Thursday, September 30, 2010

I love it when I get books in the mail.  Of course, these are all books ordered not so much for pleasure as for class projects for Seminar and Gallery Management, not to mention the simple reality of building a personal academic art library.

The Reading I have Before Me:
Divine Representations: Postmodernism and Spirituality by Ann W. Astell
Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling by Andy Crouch
 On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art by James Elkins
The Inward Eye: Transcendence in Contemporary Art edited by Lynn Herbert.
Thought Through My Eyes: Writing on Art, 1977 - 2005 by Klaus Ottmann
The Artist's Reality Philosophies of Art by Mark Rothko

Yup, looks like I have my work cut out for me.  Doesn't help that I'm only a month into the semester and that my Gallery Management binder already switched to a two incher for all the handouts. 

Saturday, September 25, 2010

Sacred Space, Holy Place: Groping Toward a Thesis

What makes a space we enter a sanctuary? What makes it sacred, holy?  What exactly is it about certain spaces that resonates with the human spirit so it just knows, truly knows that the place is hallowed?

For the Roman Catholic, entering a Cathedral is began with a specific decorum, continued with ritual movements meant to humble oneself before the central element in the representation of architectural and sculptural framework.  Every wall, decoration, pew.....it all means something in telling the greater story of faith and God.  And they do so with a specific aesthetic which varies from the aesthetic of the Protestant or the Orthodox Christian denominations, in building layout and in the choice of decoration. And what of commercialized religion, the architecture of the mega-church which is solely an object of function for the masses?  What does their building say about their faith?  Islamic architecture finds elaborate adornment within the confines of it's own law, and has created a visual calligraphic language of pure decoration that captures the imagination with its unique flavor. And for as much of the world which celebrates life's mysteries with the communion of a large body, so too do people choose their sanctuary as a location meant only for one.  For the Neopagan, sanctuary is a wild thing which belongs to the natural forces and is marked off by the imaginary boundaries of an imaginary circle.  Buddhist and Hindus take their everyday practice to the everyday sanctuary within the home, often in a room set aside with an alter, upon which sits statuary or a scroll of meditation.

What is worship, exactly?  Most associated with songs of praise and shouts of joy, worship can exist in all that we do as humans toward our God, as long as our lips are at the moment of worship filled with divine words and our hearts with divine love and our minds with divine thoughts, and we are making ourselves less so that God may grow within us..  We worship collectively under the umbrella of some sort of religious institute or personally in our own home.  The quest for God draws people together.  And so does art.

Artists are spiritual beings who are more keenly aware of this fact than perhaps the rest of this.  As the nature of religion has changed in the last two hundred years, so too has the role of the artist, who, in a postmodern context has succumbed to the role of a secular prophet in the West, no longer just a craftsman.

Daniell Siedell, whose writing God in the Gallery: A Christian Approach to Modern Art has been an invaluable resource in my study of what it means to be bring the sacred in to the gallery setting perhaps put it perfectly when he explained the changed role of art in the context of religion in a postmodern world of plurality and doubt:  According to him, the premodern

understanding of transcendence privileged intellection, self-reflection, and the dislocation of mind from body.....as premodern discourses privileges religious institutions as the framework within which or the foundation upon which transcendence was understood in and through social, cultural, and political practice, modernity increasingly privileged the experience of the arts, particularly the visual arts, as the purest expression of transcendence for the modern world.

But this aesthetic limited itself to the visual arts until now when current movements are slowly breaking the barrier and drawing

closer to religion, as a complex set of practices that produce experience, that constitute belief, rather than merely living shape to preexistent experience and belief. (81)

But is this return to the Spiritual in art an honest groping of mankind or simply the appropriation of the religious symbols to tell a very different story?  Can we still come face to face with the same sense of wonder and awe and humility before a painting displayed in an art museum as we do before a sculptural crucifix?  And should we even bother?  

I can’t remember who called the Christian church the living church, the art galleries the church for the (spiritually) dead, but I believe the statement falls in line with the idea that in a world that was supposed to have gone completely secular by now, the Art Gallery replaces the church as the voice of the human spiritual search. Luckily for us, our society is not truly secular, but it in the middle of an identity crisis somewhere between being people of faith and people of set completely apart from an institution of thought whatsoever.  We have lost sight of the Truth in the wake of a thousand screaming voices that all need to be heard, and NOW.  For those individuals who have completely stepped away from organized religion, the importance of the Art Gallery raises in importance as the messengers of Spirit to an audience who is groping for some truth at the altar of the unnamed God.

