Progress

YesterdayToday Ambitious
Tired out.
I did smear paint. Hummmppp!

I will get back to the Nasher

I won first place in the Park Cities Presbyterian Church Art Festival. I have been writing a lot about being an artist. I have been telling people I am an artist. I know that probably seems vain, or unnecessarily. But I need to. Because I am becoming that, and I don't feel like I am there. But I did Saturday. And I feel an obligation to continue this journey, because it seems like an open door.

I want to do art ministry, this will help me.

So many things are happening to me, some apparent, all in process but much in the background for now. There are things I want to tell everyone about, but not yet. I am trying to adjust to my new life, it is good. Very good.

I just want to say, I am very, grateful to Jesus who never left my side and reminded me that He called me. Now that there is some evidence of that, people have to admit it. I tell you He has been at work. He was there when I could only roll up in a ball and cry in bed. He did not leave me there. He is faithful and good. My next art piece is about being raised up from depression into joy and fullfillment. It is about worship.

What I saw after my name was called in a church full of people was me in the fetal postition having been stricken over and over and knowing that Jesus brought me to that place that night. Now that is art.

It wasn't enough that I won the award, my art was used in worship at my church and at Park Cities. I think He just wanted to drive home the point. I was honored. Deeply honored and I want to say thank you Lord.

Trash the Nasher - part one

When my Gallery Management class went to the Nasher Sculpture Garden on Saturday, April 25th we knew that our professor Greg Metz was going to trash it. In his own words, as an artist, an educator, a person who has traveled widely visiting museums and galleries, he believes the intuitions who exhibit art have a duty to place the work within its historical context and help preserve the intent of the artist who created the work.

The architecture of the Nasher is world class, the art work amazing, but something happens that is less than desirable in the context of the design of the exhibits, especially the placement of art in the sculpture garden.

The architect Renzo Piano designed the Beyeler Museum in Basel, the Menil Collection in Houston and Georges Pompidou Centre in Paris (in collaboration with Richard Rogers). While we waited for Greg to arrive I went inside the museum and was struck by the beauty of the building. I was wondering what it was that he objected to so much. It turns out Greg has no objections to the building. He said that Ray Nasher was very particular about his legacy and that Piano was a great choice. His only improvement would be to take the honey combed roof and raise it up about 3 feet from the glass roof. The roof is designed to keep the damaging sunlight from the art, but allowing for the light to fill the building. It is busy and distracts from the minimalistic approach to the rest of the building.

What Greg pointed out which amazed me was that you can’t see this beautiful building from the street. The building is hid behind magnolia trees, oleander bushes and bamboo. We were asked to walk around the building after the lecture and see for ourselves.

The building was designed with the idea of an archeology dig with in an urban culture. The travertine marble on the outside of the building is rough, while inside it is smooth helping to transition the visitor from the outside urban setting to the refinement of the minimalistic setting of the gallery space.

Nasher’s collection of modern sculpture defined as art from the 1860 through the 1960’s and his dedication to bringing this art to Dallas made him known as the Ambassador of art to Dallas. I have visited the museum on several occasions and have caught other parts of the collection as they rotate through the gallery.

As you enter the building there is a gathering space. Where the front desk is and where groups like ours gather. It had a strange combination of sculpture pieces. Amazing enough a post modern Jeff Koons baroque bust across from an Eskimo monolith – like piece and a green drop like piece that was place in a traffic flow area. Needless to say, it didn’t work. And having Greg point it out was just amusing. The work was unbalances in its presentation and weird. The large green piece might have held its own against the Koons work, but the Eskimo piece needed to be isolated somewhere because if its busyness and overpowering size.
To be continued. (It gets better)

Flower and things I love

Just recently a woman who I used to mentor asked me via Facebook to do a bluebonnet portrait of her daughters. I am looking for a good spot this year, the wildflowers have just starting to come out. I am very jazzed about this on several levels. I have not seen my friend in two years. She is very brave in letting me do this. We had left our friendship on pause at my request; I thought it was best to cut all connections. But I told her that it wasn’t forever, but for a season. So it is spring and the wildflowers are getting ready to dazzle us and I am renewing a friendship. That is a beautiful thing. Her youngest modeled for me once for a sermon cover. I have a copy of it framed that I have been waiting to give my friend for two years.

