“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

Started leaving these around town today, in honor of the Day of the Dead coming up in a few days.  They are Corona and Dos Equis bottle caps made into little pins with marigolds and skulls or tombstones.  The text on skulls are obituaries.  The Day of the Dead holiday is more a celebratory and commemorative holiday, honoring and remembering the dead but it is still a kind of memento mori and I like the colors. Not sure if I will do more each year but it was fun to try something new.

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

I intended to finish up my exploration of the imagery of art of dying by passing out these pins I had made of a pressed flower and obituary page on these hand cut and stamped coffin shapped business cards.  The pins took far longer than expected, so here they are, ready to be launched into coffee shops and other places I frequent hopefully to be found by unsuspecting folks going about their day.

It’s a lot to ask of any creative endeavor to “make a people think” so I will send these off with a prayer to just help folks pause and possibly just be blessed by a gift. 

I have written as much as I think I will for now about the art of the dying but this site has several expressions of the imagery of fading flowers, wilting grass and flying time.  There are a couple of  bigger pieces and while I continue to be fascinated by the works of Holbien the younger and his Dance of the Dead wood cuts and other such works of art, and while I have some more ideas along the same path I am pretty excited about exploring what’s before me, “Family Curse” and expect to spend a good amount of time working on that theme, as well as some other projects in the coming months. 

I hope to revisit the art of dying themes next fall for Day of the Dead, but for now this is where I rest from this series.

“All flesh is grass, and all its loveliness is like the flower of the field…The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever.”

More imagery exploring the art of dying, these pressed flowers and obituaries were actually the inspiration for the giving tins. 

Visually, I have found the obituaries a striking and linear background to the organic and fragile pressed wild flowers. 

 The theme and text are taken from Isaiah

So I was really excited about the Day of the Dead exhibit at 21C, I just didn’t realize what I expected to see was last year’s exhibit!  I don’t remember how I even found the webpage, but I never realized the exhibit was located in the past exhibits section of the site.  So I did not actually see the past event.

At first I was disappointed about the outdoor installation for the current exhibit, Going Home, but I got over it quickly as this is an amazing work, featuring over 10,000 hand cut butterflies designed with Day of the Dead colors and images.  The monarch butterflies these paper ones portray migrate between the US and Mexico and so it was a fitting image for remembering the 14 Mexican immigrants, the “Yuma 14,” who died crossing the Arizona desert. 

The full description and story of Going Home is here. 

I had to go back today to get pictures that would at least attempt to do this installation some justice.  Hope you get a chance to go downto 7th and Main to catch a glance.

“All flesh is grass, and all its loveliness is like the flower of the field…The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever.”

For this image in my exploration of  the art of dying, I wanted to focus on the flowers that fade.  Not only is it an image used in memento mori art but even traditional painted still lifes (formerly called vanitas) relate the wilting flower to the frailty of our passing glory. 

I discovered a pressed rose in an old Bible I picked up at a Goodwill store.  What could be a more striking example of the vanity of our lives? 

A forgotten rose from an unknown funeral in an unmarked Bible. 

And so the flower fades.  Our lives pass.

 The theme and text are taken from Isaiah. The tins consist of flowers picked from fields, old obituaries and headstones inside the tins, copied from shapes in local cemeteries.

A voice says, “Call out.”
Then he answered, “What shall I call out?”

“All flesh is grass, and all its loveliness is like the flower of the field. 

The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the LORD blows upon it; Surely the people are grass.

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever.”

Continuing my interest in the art of dying, these giving tins were developed as another contemplation of our mortality, the shortness and frailty of our lives.

The theme and text are taken from Isaiah. The tins consist of obituaries and grass from a cemetery, viewed through a headstone shaped hole. 

Again, my interest is not a teenage morbid fixation on death (well I hope not at least) but rather exploring new expressions of memento mori.

I am totally excited about the new Dias de los Muertos exhibit being held at 21c Nov 1st to Nov 9th, 2009. 

Definitely an inspiration behind my own exploration of the Art of Dying. 

Hope you can make it out.