the phrenology head you like, sorry I don’t have a spare one I can part with right now, but if I did, you would have it.  But the image is powerful to me because it is a great example of humanity’s attempts to understand ourselves, our behaviors and our souls.  It is a scientific attempt but it ultimately fails.  The jar contains withered grass and a pinch of dust; both from a graveyard, reminders of our mortality and that there is a terminal limit on searching for self knowledge.”

I had not set out to demonstrate anything really, just wanted to incorporate in a small place, the phrenology head image and had learned it’s background as an example of 19th century pseudoscience (however self serving that term is for the modern science establishment) and it’s ernest but misguided attempt to understand ourselves.   But the piece came together and I was very happy with it.  But the image has stuck with me and I have made a few small pieces like it.

I assembled this piece and love it’s simplicity.

I heard also last week of a a man I know of, a young man with a wife and small child and a promising start as a filmmaker, diagnosed with cancer.

It stops me in my tracks and I have been moved to pray for him and he has been on my thoughts through this week.

It seems wrong to make art that seems playful about the idea about our own mortality but it also does focus our attention to the truth that we are mere vapors, our lives short and unpredictable, this man and his family have laid hold of this truth and have come out with the greatest treasure, resting in Christ for their lives and sharing that hope with all they know.

So while it gave me pause to be making this kind of art I take courage that it’s ultimate aim is to point to our need to be prepared for eternity and trust in Christ