I find it amazing and intriguing there are Churches out there that are also Art Galleries that play with the concept of worship space as art space, such as Gallery SALT Art Space in New York City which does not shy away being an environment where both art and worship do Happen.  Then there is the interdenominational Rothko Chapel in Houston Texas, which is more than just a sanctuary for his artwork, you are invited to meditate there, pray there and even get married there if you don't want any pictures.  I've read comparisons of the Musee de l'Orangerie, which hangs Monet's famous Water Lilies, with that of a scared space; for the arts anyway. has been described as a Chapel, in mood and feel to his work.   

Other artists have explored the concept of Sacred Space in both  meditative and mundane ways.  Native American artist Whitehawk has an installation called This Sacred Space which explores the definition of sacred space from her unique cultural vantage point, a project meant for healing that appeared in the Tampa Museum of Art and the the Bareiss Gallery in New Mexico.  Robert Gober of the Mathew Marks Gallery in New York take a much more avant-garde approach to using a religious language of symbols in his work which marries them with a political and personal message.  One large scale installation, which has just recently been purchased by MOMA, integrates the Catholic mass imagery specifically, with a headless crucifix at the center.

Then there's the Jewish Exhibit I mentioned last week.

Each of these displays has a different purpose, in the sens of high art or in the more obvious intention toward worship.  In both cases, though, the concept was birthed by an Artist, with an intention toward Truth or his own truth, and the conversations begun by these people is valid regardless of the voice or intent.  As Gober’s work acknowledges, sacred can be found in the grossly mundane, even slightly profane if only we look beneath the surface.

Do not confuse me, though.  I do not mean that we should Worship Art. But Art has this power to point to echoes of God that words often fail at, and all art, made by a Christian or not, is equally valid in that search for our Creator for that end.  Even in our inherent brokenness as people can Grace pour through, as even in the brokenness of postmodern art can grace also be painted and whispered of.  Gallery or High Art, though, is a modern version of the Alter to the Unnamed God found in Acts......the worship is there, but Truth has not yet been found. 

I find myself increasingly attracted to the liturgical installations of Nancy Chinn, which are of such a quality that to have them hang in the museum setting would be an interesting experiment, considering the temporal and impermanent nature of her work which plays a direct role in the role of Worship. 

I have also looked at a series of photographers who have for subject matter the worship spaces of their specific cultures.  But the sand Mandala tradition also interests me in its sense of impermanence.

To get back to my opening.  What makes a space a sacred space?  Is it because us humans say it is so, or because it is marked by divine decoration setting it apart?  Or is it the people you see when you are in the space?  I want to know what you think.  How does one approach a not-a-show toward such an angle?

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Having one of those tired morning.....

Bear with me here as I try out a new thing: blogging from my cell phone during my morning commute. I often find that the poetry of word grasps at me when I'm miles away from my computer. But if I can capture them from my present location on the bus, I might have the chance to make my day a tad more productive.

I feel behind with my classwork right now. And short of waking out of this funk and getting the literary juices flowing, I'll probably be behind for a while. Still, I finished one short paper and my Junior level research proposal before hitting the sack last night. I spent a majority of my weekend just rereading and researching for another short paper, which at this point is outlined, but not written and due to the nature of the assignment, I can't BS my way through the short pages.

But that's not my real dilemma.

I have another proposal due next week regarding our chosen topic for a fictional gallery show we will be organizing for my Gallery Management class. We need to prepare the show's thesis, have examples at hand of similar shows, and be ready with a list of at least three artists on our topic. My problem? I can't decide on a bloody topic!

My instructor knows already that my interest in the Visual Arts is in the field of Theological Aesthetics, which I am already taking advantage of in writing my Seminar Research paper on the Spiritual nature of the work of living abstract artist Makoto Fujimura. My original hope in all my upper level classes was to maintain this theme of spirituality and the arts across the board, so that I may fully digest my sources and let myself slowly become an expert on the one topic. BUT spirituality is a difficult thing to define, even in images, and it is the nature of the thing that spirituality can be explored in so many different ways under so many different genres and angles.

