“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

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.

So I spent the last few days of the old year and most of the first of this year cleaning up, cleaning out and organizing the office space I use for a studio.  I could spend more time if I had it or the energy.

The months ahead will include some intense stretches of art making, but some is personal, for my wife for Valentine’s, some commercial for some craft type shows and some for a gallery, none of which are really great for sharing here, at least not before hand.  I have kept a non grueling pace of one post per month and expect to continue that pace but not sure what kind of work I will have to post.

But I did want to take the opportunity to say Happy New Year and to document the continued attempt at living my life, growing in faith, attending to work and marriage and making some art as best I can when I can.

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.

So I have spent a good part of the late summer and early fall preparing for the Affordable Art Show, my first such event, October 16th.  It has been fun to make things that I can do over and over and get better at, and it has been a drag to make things over and over.  Puts in perspective the idea of making a living at making art.  It’s still work.

It is exciting though to consider getting real feedback, as in do people want to buy it? Not that that is the chief end but you can’t making a living making art if you can’t sell it.  However you can make a life of making art regardless. And so while this manic pace is about to end (only to be replaced by other projects artistic and other) it is nice to know I don’t have to make money (though who doesn’t want to) to enjoy making art.

The above is a display I made to sell my time flies pieces.

I am in the midst of preparing to teach 1oo+ students from 3rd to 12th grade what assemblage is and then lead them through a brief project on assemblage.  Excited about the possibilities and to see what kind of projects the students develop. 

The tiles above are samples of the almost 200 6″ by 6″ cardboard tiles made to work on as a canvas of sorts.  Covered with a variety of backgrounds to give the students something to work against besides a blank slate.  The goal is to arrange a visually interesting composition with 5-6 objects. 

Hope to have pictures to share.

I did not expect the discomfort and emptiness that developed as we got closer to the opening of the Prayer and Wisdom group installation.  I felt the nakedness of having put my work out there and the anticipation of how it would be received, the crushing weight of trying to find my worth or validation through creativity, of trying to save myself, literally, by the works of my own hands.  Of course that’s not what I say my artmaking is about, but hours before the opening I felt naked, exposed and fearful and had to own up to my own misguided, crooked ways. 

And while trying to get the courage or clarity to work through these thoughts, or maybe avoid them, I did something I had never noticed before (though I am sure it has happened) I threw  myself into a new project.

Passing by the same plastic top of a shopping cart by the railroad tracks I do each week, the thought of actually picking it up seemed more immediate and pressing.  The images and projects I had imagined for it seemed close, coupled with the crushed red heart shaped tin I picked up earlier in the day from off the street in front of an abandoned Catholic church, energized by a week of installation building and fueled by a desire to hide from my own fears I got home and got right to work. 

I have been interested in religious folk art and wayside shrines for years.  From Gothic statutes and their unfinished look and edges, to lead singer Perry Ferrell’s cover art for Ritual de la Habitual for Jane’s Addiction, part of my own interest in assemblage stems from this art form and tradition. 

I have collected candles and prayer cards, rosary beads and symbols from the Catholic faith and I am not even sure why.  My own Protestant impulses and beliefs are not drawn to honor God through these means but I think I always feel an affinity for the ritual, the idea of sacred space or sacred ways.  I think we as humans are drawn to rituals and sacred spaces, even if we are not believers.  We attribute more value to certain activities or places or objects than we do others.  And while these may be simple folk ways, not part of a centralized belief system they do point to a larger human experience.

Yet we are also reluctant to name this or even recognize this in ourselves or society.  We speak of God with no content, no specifics.  Our discourse is polite to the point of having nothing to really say.  It is embarrassing to speak of specific beliefs, just belief in general. 

“TO AN UNKNOWN GOD” was an inscription the apostle Paul found on an altar in Athens.  He spoke to the people present, to declare to them the God they worshipped in ignorance. 

I wanted to illustrate our unwillingness to name this god of no content and make him specific.  I also wanted to point out the mystery is less mystery as it is willful ignorance.  A lot of great “spiritual” feelings get “ruined” by the specifics of faith.  We want to believe that Love is really all you need, as John Lennon sang, but we only seem disturbed by the lack of others to express this love.  We chose to not know, we chose to hide and not answer some questions or know some answers, symbolized by the heart, crushed in the streets of the city, guarded by barbed wire, unwilling and unable to answer or ask.  The saints have been removed from the candles, all that is left is an empty space surrounded by religious trappings.  And the whole structure is not what it appears, it is not special, it is not sacred, it is part of a shopping cart from Kroger and discarded and fashioned anew into a space, put on wheels to make it mobile, not stationary and thus not set in a special or sacred space.

