The husband and wife photos is made from an old glass negative, the pin through the husband’s heart.  The botanical, zoological and collected objects in jars are adaptations from Genesis 3 and Proverbs 5, the concept of the ‘nation sack  from the Memphis Hoo Doo tradition; snake rib, a man’s name written 9 times on parchment, honey comb, apple seeds, 1934 dime, sweat on a bandanna, old Gillette razor, myrrh, cinnamon sticks.

Dorothea Lange’s picture of a mother and child, looking quite distressed, as they traveled Route 66 in hopes of better fortune, is set against Hans Holbein’s woodcut from the Dance of Death series showing death coming for a small child.  The bottles of tears and razors and pins and needles to represent pain.

This was the last of the 7 pieces to get finished. 

The picture is a 1930′s Carnival worker, biting the head of a snake.  The jars are all snake parts, a skull of a viper, a rattler’s tail, ribs from a python and a rattler, some snake sheds found in the desert and small bottle of graveyard dust.

Shield

But You, O LORD, are a shield about me,
My glory, and the One who lifts my head. 

Perils, shouts of despair and hopelessness, shame, enemies, failures, temptations, fears, regrets, trials.  Not all the time and not all at once, but these are common struggles for us all.  One of the surest places in prayer I ever come to is the declaration that God is my shield, He lifts my head and He stands between me and my enemies. 

Ultimately, it is in Christ that we see this expressed, He bore our sorrows and the shame for our sins before His Father so that we might have access to pray and find acceptance with a holy God. 

Psalms 3, 84, 91

Every Tear

You have taken account of my wanderings;
Put my tears in Your bottle
Are they not in Your book? 

Every tear is kept and marked down.  Not a trial or tribulation is missed. 

I think it is easy to miss that God’s omniscience is not a divine expression of scrapbooking.  We aren’t comforted by the fact that God is all knowing or compulsive enough to keep track of everything, but that He thinks fondly enough of us to take note of our every trial and every tear.  It is great reminder that we can confidently draw near to Him, casting our burdens and anxieties on Him because He truly does care for us, on intimate level.

Psalm 56:8

Everything

Let everything that has breath praise the LORD.
Praise the LORD! 

Psalms are songs, no doubt, and most if not all, were put to music, but they are also instruction.  They call us to praise God in all aspects of our lives, sadness, anger, joy, triumph, lament, dedication.  But we aren’t all musicians that get to play in the great assembly of saints, and so Psalms ends with the instruction that everything that has breath is to praise God. Everything.

Psalm 150

I am exciting to be taking part in this group installation.  There is always a gap between what I visualize a project to look like and how it comes out, but this is even more exciting because it is such a grand scale, other artists with great visions and talents, and hearing their ideas but waiting to see it take shape and come together and how they interact.  The gallery space is being prepped and it looks awesome.  It has it’s own look and I am already amazed.

Below is an image developed for a stencil I made for one of my contributions, excited again to see how things come together and to move away from how I have done things before, open up for input while a project is in process and just have a great time laughing and working and moving pianos and hanging ropes and drawing with ash.  And that was just day one for me! 

But our God is in the heavens; He does whatever He pleases.   Ps 115:3

Dan2:28,37, Isa 34:4, Ps 19:1-3

As we read through the exile books of Nehemiah and Ezra the phrase “the God of Heaven” appeared over and over, and not just in the mouths of the Israelites, but in gentile kings and leaders. 

In Daniel we see this again as both Daniel proclaims it is the God of Heaven who is the revealer of mysteries and as Nebuchadnezzar is humbled by the Most High God and acknowledges Him as the King of Heaven.   

Not identified as a national deity or cult figure, the God of Heaven, with a domain that has no boundaries, is thus also the God of all the Earth. 

And while it is impossible for us to look past the heavens, we are assured that God will one day roll up the Heavens like a scroll and will reveal all things that are now hidden. 

I was inspired by the woodcut below, thinking at our attempts to comprehend the heavens and how humans have struggled to understand our place in the cosmos.  For the piece I chose both ancient astronomy pieces and charts from the Apollo 11 voyage.  The key hole, which represents the unknown, is off center hinting at our inability to even guess at the right place to go for answers, much less get them.

 “Of that place beyond the heavens,” wrote Plato, “none of our earthly poets has yet sung, and none shall sing worthily.”  Undaunted by Plato’s warning, artists sought to depict what might lie past the sphere of the cosmos as this well known woodcut illustrates…The sun,  moon and stars—the known celestial bodies—appear within the arch of the heavens.  Outside are unfamiliar orbs, turbulence and the machinery that moves the universe

-David Ulansey

Jer 42:10-16, Gal 3:13

It may seem incredible that the remnant in Judah would attempt to find shelter, safety and provision outside of God’s will, but our fear and unbelief that leads us to doubt the goodness and kindness of God towards us, will also blind us to the insanity of running to the waste places in our own lives that God has previously delivered us from.

The people of Judah had just recently experienced the devastation of their land, the exiling of their own leaders to Babylon and the occupation of their land by the Babylonians.  Fearing the wrath of the king, they were looking to relocate to Egypt to avoid further trouble.  Jeremiah, at their request, brings them this promise.

If you will indeed stay in this land, then I will build you up and not tear you down, and I will plant you and not uproot you; for I will relent concerning the calamity that I have inflicted on you. Do not be afraid of the king of Babylon, whom you are now fearing; do not be afraid of him, declares the LORD, for I am with you to save you and deliver you from his hand.

