Life would be better as a musical.

I have always wanted life to be this way... breaking out into random 80's power ballads...

yes, this is how I'm spending my summer so far and I love it.

Justin's Holiday in Cambodia

For those who are interested, you can follow Justin Craft's adventures in Thailand and Cambodia via his blog... "Holiday in Cambodia"

"Grace is Where I Live" John Leax

re-reading one of my favorite books, John Leax's collection of essays... though writing as a poet, it speaks well to all artists...


from "Holiness and Craft:"

As I write, the poem I am writing is always in the future. When I have finished writing, it is behind me. It is in the past. Only as I am writing it, as it is in the process of becoming, is it in the present. And only as it is in the present, is it my concern. Compare this to salvation. Salvation is a process occurring in all three tenses. It is future because it will not be complete until Christ returns. It is past because Christ accomplished it on the cross. It is present as I give myself to Christ. Here, as in the writing of a poem, my concern is with the present action. What is past is related to the present only as the present brings its meaning into being. What is future is related to the present only as it is imagined and desired in the present-- that is, as it is part of the present.
Holiness and craft come together at this point: the moment of the poem is also the moment of salvation. Both occur in the present. I make my way as a poet and as a Christian by giving attention to being in Christ and in doing in him the work before me. Quoting Thomas Merton, "it is in the ordinary duties and labors of life that the Christian can and should develop his spiritual union with God."
While hoeing his garden, Saint Francis was approached by a villager who had his own idea about how a saint should spend his time. The villager demanded of Francis, "What would you be doing if you knew the Lord would return this afternoon?" Francis replied, "I would be hoeing my garden." I think this is the meaning of "Take therefore no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself," (Matthew 6:34).


from "Stewardship and Witness:"

Language is the soil in which the message grows. Poets care about the message, but they must first be stewards of language. The message is like a seed. It must fall into the ground and die before it can be born into a poem.
Just as the sacrifice of soil for the crop of one year is ultimately destructive, so the sacrifice of language to the demands of the message is destructive. Like so many other things in life, we must give up even our truth to keep it. Any other course will use up the soil in which we nurture it and guarantee that the future will be impoverished.
Just as I serve the soil so that my garden will remain fertile and grow good crops, when I write I serve the language so it can bear the message I've learned. Curiously, as I seek to make stewardship my concern, my vision clears, and I speak more precisely the presence of Christ in my world.




From "Story, Place, and Marriage:"

A sentimental attachment to place is, like a sentimental love, stupid and useless- a hindrance to genuine relationship. A sense of place is not sentimental: it is practical and necessary. The mistake is to consider place provincially. While a sense of place is based on local knowledge, it is not limited to local knowledge, it includes a range of places.
...What is one caught in the forced mobility of our urban culture to do? The answer, I believe, lies in story.
...though I may be out of my place, beyond the limits of my local knowledge, I am not out of my story... "

Coldplay

two photographers of recent interest

Stephen Berkman




James Fee

Web Galleries of new work

So my website is embarrassingly oudated, and I can't be bothered to update it anytime soon... in the meantime, I've finally figured out (with the help of resident html genius Jeff Rau) how to put web galleries of my work here on my blog, via Flickr slideshows. Nice trick Jeff, thanks.


So look to the right. You should see the first one there, for my Northwoods Journals series. More to follow... eventually...

Printable Pinhole Camera Designs

A new twist in making your own pinhole camera:

click here to download/print the designs

"Making Art as if the World Mattered"

“Vision that responds to the cries of the world and is truly engaged with what it sees is not the same as the disembodied eye that observes and reports, that objectifies and enframes. The ability to enter into another’s emotions, to share another’s plight, to make their conditions our own, characterizes art in the partnership mode. You cannot exactly define it as self-expression—it is more like relational dynamics. Once a relationship is given greater priority, art embodies more aliveness and collaboration, a dimension excluded from the solitary, essentially logocentric discourses of modernity. Partnership demands a willingness to conceive of art in more living terms. ‘Compassion is the rooting of vision in the world, and in the whole of being,’ states David Michael Levin. It is a way of seeing others as par of ourselves. When art is rooted in the responsive heart, rather than the disembodied eye, it may even come to be seen, not as the solitary process it has been since the Renaissance, but as something we do with others.”