The portraits will become part of the portrait project I am doing in order to become just that a portrait photographer and painter. Some of the portrait project will become art. I just don’t know what yet.

Anyone else who would like to be a part of this, contact me. We will set up a date.
I love flowers and I love spring and I am sharing the best of last Saturday’s find.

Art Theraphy

Yesterday when I went into Dallas to deliver my mixed media piece to the show I took my camera and a plan to check out a few shows for my class. I decided on stopping by the MAC, the McKinney Avenue Contemporary. I did a little exploring which loosely translates as letting myself get lost. But in doing so I made myself better acquainted with the area. I found some dogwood trees that were still blooming, some azalea and tulips all by Turtle Creek. Great find. So I was very happy with my little photo session.

I went to the MAC and was pleasantly surprised by the show. The artist in the main two galleries was a man named Olin Travis, the show called People, Places and Visions. The first room houses what I thought was the more serious art. It is dramatic in theme and execution. All the work has dramatic sources of light, lots of colors that fade into blacks. They are full on human emotion and pathos. As I took my time studying each one I was taken in by them, they struck a chord with me that was unexpected. I also related into them through my own art. I could see a connection that I have with. I bought the catalog so I will be able to reference that paintings when I work. I want to try some things I saw in them. The first room had both figures and an environment; I won’t say landscape because the landscape was invented. The other room held his more traditional landscapes and portraits that I loved because of the subject matter and the more impressionist rendering of the work. You could see the influence of the Impressionist and post impressionist cubist painters in his work. One of the landscapes was of a boat dock at White Rock Lake. That is when I realized the painter was a Texas artist. I did not know until I read the catalogue that the MAC at its inception was determined to celebrate early Texas artists. I wondered why the art was not contemporary.

On particular painting stood out to me, its title was Man Mourning a Lost Hope. It isn’t hope in general, that is being mourned but a highly valued hope. The artist achieved that by composing the painting with a small figure seated at the bottom of a huge canyon like cityscape. It seemed to say to me that all the things that the world has to offer will be mourned, have the capacity to cause us to feel at loss. Looking at the art I knew I was at that place. I think if we are honest all of us have been there from time to time. There has to be something different. Like Solomon said in the book of Ecclesiastes, all is vanity and chasing after wind.

I have experienced a lot of loss but this sense of loss is different. It is a hope I had for myself, a personal goal, a sense of accomplishment. I don’t think that it is a bad thing to be at the end of, but that doesn’t make it less of a loss. It is giving up doing life my way. And when I looked at the painting I could no longer deny that there was a message in it for me that God had been waiting to deliver.

Art Rag III

Since I am taking the gallery management class and I have entered an art show in a faith based community I thought I should offer to volunteer for some aspect of the show. I know that the event is very labor intensive. When I went to drop off my art piece I asked the woman who checked me in who I could talk to about volunteering to help hang the show. We have done installation in class. I just attended a three hour lecture by my professor Greg Metz who is known for his work in installation. The lady “in charge” was pointed out to me. I went and introduced myself, told her I was a student at UTD and was interested in helping hang the show and could receive class credits for helping. Over the course of the conversation I was basically told “I don’t want to bother with you.” I have thought about this a lot since I had the conversation, trying to come up with another explanation, but that was it was, “I don’t want to be bothered.”

I was approached by the woman who helped me checked me in as I was leaving; she asked if I talked to the lady “in charge.” I told her I had and that she couldn’t use me. The check in lady was a little surprised. She asked me if I told her I was with the university and studying installation. I said yes. I told her it was OK. I explained that I live in Plano and there are a lot of places closer that will let me help for school, but I was interested in helping here because it was a faith based show. I would find other ways to get my credits

I had several reactions to this encounter. There was outrage, but not so much personal outrage. To tell you the truth for me to try to get uptown to help would be a huge sacrifice of time for me. What I saw that made me cringe was a ministry killing attitude. It made me question why the church was doing the show. This is important to me because a friend of mine and fellow artist Brenda Gribbon are in the process of starting an arts organization for Christian visual artists. I am thinking through questions like why. What would be the purpose of an organization like that? One of my disappointments with the church that has been hosting the art show for the last three years is that they have said one of the purposes of the show was to connect Christian visual artist in the area. There haven’t been any other events except the show and a meeting where they take input for the show. To their credit they have had some speakers over the years in conjunction with the show, but no movement to create a community of artists. The impetus for Brenda and myself is a desire for community thus opportunity for ministry as artists. The conversation I had this afternoon as I dropped of my art fell short of good ministry for me for several reasons.

