New Year: New Artistic Initiatives?

In the parable of the talents, Jesus is clear that he does not want us to be wasteful with what little we have. Instead, the servant with the least amount of resources learns that he who is faithful with small things will be given more.

As we confront issues of funding for artists in the twentieth century church, we have to ask whether our funding systems are simply handouts, or if they innovatively encourage creativity that is both redemptive and generative.

By redemptive, we mean that, at the intersection of a theology of beauty and the church’s broader theological narrative, we find the opportunity to support art that is “on earth, as it is in heaven”—projects that are re-humanizing, full of resurrection, etc.

By generative, we mean art that is not a dead-end. Art that moves towards becoming self-sustaining, "pays it forward" by being life-giving to another person or work of art, or paves the way for future creativity, broadening the horizons of what arts practitioners consider possible. Most often, generative initiatives may come through projects (or even business plans) that confront systematic challenges within the creative realm, which require the “big bucks.”

Take the example of micro-grant programs like SOUP, the Detroit-based version of the national movement towards artists funding other artists. Area artists gather monthly to eat together, each participant contributes a small amount for admission, and attendees propose creative projects. At the end of the meal, the crowd votes on which proposal to fund with that evening's income.

Suppose that we re-worked the church’s current grant-like model of funding from Angel investment groups towards a combination of micro- and macro- initiatives. Democratic, grassroots dinners like SOUP only maintain their integrity if they remain small. (A 1,000+ SOUP night would be a conference, not a dinner.) So, let artists go on funding other artists until the end of a term when the completed projects funded by that year's microgrants are entered into a larger competition for funding. The projects which proved to be most successful, generative, redemptive, would receive a much larger grant so as to expand their scope. (Those who have been given little will be given more.)

Such a model would be revolutionary on a number of levels. 1) It engages artists in the decision about what to value instead of leaving our artists at the mercy of the art market. 2) It starts with a small responsibility, a small amount and entrusts those who are faithful with that amount with more. 3) It would be a systemic approach to funding (and growing) arts projects.

Rather than haphazardly giving grants to individual artists for single projects, the model develops groups of artists and pipelines of projects, paying innovation forward, and being truly generative.

Maureen Lovett, Director of the New City Arts Initiative

Natalie Race, Editor of The Curator

The authors thank Maggie Guggenheimer, Kate Daughdrill, and the International Arts Movement whose insights have influenced the thoughts behind this post.

Epiphany Is Manifestation

Epiphany can be seen as manifestation of the divine. As Christians we believe God can break into our lives in real and tangible ways. Not as a distant fire or cloud, not like a scorching burning bush. Christmas means Epiphany came as a small vulnerable child needing to be held.

Epiphany also occurrs through the mundane rhythms of life: a maiden at her task, men in the Far East studying the sky, and shepherds tending fields nearby. To these folks Epiphany appeared in the ordinariness of being, a gift wrapped in occupational details.

Simeon’s Epiphany took place in the temple. Here the old man gains the peace to die. And so, with this strange appearance of a new kind of life, one that is fully divine and fully human, there comes a death. Epiphany bestows the peace necessary for self to die. This peace comes by way of the cradle and the cross—the natal incarnation of the Christ and his ignoble death.

In chapter 1 of Colossians we read about creation. We learn who made it, upholds it, and redeems it. We read how God reconciles all of it to himself: heaven and earth, spirit and matter, the invisible and visible. Jesus’ work in and through creation and his death are the Christmas gifts of Epiphany, the manifestation of the divine in our lives. With his death our new birth and the birth of many of our creations become possible.

Those who have seen him re-orient their lives. Shepherds continue to shepherd, but because of Epiphany Christ deepens the meaning of shepherd. The wise men, in order to protect their Epiphany, re-route their journey home. And if Jesus “is the image of the invisible God,” as a small and hungry baby he hallows every mother’s embrace. Christmas asks us to make room for both a birth and a death in the ordinariness of life.

Welcome the gift of Epiphany.

Maria

Joseph and the Spirit

Christmas sermons, stories and songs don’t generally focus on Joseph. But then there is the nativity narrative found in Matthew. Because Joseph’s story demonstrates reliance on the provision of God, I must confess my own inability to worship God out of his abundance.