One direction that I've brainstormed was to explore the healing nature of art regarding soldiers caught up in the most recent foreign conflicts. It's been a successful concept already at the hands of the makers Sgt. Ron Kelsey's Reflections of Generosity show currently on display at military bases in Europe. Even though it really has the feel of a show by soldiers for soldiers, its message is truly one of finding healing and resotarion through community and the arts.. A big issue with covering Soldier's issues, though, is the ease at which the topic can become political, of which the Reflections of Generosity show avoid doing rather successfully.  Some of the Soldiers affiliated with the equally thoughtful and provocative Combat Paper Project use hard directly for healing by making paper directly from their war torn combat uniforms and then making art from it.  While their purpose very much is healing, one of their showcase works when they displayed in England, by Jon Orlando takes a very clear political side against the war in Iraq.  His work, still is worth a look at the inner struggle of a nasty situation.  On the other side of the coin, you have very obvious kitschy pro military propagandist art, which I am equally trying to avoid.  I had a discussion with an Airman friend about the possible existence of such a show.  He made it clear that he would be insulted, as a servicemen, at an obvious portrayal of what he referred to as 'broken U.S. property,' but should the show be tasteful, it might be worth a look, given it was far from a majority of the civilian public where Soldiers could grieve their own experiences of war in privacy and peace upon viewing.  I realize too, that while it is an issue I am passionate about; after all, my fiance is in Iraq; I am not actually a soldier and have no idea what life really is like over there.  I just hear about it after, from friends and family.  I am just the quiet troop here at home holding down the home front in his absence. A Penelope, not an Odysseus.


My other idea was to much more blatantly deal with the topic of religion, but this too can be difficult without wondering into the realm of kitschy and sentimental. Yet I fully feel as if there is a giant hole in the art world....a world where it is acceptable to seek the higher forces under the postmodern context, but it is apparently controversial to speak from the wholeness of the God's peace. And since this is a project for a project at a public University, I have an even finer line of respect for the postmodern view to walk....

I was thinking of following the idea of Sacred Space....Worship Space. Which easily speaks to the idea of seeking divinity without obviously speaking to religion or a specific religion.  Photographer Kenro Izu has a breathtaking series of work just of sacred spaces as defined by Southeast Asia.  Thailand 36, a Bodhisattva head caught in the roots of a tree somehow came across especially haunting.  And in April in New York City, the show Modern Art, Sacred Space: Motherwell, Ferber and Gottlieb showcased in the Jewish Museum  the artwork from a nearby synagogue being renovated.  The pictures of the Gallery room looked like a promising example of a direction I could take. Some of my readings also took me to the temporary works of
one little lady Nancy Chinn, who adorns sanctuary spaces with temporary and works meant to celebrate the season.  The photographs of her work really are breathtaking.

I casually brought up my two ideas to a colleague who is more interested in a show about Sacred Space that the former option.  Not to mention, while both topics have the controversy, a spiritual exploration of What it means to have sacred space is more assessable.  Still, if anyone has any thoughts, I am open to suggestions.

Saturday, September 18, 2010

Writing of Portaits in a Pub Portrait Gallery

Dressel's is by far my most favorite pub in Saint Louis. And that's a close call, considering my love of Tigin's.

Here I am, trying to focus on a paper: a comparative analysis of John Singlton Copley's two portraits of Eunice and Thaddius Burr which hang in the Portrait Gallery of the Saint Louis Art Museum with that of the Freake portraits painted nearly a century earlier. And I'm sitting in a Welsh pub in the Central West End, filled, to the interior brim, with portraits; drawing and prints of faces artistically rendered in graphite and charcoal and ink on the white page.  Around the central U-shaped bar, the upper shelf if lined with its own set of sculpture busts of famous thinker.  This is a thinking man's pub, for the thinking man (or woman) who appreciates such artistic renderin, Strongbow apple cider, and traditional welsh fare. My favorite: the Goat Cheese Menagerie, served with shallots, garlic, peppers, and green, meant to be spread on toast.....but there is Shepard's Pie and a daily stew special here daily too.  The food is rich and succulent and it is as capable to get drunk off of it as it is the amazing beer.

I feel enlightened here. I feel smart here. And I feel tapped into my favorite subject matter as an artist as well: the Portrait.

***btw, Should you ever partake of the amazing Goat cheese appetizer, make sure you place yourself very firmly away from human contact for the next 12 hours, as a meal made of goat cheese, garlic and shallots is sure to raise quite a stink.

Integrity, Faith, Scholarship, Chairs and the Art of Lecture Crashing

It's been an intellectually exciting couple of days.  Frustrating in its own ways, between an adventure stranded in Forest Park on an evening buses inside the park were canceled for another event and getting buried under Senior Class Project Homework.

For those of you who don't know me, I'm on what I hope to be my very last school year as an undergraduate student, the degree finally being a BA in Art History. It's been a long road from freshman Graphic Design and Drawing Studio student at even another institute.  I'm finally making the much needed leap from someone who struggled with grandiose abstract ideas to actually finding a concrete version of my message and putting it to the pen of scholasticism.  Can I make the leap? *gulp*

My thesis idea rolls concepts of Spirituality and Religion, especially as pertaining to my Christian faith, with my passion for the Arts and Art History.  A year ago, I had little awareness of other contemporary work under this combined umbrella, save for the rich tradition of Roman Catholic Art during the Renaissance.  Who nowadays actually explores their Christian Faith in the context of art without getting tacky and kitsch or limiting themselves solely to a single sub-culture to the exclusion of those who could actually learn from them?  But at the same time and on the other end of the spectrum, how do we actually gain the courage enough to begin to tell the story of faith in a depressed anti-religious (yet still spiritual) art world?

