Christian Artists' Bookshelf

I forgot to mention the two books I am currently reading:

Refractions: A Journey of Faith, Art, and Culture by Makoto Fujimura and

Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art by Madeleine L'Engle

I haven't finished reading them, so I'll refrain from comment, but do any of you have any imput on these books?

A Christian Artist's Bookshelf

Being and artist in a Christian community is often as difficult as being a Christian in an arts community. This seems odd in light of Western history insofar as the Church has been largely responsible for commissioning some of the greatest pieces of art that has ever been created. Now, it is widely accepted that the Christian artistic community is largely irrelevant. There are so many changes on the horizon, however. Many Christian arts organizations are popping up, such as CIVA (Christians in the Visual Arts) and the Foundation for Sacred Art. Not to mention, Image Journal and the International Arts Movement. Sadly, only a few Christian colleges are really taking their visual art departments seriously. I think that this is changing for the better, though! A lot of culture-making Christians have seen the danger of eschewing the arts and have done a lot of culture work to change things. Beauty is not irrelevant for Christians, as much as our Manichean cultural poison would have us believe.

What books, essays or articles can we turn to to help shape the minds and practice of Christians in the visual arts today? A few of my favorites are:

Art And the Bible: Two Essays (Ivp Classics) by Francis A. Schaeffer and Michael Card

State of the Arts: From Bezalel to Maplethorpe, by Dr. Gene Veith

Rainbows for the Fallen World: Aesthetic Life and Artistic Task, by Calvin G. Seerveld

Body and Gift: Reflections on Creation / Pope John Paul II's Theology of the Body in Simple Language, Vol. 1, by Sam Torode and Christopher West

Purity of Heart: Reflections on Love and Lust / Pope John Paul II's Theology of the Body in Simple Language, Vol. 2 by Sam Torode and Christopher West

From the blog, Aesthetic Elevator: "The Nude Figure and Christianity"

"Religion and the Arts in America" by CAMILLE PAGLIA in Arion: A Journal of Humanities

What articles, books, essays, blog posts would you recommend?

The Critic

My studio is now in the foyer of my 1930s cottage. It isn't exactly the place to make big sculptures. So, I've been painting. I don't see myself as someone who is very skilled at mixing color and my paintings tend to be very monochromatic and more like drawings with paint than anything. Let me introduce you to my Critic. If you are an artist, writer, musician, runner, student, or any other type of person you probably have an inner Critic who is always cutting you down and trying to talk you out of living out your calling. In Christianity we call this voice the Devil, Satan, whatever. In the arts, he is the Critic. My Critic is cruel and relentless, but he is never creative. When I started this particular painting, the conversation went a little like this:

Critic: This painting sucks.
Sarah: I've only been working on it for three minutes.
Critic: Well, it probably will suck, then.
Sarah: I don't care, I'm having fun.
Critic: Don't you have better things to do than make a sucky painting?
Sarah: Shut up and let me paint.
Silence
Critic: Your painting sucks.
Sarah: Would you shut up. I'm having fun and it doesn't matter.
Critic: Sucks.
Sarah: Groan.

And so it goes and so I paint. The Critic doesn't leave me alone there. When I sit down to write my thesis, he says the same thing. "You'll never finish this thesis. It's terrible anyway." Or in sculpture, "Your best work is behind you, you might as well give up now." Or in my day-to-day "You are a lazy, good-for-nothing, Sarah." I try to show him my resume, which has many fine points and awards. He isn't impressed. "Well, so-and-so has a PhD and you don't." I can't win with him. So, I'm trying to silence him. Kill him. Off with his head!

Channeling Whistler

I just love this painting, The Lady in White by JM Whistler. Perhaps it is the sculptor in me who loves the white-on-white. She's a sculpture against a white backdrop, but her flesh is real. Sculpture come to life; it is all of our fantasies. She isn't alive because she is realistic, however. Hyper-realism doesn't make a painting or sculpture come alive! It is rather the presence of the work. Do you know how you can tell if another person is in the room, even if you cannot see him? This painting is that way. She's in the room with you, alive.

MA Thesis

This past year has been more writing than sculpting. That's because I've been working to finish up my degree before the baby arrives. Just to clarify, I'm working on an M.A. in Humanities with an emphasis in Medieval and Renaissance Studies. My thesis is on Piero della Francesca's Polyptych of the Misericordia.

I am sure that you are all wondering why a sculptor would be getting a degree in the Humanities and writing a paper about a panel painting. For one, I do not see the history of art and the making of art as two separate disciplines. It is very important for my work that I know quite a lot about the history of what it is that I'm doing, and not just what is being made now or even recently. Why have humans made art historically? We now see art as an expression of the self, as being therapeutic, as something we make because we want to and then we struggle to market it. As far as human history is concerned these ideas about art are very new. In the Renaissance, no one would think to make art just because. There was an intended purpose, a patron and a payroll. Most artists worked in groups as a part of a workshop under a master. The myth of the reclusive, anti-social artist who works obsessively alone on things that express the inner workings of his soul may describe a few contemporary artists, but it is not the norm. In fact, many of us contemporary artists who work better in groups, are generally clean and cheerful and who would like to earn a decent wage feel like we phonies because we do not live up to some invented stereotype based off a few eccentrics.

So at the end of all of this, I'll have a Master's degree, not in studio art, but the art history, culture, philosophy, theology and literature of a time when the West commonly sees as the pinnacle of art. Until then, my nose is pressesd firmly to the grindstone as I try to get this done. It feels like a monumental task, but the words of my uncle echo in my mind, "One shovel full at a time." Or, for me, "One sentence at a time."

Kudos

A nice little mention by First Things!

Nine Tons of Marble

My uncle tells this beautiful parable about achieving a monumental task. Many years ago, he and his young son had to lay a sewer line in the back yard. They had to dig a forty-foot trench by hand, too poor to afford any machinery. His small son asked, "Dad, how will we ever dig such a long trench?" And he replied, "One shovel full at a time." Some time later, the father and son team were finished. When the men came to deliver the pipe, they asked, "Where is all of your equipment?" My uncle told him that they didn't use any. "But how did you possibly dig all of this?" And my young cousin piped in "One shovel full at a time."

While I was working on the Virgin Mary sculpture, I had literally imported nine tons of marble from the Cararra Mountains in Italy. How were we ever going to get an image of the Virgin out of that enormous block of mountain? It seemed like forever that we worked on this sculpture and the only way that it was going to get done was one bit at a time. In fact, this is the only way that art is ever finished, one brush stroke at a time, one note at a time, one blow to the chisel at a time.

And so this blog offers a glimpse into the shovels full of creativity that I dig up along my journey. Some days I don't work and lately those days seem more and more, but the ache to create grows more and more intense. I hope that I will have more to report in the coming days.