The Artists Role As Connector

Last April’s InterArts Fellowship, entitled “The Artist as Cultivator,” sought to investigate the connections between art and prayer. Without too much explanation we hoped the art--in the form of dance, song, music, and poetry, would lead some to prayerful ruminations. But, we also longed to portray the beauty of prayer.

One of the outcomes of April’s IAF were two separate Reflect nights initiated and facilitated by Nathan Troester at his church in Williamsburg. Nathan commenced the evening with prayer and a short theological presentation, later asking the handful of invited artists to reflect and response through their respective artistic mediums.

Graphic designer, printmaker, and creative director of Live From Bklyn, Dailey Crafton, shares his account from the first Reflect night in Live From Bklyn’s blog. I link the post here, but allow me to excerpt some of the content for this reflection:

as i meditated on the concepts of the transcendance/eminence of God, my thoughts were drawn toward the name that God gives himself, “I AM.” this name speak of self-existence, completely independent upon anything else for survival. transcendence defined (and named). i also thought about the Christian doctrine of God-incarnate in the person of Jesus. about how he had a body, hair: a beard. eminence. from these thoughts i also moved into thinking about the material/immaterial dichotomy. immaterial God, material man. I AM material, as it were. i’mmaterial. and that was the concept.

within the swirls of the piece, you can see the word i’mmaterial. and the line is a continuous, unbreaking line, symbolic of the infinite. i also wanted to capture the idea of humanity, so i used a pattern that to me is evocative of hair, a beard to be more specific.

What Dailey’s description from the Reflect event provides is an example of how artists can integrate prayer and art while also portraying their role in connecting abstract ideas with concrete matter. Yet more is being bridged, we also see the reconciliation of spirit and body, work and faith, product and process. Dailey demonstrates how art belongs in the realm of theology, and theology certainly can shape our art. Witnesses to such interactions come away with a deepened understanding of God, while also refreshed by possibilities. It is firmly set in my mind how artists are called to be bridge builders in our ever increasing disconnected world.

Pray artfully,

--Maria

Thank you, Dailey, for allowing us to reference your blog post. Dailey’s i’mmaterial linocut print is available through his online shop.

How Much is Too Much?, or Wrestling with the Place of Culture in Devotional Life

"I was born in a house with the television always on," sing David Byrne and the Talking Heads in their song Love for Sale. What could be truer than that for most of us? Yet even with the television blaring (and sometimes because of the television blaring), we manage to hear God's voice in the culture...because He's everywhere, and not only in a monastery.

We know that, but we also feel a certain tension. Christians live in a gap between "Be still and know that I am God" and Marshall McLuhan's "the medium is the message." I for one often feel the pinch, wondering how to mind the gap.

Witness a recent morning, when I started the day with quiet meditation on events in Jesus' life using Ignatian

exercises designed to help me see Jesus aright so that I "might be with Him, become more like Him and serve Him more." After an hour or so in prayerful reflection on Scripture, I went to the gym carrying two novels, a year-end issue of Time, and an iPod with a Tim Keller sermon downloaded and an energy-pumping playlist. I read from and listened to each in the course of an hour. I also had access, anytime I looked up from my elliptical machine, to four television screens, each tuned to a different channel -- as I was invited to think about (for far less than 30 seconds each) the plight of freezing citrus, the unethical treatment of elephants, full-body scanners, "healthiest super-foods" and "why the Sun didn't swallow the Earth." Just an average couple of hours for an average middle-aged woman, trying to orient myself towards God and live out the implications that flow from what I know and where and who I am. All before 9 a.m.

I'm used to trying to pay attention to everything all at once, yet sometimes I wonder if I fully take in any of it. Sometimes I scream an Anthony Newley-esque "stop the world; I want to get off" as I long for solitude and silence. At other times I want to be in the middle of the action. I still wish I'd been in the crowd for Oprah's and The Black Eyed Peas' "I Gotta Feeling" flash mob scene on Michigan Avenue last fall. Yes it was commercially produced and motivated; but it was an orchestrated act of joy, and I even imagine it as a foretaste of heaven (probably with different lyrics).

Feeling that tension, I've been thinking lately about the dichotomy between the positive role of popula

r culture in my devotional (yes, devotional) life and the overload I feel when "the world is too much

with (me)."

To continue reading go to its original placement on the Washington Institute's website.

--Cary Umhau

Cary is our guest writer, she regularly blogs at www.holyvernacular.wordpress.

com and can also be found at www.caryumhau.com