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

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Finished a piece recently that I had started quite a while back.  Things come up, obstacles are faced and sometimes you put aside a piece because your are interested in something else.  But with my old computer crashing recently I returned to work on some unfinished pieces, like this one, called Treasure.

It is  a small reflection on Christ’s teaching about what our heart values and highlights the fleeting nature of riches.  Often enough pieces I make come home to me in new ways as I struggle with my own life and decisions and continue  to walk this life as the sojourner and pilgrim that I am.  More than anyone I need to be reminded of my true home and the real treasures.

I’ve finished three pieces today derived from the Family Curse series, Adam’s Lament, I’m calling it.  It takes the elements of the curse upon the ground and our endeavors and works them into one piece. The character in the picture, Clay I have taken to calling him, is cut from a photograph by JohnVachon, 1941.  He is slumped over in despair or depression, and seems crushed. 

The elements from the curse, the earth, the thorns, thistles, sweat in work and our ultimate death form the background and the little bottle of graveyard dust reminds us that from dust we were formed and to dust we will return. 

Ironically making this piece and smaller collaged works has been a struggle for me as I stress about making art and making a living. Comically thinking about making the work, I reflected very little about my own struggles with work, not until I was finished with them and thinking about writing did I realize how much I chase after the perfect livelihood, that somehow I expect my faith to save me from living out this struggle myself among thorns and thistles.  My faith, the real faith, of course has bearings on my whole life, work included, but as I have been making art and blogging over  a year now, there has been constant questions about if/when I might perhaps make a living by art and the perennial, albeit oft forgotten, resolution to trust God where I am at, keep making work from my heart, get better at it and be thankful for the blessings I have and the grace I enjoy.

So it seems like this is a good place to start making art that I will begin to sell, maybe not make a living at it just yet but at least start funding my artmaking with my own art sells.

I had really expected that I was about done with the family curse series, a series exploring the fall of Adam and Eve in Genesis chapter three, through the lens of hoo doo curses and Great Depression images, playing on the idea that our struggles as individuals is somehow tied to a curse upon our family of origin, only it is a more ancient curse than we realize.

I have a few pieces in process that use the images of the family tree and family curse and ties it back to the tree of knowledge of good and evil that Adam and Eve partook of that brought sin in to the world.  I had hoped to finish finally with the cursed tree, where Christ became a curse for us and removed the curse of sin once and for all, but honestly those are hard images to imagine and execute.

Possibly as a stall, but also as it relates to the cursed roots of our family I am embarking on a series that explores the cursed fruit we see on our lives and the lives of those around us.  I have struggled between depicting the rest of Genesis after the fall and expulsion from the garden and the seven deadly sins, the resolution will reference both as this piece does.  The pride and rebellion of the Tower of Babel seems like a great parallel to pride in general working out in our own lives.

So here is the first piece of the next part of this series, trying to keep with Great Depression era images, I had to in this case reach back a bit further.  Pictured is the iceberg believed to have sunk the Titanic, the colossal of the White Star Line cruise ships. 

I enjoy that without being explained the image is abstract or looks at the Tower of Babel and Pride from a oblique angle, less literal and I like that, it’s joyful in a way I can’t describe.

We recently moved to the city and I have been stirred to reach out to people, to learn to love my neighbors, to get involved in the life of the city.  I have been inspired by Jeremy Begbie’s “Future Hope” lecture as it relates to art making as well as to engaging in “making all things new.”  

But my real longing, my real loyalty is to another city and this piece reflects that sometimes hopeful, sometimes impatient longing for that city.  There is hope, otherwise we would give up counting the days, but as the days stretch out we can be impatient, I know I am at times.  The Psalms ask several times “How long?”  How long would the enemies prevail against God’s people?  How long would God allow suffering?  How long until they saw their desires?  

The psalms validate that longing and that question as it is asked over and over again.  Faith is total, though it doesn’t have to always answer all of our questions.  We may not have immediate answers to dilemmas that face us but we are not without assurance and hope. And so at times we wait, we look and we long.

 (Mostly) found wood, old calendars, paint.  51″ x 51″

Old photo of a worker picking cotton, a small vial of sweat and worn bandanna. 

The final piece in the series, though I am working on a few other related pieces.  Thought I would finish up posting these pieces as I am moving and will be sweating quite a bit today myself.

Thistles (or a thistle like species) springing up to frame and threaten the harvest being stacked in the old photo.

A famer plowing the field in a old photograph is surrounded by layers of thorns.

“we see the vivid juxtaposition of thorns surrounding a photograph of a farmer plowing behind a horse. Sharp thorns threaten the framer’s actions and seem to hem him in from all sides, alluding to the difficulty of working the earth.”

Old image of house and land from the Great Depression, Dust Bowl era, and parched earth picture cut and reassmebled on of a duplicate to get cracks in the piece.  Bottle full of graveyard dirt.  Part of the three that will be in a traveling show for CIVA.

The idea for these bottles predated the whole series, I had wanted to make little “message in a bottle” type pieces to give away and have been fascinated by the conept of the message in a bottle theme since hih school.  Being able to reproduce the jars and bottles to leave for people has been a motivation to finish this series.  The above is a collection of the seven objects represented in the whole series, snake skin/shed, small nation sack containing a man’s name written nine times, a dime and a single apple seed, a jar of tears, a bottle of dirt from a graveyard, a thorn, thistle and a piece of a bandanna. 

These bottles contain a vial of graveyard dust, a snake shed and ribs from a rattlesnake.

The ‘nation (domination) sack from the desire piece is reproduced here with the same same 9 elements, a 1930′s silver Mercury dime, an piece of parchment with a Man’s name written 9 times, a razor blade, a vial of honey, 7 apple seeds, a sprinkle of myrrh, a cinnamon stick, a snake rib, and a piece of a man’s bandanna.  The red top is the traditional red flannel used to make mojo hands.

 These last bottles contain the elements of the curse that relate to work, cursed earth in the form of a vial of graveyard dust, a thorn, a thistle and a vial of sweat.