Here is a man who must take home a wife who is with child, a child not his own. But God’s command to Joseph goes further than the adoption that includes his Davidic heritage, he says to Joseph: when you fulfill your fatherly duty of naming this alien, give him the name I choose for him. Furthermore, this child will lead you to stables and through deserts. He will drink from your limited water supply and eat from your small table so that you and the world may know my abundance and grace.

Presently, we have two young adults living at home. There is my grown son and another who is not my own. To the son, all that is mine is his, I don’t expect him to restock the cereal, but I ask him to on occasion. To the other, I’m annoyed if she doesn’t replace a bar of soap. With the stranger I live in scarcity holding on to what belongs to kin. So, I ask myself, how did Joseph do it? The text gives us the key: “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.”

The Holy Spirit takes what is un-familiar, and seemingly un-related, in order to lead us to an abundant life with God, a life with Christ. Therefore, do not set to divorce, but rather take in what is not yours. With the Holy Spirit this axiom becomes fundamental to both art making and the Christian faith. Live life and make art out of God’s abundance.

Merry Christmas,
Maria

The Annunciation's Drama

A sort of advent ensues prior to a dramatic play. We make our way to the theater, purchase tickets, take our seats and wait for the curtain to rise. Yet something else transpires pre-show. We willingly put ourselves at risk for we know art has the ability to alter our belief systems— including the ways we view the world and ourselves. And thus it is so with Christianity, the world being altered by a true story. George Steiner goes as far to define the narrative of the annunciation as the scene of “gravity breaking into the small house of our cautionary being.” Indeed, beware of the angel’s announcement that the Holy Spirit is birthing something new in you, for as Simeon uttered to Mary, “A sword will pierce your own soul too.”

The Christian narrative asks us to give up our wants, or rather, re-align them with God’s. This push and pull is the formula for good drama. And what drama, as Lionel Trilling observes, “does not consist of the opposition of ideas?” Art unsettles. This is how it aids the arrival of Jesus. Art interrogates our ways of being, and hopefully, acknowledges our need for Him.

In literary terms, Edward Said would describe the “opposition of ideas” as “antithetical positions.” Here logic and reason dally with pure contingency. According to Said, this volatile combination generates meaning. And so in the logic of art making we become faithful through the contingencies. Faithful art provides meaning, produces new life, and breaks up the walls of our cautionary being.

Let advent and the annunciation enlarge you.

--Maria

Creativity and Incarnation; The message of Advent

In The Theater Essays of Arthur Miller the playwright describes a singular moment of artistic creation – the very first time in rehearsal that actor Lee J. Cobb actually became the character of Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman.

…Lee rose from his chair and looked at Milly Dunnock and there was a silence. And then he said, “I was driving along, you understand, and then all of a sudden I’m going off the road…”

And the theater vanished. The stage vanished. The chill of an age-old recognition shuddered my spine; a voice was sounding in the dimly lit air up front, a created spirit, an incarnation, a Godlike creation was taking place; a new human being was being formed before all our eyes, born for the first time on this earth, made real by an act of will, by an artist’s summoning up of all his memories and his intelligence; a birth was taking place above the meaningless traffic below… I knew then that something astounding was being made here. It would have been almost enough for me without even opening the play.

Miller’s fascination and wonder at witnessing a live artistic birth reveals a wonderful truth – that creativity and incarnation are intertwined. Many artists have experienced similar moments when time stands still and something new suddenly springs to life. It is what makes art so thrilling. The only fitting descriptive language that seems to suffice is the supernatural.

The beauty of Christ’s incarnation, which we celebrate at Advent, is that God chose to become like us, to identify with us, in order to save us. He did not come as a raging storm, smiting everything in His path. He came as Emmanuel, God with us. He felt what we feel and experienced what we experience. This is not the action of a remote and uncaring deity but of a lover doing whatever is necessary to rescue the beloved. Take away the incarnation and you drain the power of Augustine’s conclusion: “God is more intimate to me than I am to myself.”

--Steve Shaffer

Steve is a fellowship group director at Redeemer. This entry is excerpted from his presentation from the Living Room study series.