It's a thin line.

Theological Aesthetics seems a recently begun conversation, but luckily there are resources in the area, and books, after several searched on Amazon.com, I found out, do exist in the field and authors have indeed attempted to engage our postmodern culture with the hope it has so recently been lacking.  And some have even maintained a quiet integrity while doing so.  For a world which has been in the past not afraid of its Christian past, suddenly the fact that I have chosen this as my field of study in my last year at a public University has made me So, how does one push forward in the topic in an acceptable way at this kind of environment.  Do I paint a solely Christian message then get in trouble later on for "closed mindedness" as I am sure I may someday be accused, or do I engage the whole of the human desire for spirit through the voice of all religions and hope someone catches an under laying glimpse of my own Christian sense of Hope?  How do I embark and keep my integrity as a scholar-in-training in a postmodern American landscape that doesn't want to be told how to act and whom to worship, God-forbid?

Just some thoughts. Really.
I used to get frustrated for a specific local art gallery for not being upfront with its own Christian link, and hesitancy to deal with the Gospel directly in art, and yet, there they were, finding subtle ways to speak of the message of seeking God.  Working in the secular gallery setting, then, when we know the audience wants nothing of God.  I can think of a handful of artists who have successfully broken into the secular world and maintained their integrity as both Christians and Modern Artists, a fact which I am in total awe of.....they answered these problems for themselves.

Yesterday.
Wow.

After a very full morning, I partook in my weekly Friday evening trip to the Saint Louis Art Museum......well, what I hope to be a regular weekly Friday evening trip to the museum.

My boss, the Director of Gallery 210 gave quite the delightful talk in the history of modern manufacturing design in relation to the Museum's collection of chair, which sit not far from the mummies in the basement level.  Honestly, so many times I have walked past those chairs, partaking in the laughter of my friends who little understood their significance in the time line of art, wondering why the heck would a CHAIR be considered art?  Well, they are significant after all, in the realm of how to approach new technologies and materials in present societies, how to break the traditions of the time.  And something as simply and quintessential as a chair, and elaborate elevated board in which to place your bottom, has provided an evolution from and back from and toward elaborate decoration or simply utility, or as we see the result thereof in the Target franchise, how to elevate life by making utility and usefulness assessable to amazing design.  More amazing, the technology used in the Museum's most recent acquisitions is also used in making prosthetic limbs for veterans of the most recent wars who have sacrificed their own body for the military cause.  It's an amazing connection of aerospace and digital engineering with art, and well worth the second glance.

Granted, the experience also led to some decent insights about the nature of any future in Grad school.  Getting enough sleep translates into not working hard enough, or so the saying goes?  What's a girl with sensitive sleep patterns to do in light of that insight?

Well, the whole point of my excursion, besides listening to Terry speak about that class of his I was curious about but never took, was to work on a paper involving two of the John Singelton Copley's hanging in the Portrait Gallery.  Fat Chance of that after my curiosity took over.  I wound up following what I thought was just another Gallery talk on account of not actually knowing that much about the art of the Enlightenment and Romanticism periods of Art History, but it was delightfully not what met the ear at first, when the lecturer boldly announced and discussed his own Christian faith. He raised some very important questions, and in his play out of modern history managed to put the utter despair postmodernism into its historical perspective as the result of hundreds of years of doubt in the the European, and also American, heart and mind.  I'm sure I will be thinking of, dwelling on and considering his points for months, if not years to come!  I am in luck to have found out later on, that I do indeed have a contact with this fascinating speaker via facebook and some good friends who I miss dearly but have touched me much.

 I'm still in the middle of a contact high off of life.  I am more motivated toward scholarship and study in my chosen topic in hope of making at least some kind of impact, and I understand the balance of walking the thin line between secular and sacred even moreso now than before Friday night. 

Optimistically, for once, I look forward with hope.

What I'm reading.....

Just a list of my working Bibliography for various Senior Projects dealing with the topic of Spirituality and Art today.  Not a comprehensive list by any means.