From Suzi Gablik's “The Re-enchantment of Art,” pg. 106.

Still Life with Peeps

morning thoughts

"Art is neither safe nor predictable; it requires, and rewards, a deep engagement of our imaginative facilities."

"Art, like religious faith in general and prayer in particular, has the power to help us transcend the fragmented society we inhabit... the intuitive language of the imagination is so vital. Reaching deep into our collective thoughts and memories, great art sneaks past our shallow prejudices and brittle opinions to remind us of the complexity and mystery of human existence. The imagination calls us to leave our personalities behind and to temporarily inhabit another's experience, looking at the world with new eyes. Art invites us to meet the Other-- whether that be our neighbor or the infinite otherness of God-- and to achieve a new wholeness of spirit."
--Gregory Wolfe, editor of Image journal


"Redemption comes in many shapes, with many kinds of pain."
--Dolly Parton (yes, seriously. Give her songs another chance if you haven't already.)

Sacred space, place, and time... Portland meals.

Surely the time we get to spend with friends who live far away is sacred time... physical, shared, embodied time with them is rare... I can't often see my friends in Portland, London, Minnesota, Orlando, Denmark, Denver, or fill in the place for yourself... so those times are a gift when they occur, and it seems to me that something about that time and place creates a sacred space.







Meals. The shared table... the conversations... the pleasant and comfortable silences... the amazing Borsch home-cooked by Julia, the "laughing and riding and cornholing... (except Buster)"... I'm beginning to think that there is nothing I enjoy more fully than meals with good friends. At its best, this sacred space allows for a shared presence... being... to be together... to be known and to share that knowing presence.







'






Portland was full of this, and I'm grateful for each meal... for both the pure enjoyment of the food but also for the time shared at those tables with Tom, Adam, Tim, Adrian, and Reuben... the borsch at Julia's cart, the coffee and red velvet muffin at Crema, the toffee cupcakes at St Cupcake, the Rwandan coffee at Stumptown (which I tried and failed to brew on my own today), the all-too-rushed meal of kelp, ribs, and dumplings at Biwa, the snakebites over pipes at the Horse Brass, the meat platter at Two Brothers Serbian food (Ayvar!), the black molasses bread and watergames at Otis Cafe, the extremely fresh crab and cod in Newport, and of course, the schnitzel, spaetzel, wurst, and steins brought to us by our sciatic-nerve suffering waitress, Sarah, at Gustav's German bar. I hope she got the massage she needed.

New Work, New Exhibit- "Through a Glass Dimly"

"Through a Glass Dimly," the 5th and final Biola Art Alumni exhibition, opens Tuesday, 2/26.

The artist reception will be from 7-9pm, though the exhibit will be open through March 20th if you're not able to make it. (and remember, March 14-15th is our alumni reunion weekend and our major symposium "On The Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art"- see an older post about this). The show also features new work from Jonathan Anderson, Natalie Anderson, Tony Caltabiano, Jon Puls, Brandi Nuse-Villegas and a host of other alumni and friends that I can't think of right now.

Visit the BiolArt website for further details

I am very excited to finally exhibit some new pieces-- they are part of a "new" body of work that I've been developing slowly-- one piece (the first one shown below) has been around for a few years, but the other two have been printed for the first time... and all of them will be making their debut as finished, framed pieces (I built the custom frames myself, which I must say, I'm quite proud of.)














I don't know what to say yet about these pieces. They come to me slowly. I can't force them, they arrive like surprises/gifts. That's why there's only 3 and it's been 3 years since the first one. They're untitled so far. Something about tension... something about the search for the sacred in the contemporary... something about "standing in a circle of quiet, waiting for the world to turn..."

L'Abri

In honor of Sydney Van Orden who is spending this weekend at the English L'Abri, and in honor of the annual L'Abri conference that is being held in Minnesota (England AND Minnesota shout outs!)...

I checked out the English L'Abri website and found that they had put up galleries of my pictures. So not to toot my own horn, but I'm honored and excited to see them- check it out

English L'Abri-photo page

They make for a wonderful distraction.

A little more Flight of the Conchords for you:

(if you haven't been initiated yet, you really must watch their HBO show- now on dvd- and/or get some of their songs on itunes)

Just because it's stuck in my head.