Fly Forward

I've decided that college life is just too good to not write about and share the journey with you as I go....who knows???  Maybe you're even contemplating the crazy idea of returning to the academic world yourself!  This may or may not help you see a sensible way through!  I am excited to be in a world of art.  It is a place of tension for me, being a Christian and an artist.  Those two worlds (the art world and the Christian world) are a contentious mix.  If you are a Christian, you are usually expected to do nice, clean art with pictures of Jesus and a scripture verse squeezed in the composition somehow or it is not considered sacred art.  It also doesn't really matter if it is compositionally sound or not, so long as it is clearly delineated as a sacred piece of art.  On the other hand, in the mainstream artworld, the loss of aesthetics is a dark cloud looming predominantly over emerging work.  Much of the art being produced is portraying a dark and gloomy world in which there is no hope.  Content chosen often has a grotesque or even evil expression.  While there are pockets in both worlds that do not lend themselves to these descriptions, the overarching movements tend toward these attitudes and ideas.  They are in stark contrast to each other and the two groups don't seem to get along or even have a desire to build bridges.  Christians think artists are dark and terrifying and damned to hell and artists think that Christians are fluffy and superficial, archaic and naive. There are truth in both of these camps, but neither has the whole truth.  I am both delighted and terrified to be standing with one foot in each camp, sympathetic to both plights.  My education is helping me to understand the art world, a world I have not been a part of.  I am learning to listen; to listen to both sides and do what I can to build bridges.  It's a tension that we all, as artists, must encounter if we are to be bridge builders and culture changers.  What we say and make must have relevance beyond our little individual bubbles.  That means that we must learn how to pay attention.

These thoughts are some that went through my head as I approached my latest sculpture project.  We were asked to carve a wooden mask with ancient indentifiers, such as African or Venetian or Mayan and apply a current cultural icon to it.  We were to empower the masks with age.  I decided to do Oscar the Grouch goes Venetian.  As I began to carve and think about where this was heading, I had to empathize with poor Oscar, who would not be caught dead in a frilly, gaudy, shiny Venetian collar.  Then I thought about my own identity....who would I not be caught dead with in my associations????  Sounds like a question you'd pose to an 8th grader and they would know the answer immediately.  But, really......we just learn that behavior when we're 14; it continues on throughout our lives.  Even in small subcultures, we align ourselves with those we want to align and ally with and we decide who we will not be identified with.  This is an adult phenomenon that has its beginnings in early childhood.  Why is this???  The answers are as numerous as the social scientists who attempt to satiate the question.  I wonder what it would look like to cross-pollinate the long held accepted norms.  What would it take for those sophisticated, beautiful Venetians to invite smelly, grouchy Oscar to a meal of exquisitely chosen trash particles??  Sounds absurd, doesn't it?  Oscar in a highly embellished, shiny costume??  Perhaps Jesus was thought to be absurd, since that's exactly what He was known to do.  All the religious people of the day were certain not to be seen with "sinners" and "tax collectors", since such company would be beneath them.  Yet, Jesus was unconventional in His relationships and unattached to any sort of hierarchal expectation or social order defining Him.  He built bridges where there were expansive chasms.  We hold the same challenges today that He held when He walked here.  As Christians, we have alienated and isolated in ways that have caused great damage.  We've all done it.  If we're going to mend some of the damage, we've got a lot of challenges to push through.  The world hates Christians, but it's not because we've been a beautiful aromatic sword that offends with truth and goodness.  It's because we've been eager to wield a violent sword of vengence and self-righteousness.