As a person who has worked with volunteers and as one who wants to build a community of artist I wonder why I was not asked to do something else if the hanging team was trained and in place. I wondered why the lady “in charge” didn’t take a little more interest in what I was doing, just to be polite. I wondered why I wasn’t asked to give her my name and contact information for next year. I was amazed by how many ministry building opportunities she had missed. My pastor has spoken to me about doing something like they are doing on a smaller scale. If the church is interested in promoting Christian visual artists then an opportunity was missed to begin conversations to grow this idea. But one person’s response won’t stop me; I will try to talk to other people at the opening event. I am on mission. However so far I am not interested in doing things the way they are doing it.

There was a time when I was in a women’s ministry that was flourishing. We put in place some guidelines to help grow ministry. We gleaned the concepts behind them from some of the best leadership in the area. We wanted to expand our women’s ministry to include as many women in the church as we could in a vital way. We wanted to affect the community outside the church too. One of the foremost concepts was the word INCLUDE. So simple but something we women by nature tend to not do by default. We tend to be cliquish. We get comfortable and we like being with our friends and we forget to include and invite. Then we wonder why only 50 women show up for an event when 500 attend church. We wonder why no one volunteers to help. We get burnt out, self righteous, discouraged when our ministry dwindles.

Organizations that want to thrive need to be intentional in their inclusion. They need to think about what’s next and make sure they have people in place to replace members who move on for whatever reason. How many ministries fade away when the people who started them leave?

We did a few simple things. When we built teams we included all demographics of the women in our church; young and old, single and married, with children and empty nesters. When we had an event and organized volunteers we made a rule that we needed to recruit three to four new member or inactive members for each event. We rotated leadership in the various positions. We learned to give ministry away and tried to get as many people involved as possible. We trained our volunteers because we felt some were hesitant to step forward and serve and lead. We nurtured relationships because that is how God works, person to person. We looked for new ways to do something so we could use the gifts and talents of the people in the church. We were thankful for the women who served and lead out. We tried to communicate that. We tried to give ownership to our volunteer by giving them the assignment and letting go. We provided guidelines to keep us all on task and to avoid confusion. We networked with other churches to help us see the bigger picture and learn from their experiences. We believed that the body of Christ is a body and that we can all work together in purpose. It was a beautiful thing. Anyone can do it,

Art Rag II

I picked up the two pieces from Kinkos last night, in the rain before class. I am sick so I am sure this colors my feelings, but this work which I was really, really liking isn’t working at this stage. I am bummed. But before you think there is a conclusion here, I will tell you this is a process, AND this is the moment of breakthrough. In real art for me there is a point of crisis, something goes haywire and needs to be fixed. You either press on and get it to work or give up. I usually press on, my nature, which is deeply embedded in my genes. The results most of the time is something I love and is better than it would have been had I had no crisis.

But facing the crisis is always, always yucky. I do this maybe I will never attempt mixed media per Photoshop again. Why did I spend the money to see if this would work? I have had this idea, one day I will put it on canvas instead of paper and I will love it, now it is a waste. And a waste of time and I have no mixed media direction. I should go back to bed.

Instead I went and got my drawing pencils and found the imperfections that the scanning process caused can be fixed with a pencil. I may or may not add color. I will go step by step and consult Scott my greatest and most trusted critic.

I need to get stretchers (Maybe I have some. I have quite a few from painting class, I need to look in the garage studio) I need to order a frame.

Something I did get from the gallery gawk on Saturday was when I looked at the mixed media pieces I thought the artist were very, very brave in their work. They really took chances with the media, subject and process. What held it together if it worked, some did, some didn’t, was design.

I want to be brave with my art. Brenda reminded me I was very, very brave with my writing. That helped me think maybe I have it in me.

Scott the critic just in.... "Mom it is the bomb."

We are discussing keeping the imperfections. We decided to reproduce the griding cause by the scan and pull it into the sky instead of correcting the imperfections. To do this I figure I can scan the part of the drawing with the grid on it and print it out. put graphite on the print out and rub it to the sky, subtly reproducing the effect. We think it will work.

It is so much fun to have an artist son.