But if you are going to say, ‘We will not stay in this land,’ so as not to listen to the voice of the LORD your God, saying, ‘No, but we will go to the land of Egypt, where we will not see war or hear the sound of a trumpet or hunger for bread, and we will stay there’; then in that case listen to the word of the LORD, O remnant of Judah. Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, If you really set your mind to enter Egypt and go in to reside there, then the sword, which you are afraid of, will overtake you there in the land of Egypt; and the famine, about which you are anxious, will follow closely after you there in Egypt, and you will die there.

Jeremiah goes on to prophesy about the different nations around Israel that God will judge for their corrupt societies, snapshots of destruction.  The picture is clear that outside of living in God’s will, there is no safe place.  Sin offers no shelter or covering, and we cannot hide from the curse on sin.  We can only find shelter in the one who bore the curse for us, Christ, who “having become a curse for us–for it is written, ‘cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree,’” has provided us the only shelter from our own destructive habits and God’s judgment on sin.

As I read and re-read Isaiah 53 I was struck by the incredible foretelling and picture of the suffering Christ would endure. I thought of Peter looking back at the glorious salvation provided by the sufferings of the Cross, on back to the Old Testament prophets who foretold it.

“As to this salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that would come to you made careful searches and inquiries, seeking to know what person or time the Spirit of Christ within them was indicating as He predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow.”

I was amazed that by the grace of God, it is apparent to us today, though the sufferings of the Deliverer and Redeemer of Israel, the Messiah, were not understood to even the prophets who so accurately foretold of Him.

Though they had the entire sacrificial system and the theology of the sin offering for our transgressions, they would not have guessed at the plan God had to faithfully and finally buy Israel back from her sins and to open it up to us Gentiles, who have been included in that blessing of Israel. 

And I saw my many responses, my anger and sin towards God, my silence before His great plan and initiation of this salvation and my great joy at His grace that I should be shown mercy.

The piece depicts the violence done to the Servant, the scourging He bore for our benefit and the piercing for our transgressions. It is composed of layers of pages Isaiah 53, Psalm 22 and 1 Pet 1, between pages of papyrus, writing materials used by the ancients and finished with a piece of parchment made from animal skin, all signifying the Word made flesh and the sacrificial offering of Christ.

Recent international news has made me grateful for the peaceful transitions of governmental power via elections here inthe U.S. But I also have been reflecting for months on the mostly negative talk coming from Christians regarding President Obama. I didn’t vote for him and I disagree on many of his policies, but I am a Christian first and a U.S. citizen second.

This piece reflects my take on many of us in the church who look to influence our world through politics. We are not called to violence OR power. I am not opposed to Christians pursuing a life of service to community through political involvement but so called, decades old “Culture War” is largely being waged through politics and I feel like that is misguided.

I find most disturbing the Antichrist role many in the church and religious right assign to President Obama, not because that is offensive, it is and it bothers me, but worst than that is the lack of any mention of a Christ role in the story.  Jesus Christ isn’t mentioned, even the church isn’t mentioned, the only uneasy references to saviors are political players and that is what I am most concerned with.  My intention is not to engage as much in the dialogue of politics and speculate on 2012 candidates but to simply refocus my own thoughts and heart on the heart of the Gospel, the person and work of Jesus Christ, not elected, not chosen by us, but victor over death and as will be seen one day, ruler of all the earth.

The background to the ballots and bullets are bible passages that relate our spiritual battle and where our allegiance belongs. They have been cut out, as a symbol of the violence we do to the scriptures when we use them to support earthly kingdoms or ignore them to pursue power over preaching the gospel. But the lowest level has the same scripture passages still whole, shining through, because God’s word won’t fail even if we do.

Verses used
Jesus said…”No man can serve two masters” Mt 6:24
Paul told us that “we wrestle not against flesh and blood” Ep6:12
He also said we “walk in the flesh but don’t war after the flesh” 2Cor 10:3

And finally, Romans 13
Every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God. Therefore whoever resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God; and they who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves.
For rulers are not a cause of fear for good behavior, but for evil. Do you want to have no fear of authority? Do what is good and you will have praise from the same; for it is a minister of God to you for good. But if you do what is evil, be afraid; for it does not bear the sword for nothing; for it is a minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath on the one who practices evil. Therefore it is necessary to be in subjection, not only because of wrath, but also for conscience’ sake. For because of this you also pay taxes, for rulers are servants of God, devoting themselves to this very thing. Render to all what is due them: tax to whom tax is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honor to whom honor.

 Like a broken record, the Preacher in the book of Ecclesiastics repeats the phrase “under the sun” over and over as he contemplates the human condition.  His earthly perspective and questions and experiential basis for answering predates and anticipates the Greek philosophical tradition by almost 500 years.  Here is a man seeking to understand life below a heavenly perspective and seek what is the best way we should live…and the answer is in recognition that we will die. 

Rich, poor, wise, foolish, sinner and saint, we will all die.

Just as in Plato’s dialogues, where Socrates stated that philosophy is about preparing to die, learning how to live in light of our own mortality, the Preacher calls us to consider how we should live.

However in the midst of this grim perspective, in the context of God’s wisdom we see what our great blessing is during all the days of our lives.  Ecc 9:7-9 stands out to me, “Eat..with happiness, drink…with a cheerful heart.  God has already approved your works…Enjoy life with the woman you love all the days of your fleeting life…”

Morality has been the aim of the art of Memento Mori in art history (Latin for “Remember you will die”), to encourage people in light of their mortality.  And as I reflected on the theme in Ecclesiastics I was stirred to also remember that we are not able to save ourselves through our own morality, that God remembered us, and sent Jesus to live the life of righteousness we couldn’t, and conquer death after conquering sin.

And so the piece departs from the traditional imagery of mortality, fading flowers and time flying and ends with contemplating Christ’s own death, His burial and His triumph over death.