It did not work to hide myself from my own nakedness or to try to save myself by my works.  My art is not sacred and it has no power to save me or move others to validate my efforts.  It’s just art.  We can hide in our little ritual spaces or we can run to them for help but as Paul told the curious onlookers,

 “The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things”

 Thought I should write a quick update, been busy with work that isn’t really something I can post here yet.  Working on some pieces that are part of an installation that is a reflection on the book of Psalms. 

Looking forwrad to a few things about this including, working as a group with fellow art folks from my church, seeing the installation come together, seeing how different ideas take shape, including my own.

On that note, it was exciting today to push through some obstacles and normal ways I work.  I usually work in a very literal vein, what I can only think of as “being a purist.”  So if I need arrows, as I do for my project for the upcoming installation, my mind goes to how to produce arrows of a historic sort, complete with hand made fletchings from real feathers and arrow heads knapped from flint…not capable of actual flight but approximating a look I feel is aunthentic.

But faced with both time and money constraints and yet wanting to be productive today and not push the project off til later (no time for that really), I looked through materials I did have and came up with a totally different look made from National Geographic pictures of Terns (a sea bird of sorts) and Canada Geese for flecthings and playing cards cut into arrow heads.

I know, sounds crazy, but I like the look and it works for me on several layers, but what is really exciting for me was getting away from a literal representation and using materials creatively.

This post serves as a marker to myself mostly to remember this development and continue to explore that.  But if you have been reading then thought you might care to know what has been going on.

The above image was originally going to be for my review of my time at Calvin Institute (in Grand Rapids MI, near Holland) and the symposium on worship, but I am feeling like that may not happen and I like the Dutch Chuck piece (get the Holland reference now?).  So there it is.

Below is basically the letter I wrote for my brother in law, a great kid, still in High School who really inspired me this last week by his desire to give gifts for his family, earning and spending his own money to get gifts, real gifts, for his family, and his new brothers in law.

A little about this gift…

It is a portion of a letter tray, used for holding type, I love trying to figure out how to design and create in small spaces and it allows for there to be more than one thing being said at a time…like our lives, but we are also beyond compartmentalizing ourselves.

Left bottom 

Your initials, mine too, and I was glad to share the few letters I had to make you a gift.

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.

Left top

You are one of the few people I talk with who both enjoys political discussion and also sees limits to our system the way it is.  I did a piece called “Neither Ballots NOR Bullets,” you saw it and this little piece is based upon it.  Christianity and the Bible are above politics though they have political relevance, Jesus didn’t come to setup a political system or support a political party.  The bullet I found in a parking lot and the Rockefeller campaign “pin” is from either his 1960, 64 or 68 presidential bid and it is the kind of “pin” that you would fold the back over the top of your shirt pocket to clasp it.  I had Goldwater too, but thought you’d appreciate the Rockefeller pin more; money, moderate social stances, fiscally sounds, etc.

Right bottom

Key holes to me represent mystery, we don’t know everything, nor can we…it’s not wrong to ask questions as long as you can handle not everything has an answer or more accurately we may not understand the answer. 

“The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our sons forever, that we may observe all the words of this law.”

Light bulb, because you are very bright, as in, intelligent, but the bulb also must be connected to the source to shed light to others. We are at our best when connected to the source,  and we also, despite our understanding and intelligence must also be ok being next to mystery.

Right top

Family Curse Jar

You are the first to receive or even see this piece (besides my close confidant, your sister).  I am working on a new piece that is about curses, and family curses, but it isn’t about our immediate or even distant ancestors, it is about Adam and Eve and their fall and the curse we all bear now.  It is based upon hoo doo (African American folk religion/magic)  of the mojo bags and conjure men and women)  So the jar collects symbols of the curses…cursed earth, from the graveyard, snake skin, tears/sweat from child labor and hard work, thorns and thistles from a ground no longer easy to work, a “nation bag,” used by women in Memphis to allure and dominate men, symbol of Eve’s struggle and fig leaf stamps, exiled from the garden in our nakedness…­