God in the Gallery: A Christian Embrace of Modern Art by Daniel A. Siedell
Refractions: A Journey of Faith, Art, and Culture by Makoto Fujimura
Art for God's Sake: A Call to Recover the Arts by Phillip Graham Ryken
For the Beauty of the Church: Creating a Vision for the Arts edited by David Taylor
Theological Aesthetics, A Reader edited by Gesa Elsbeth Thiessan
It Was Good: Making Art to the Glory of God edited by Ned Bustard
The Philosophy of Art: Readings Ancient and Modern edited by Alex Neill Aaron Ridley

Friday, September 10, 2010

September 11

In honor of tomorrow's Yellow Ribbon event with William's unit and in memory of September 11, I give you me and my handsome man in his uniform.  It's kind of funny.  When I stand next to him  donned in digital pattern and combat boots, I can't but be humbled for the extreme sacrifice he is making for us, for our nation, all so that I don't have to do the same, all so that I have the freedom to go to school and learn to be an art historian.  It's when I stand next to this man, that I am proud of my American Heritage, of the battle my forefathers fought, and most of all, pride for this loved one of mine and all of my loved ones who have, who are, and who will be serving for the United States military.  I am proud of my country, and no act of terrorism, foreign or domestic, will keep me from that pride.  In memory of all the lives lost, you did not lose them in vain.  We will always remember YOUR SACRIFICE. We will always remember this day when our world was forever changed.

Everyday Immram

When I originally started this blog, as you can tell in the reading, I was setting out to make it kind of a wedding website, to prepare for my June 24th wedding to one very special guy.  The wedding is still happening, of course, but I think I'll just use an already prepared wedding website template due to my severe lack of html code knowledge.....making this little piece of blog-space my personal work of contemplation.  I'm basing the overall idea of it off of my old livejournal, which still exists for those who dare find it and for my own reasons of keeping around a good five years of my life in text. Don't worry, it's mostly all locked up.  I've more than a few thoughts on the whole ordeal anyway, meditations if you were, on this transition that I'll be embarking on from single college gal to married woman and military wife; not to mention contemplations into a certain someone's homecoming from a deployment overseas.  So, where does one put their thoughts when they  are just bubbling to come out?  Well, as I've blogged since the year 2000, off and on for a decade now, the blog format only makes sense, as print can often declare what images cannot (and vice versa).

So what exactly is an Immram anyway?

Anyone who comes to know me will eventually pick up on my love of Celtic Legend and Myth, and my easy identification and admiration of the Christian Church as it was first brought to and adapted culturally by the Celts of the now British and Irish Isles.  These people's learned to tell the powerful Christ-Tale in their own words, in their own language for quite some time, defining Heaven as the Tir na nOg (their land of youth), and more famously, Saint Patrick's identification and metaphorical use of explaining the Holy Trinity through a clover.It would be the Christians who brought writing to these people, through their love of the Gospel and the Gospel arts, and then these peoples which brought Gospel writing into an art form unique to their place and time.  Just look at The Book of Kells and The Lindisfarne Gospels to see just how far little monks for centuries made the writing of those Holy Books an art. 

Many Celtic deities were rewritten and re-imagined to tell the Christ-story, including the tale of The Voyage of Saint Brendon who takes a sea-faring pilgrimage.  The story uses the  storytelling format called the Immram, or 'tale on a boat,' often to an other world of paradise or including a 'vision'.  Interestingly, even though this storytelling format was used to preserve Irish mythology, more often than not they contain Christian teachings.  The tale of Saint Brendon's Voyage, for example, detailing one man's journey of unbelief of Truth toward true belief of the Truth because of his journey, which often starts because of an Angel.  This sailor has been considered a patron saint of sailors, has been compared to the stories Sinbad and Odysseus in the style of tale, and is thought to be the ancient inspiration for C.S. Lewis' Voyage of the Dawn Treader from his ever famous Chronicles of Narnia.  While I can't tell you how true these comparisons are, I would not be the least bit surprised at Lewis, a student of mythology, if he did reach back to St. Brendon's Voyage as healthy inspiration for his children's tales.

I am a creature who takes everyday kinds of journeys.  As an artist, I tend to reach into my own heavily symbolic subconsciousness in contemplative prayer for the answer as to what shall wind up on the paper to be drawn, or even as my way of listening to God, my own creator. And the language of ancient symbols connects with me, somehow, as it may have with Lewis.  I process very often by writing, even if I never intend to share that writing, it's how I put idea into brain, message into heart. It's my favored medium for exploring those ideas which bubble beneath the surface during this, my own life's journey.  But unlike Saint Brendon, my journey doesn't need to travel to new exotic islands to be relevant in trying to catch my own glimpses of Christ.  It takes place here at home, in my own city, in my own everyday kind of life.  You are still welcome to join me, should you desire that.  I know I'd love the company.