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

After some slow starts, August ended with me busy at new works in preparation for a few arts and crafts shows. I wasn’t focused on many new pieces but just getting started on working and thinking of ideas really opened things up.  Before too long I had new direction, new ideas and new energy where before I think I just felt unsure, tired or lacking confidence.  I also rediscovered how much I enjoy not cramming, but planning ahead and walking away from an unpromising or stuck projects.

I also figured out a new strategy after a very great year of making and selling art publicly.  Rather than work almost entirely on just one series and then cramming before the next round of art and craft shows, I have decided to work in two or three streams, a new series, which will take me well into 2012 and maybe beyond and individual random pieces that I have put off or not developed while working on the last series.   Lastly, working on keeping at the more commercial part, jewelry,  in a regular monthly pace, with at least one day a month just for jewelry.

The piece above, “St Knox Skateboard Shrine” really started 2 years ago when I found the statue of what I was to learn was St. Peregrine.  He is unaltered by me, that scratch on his leg is correct and the spark for the idea to make a skateboard shrine.  I have always enjoyed Catholic folk art and appropriating images and concepts, so when I saw the statue of what I conceived of as the “Patron Saint of Skateboarders, Daredevils and Little Boys” that kind of came together.  There were some nods to Jackass star Johnny Knoxville and to the idea of “the school of hard knocks.” The look tries to approximate what I remember of shrines and Catholic churches I saw as a child with my parents in Rome, velvet, gold leaf, milagros, and prayer beads.

It was fun and comical to make and well received on it’s first and last showing (it was purchased!) and confirmed I need to keep my three prong approach.

Finished a series early July and took a much needed break, a vacation to San Francisco and had a heck of a time getting back to anything productive in August.  But a recent opportunity for a small show has me working again, trying some new ideas and exploring old ideas I skecthed out but never worked on.

I am glad for the opportunity because it presents me the chance to get back in the saddle.  Had some experiences that caused me to doubt myself and what it is I do.  That is actually pretty common for artists I guess, but it was the first time I really felt like I hit a wall.  So I am excited about just getting back into making stuff, letting some ideas simmer and try out others I have been putting off.

New piece “The Birds and the Bees,” part of a new series, “Library.”  The series was based upon the Dewey Decimal System, each category getting it’s own piece, all made from books turned into shadow boxes.  This piece was for the Social Sciences.

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.

One of the gifts for my wife for Valentine’s, this piece got me started on the heart series I am working on.  She liked it, it may be her new favorite, which is nice since it was made for her.