Creating In a Destructive World
Before I work, I imagine all of my art in an untidy pile in a dumpster. I picture rain falling and sun bleaching in twitching time-lapse until a small pile is carried away by a phantom wind. Admittedly it’s a strange prayer. Time gets the best of time-bound materials, but the true value of art is its capacity to meet individuals in a moment of need.
The true value of art is its capacity to meet individuals in a moment of need.
This practice is my way of reminding myself of the counter-intuitive words of Christ. Our effort to preserve life can be harmful, while loss, the thing we’re the most afraid of, is often the space where we find freedom. In order to venture into the unknown, the first order of business is coming to terms with oblivion. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust.
As noted by the poet Christian Wiman, “Hope is not hope until all ground for hope is lost.” Noise makes art difficult. The goal of art is not to permanently stamp my individual and limited self on the fabric of time. This objective is a symptom of residing in a culture in which everything has been reduced to a product. The heart of the work should be rooted in servanthood. I’m called to serve the work, to wrestle through places of unknowing and discomfort to permit space for others to do the same.
In insisting upon precise, exclusively optimistic outcomes I can accidentally make my work a product of self and close the door to interference. If the work is too precious it ceases to be playful, the work of a Holy Spirit.
As a maker, part of being able to show up is understanding things will go wrong and I will need intangible outside help. In the event the work becomes prophetic, its success as a piece may be indicated by the way it frustrates an audience by refusing to cooperate with expectations.
The parables of Christ were not about encouraging people to be comfortable in their assumptions and art can function in a similar way. The Spirit is disruptive and while comfort may be an eventual outcome, discomfort is often the starting point. To insist the world must be a place designed to make my experience “nicer” is to lop off the stuff which serves to connect us to our neighbors. Often, we connect deeply when we share in our weakness.
Often, we connect deeply when we share in our weakness.
In part, art is by necessity linked to ego, it’s an expression of a singular uniquely created individual with unique individual struggles and gifts. It insists upon differences, and finds vitality in the variety of expressions.
However, the ego can also become tyrannical, it can sneer, seeking avenues by which to control or subjugate by force. The comfort of the (one individual) self can become its only objective.
Inspiration, the voice of God requires voluntary surrender, the nurtured ability to listen for a still small voice. It requires an internal struggle which is about more than personal comfort. When Paul encounters God on the road to Damascus, God asks Paul, “Why do you kick against the goads?” Implying that no matter how hard Paul struggles against God, unimagined outcomes are a certainty. His work will be undone, will undo itself, until it is rooted in humility, grace, and mercy. Work only comes to fruition when it’s collaborative with the ongoing work of the living God.
A man who drives his car into the ocean screaming that he has overcome water is a tragic figure. Humility is to recognize that we live in the waves, in seasons of uncertainty, to let our art absorb and address some of the unpleasant shock of our surrounding realities. Art can and should address confusion, mystery, evil, ugliness, sorrow, pain, racism, and anger because the Bible addresses all of it.
Work only comes to fruition when it’s collaborative with the ongoing work of the living God.
Good work is about reaching out in love to where we are in the times we reside. We subvert the recognizable in an effort to help others to see better. To create can be about listening for strange impulses and letting them participate, even if a concept is initially unsettling.
Sometimes we’re given images to speak to difficult times, and difficult images are the only effective language available. Where optimism demands a happily ever after, hope is persistent in spite of poor outcomes. It’s a lean toward surrender, insisting upon good for its own sake.
The struggle with materials, the last minute thoughts, the unforeseen consequences of a spill are often where the life of a piece occurs. To come to the precipice when everything seems to be lost and to continue anyway is the point where God often intervenes. A piece can come to life in the sense that we invite the Spirit into the things we make. This happens when we soften the demand for control and listen to the voice which is always working to define and give shape to intent. All art is built on contrast, dark shadows against bright lights. Acts of creation sometimes necessitate destruction, the removal of paint, the willingness to paint over something which is too much.
Negative space, absence can serve to create focus. In a painting, nothing is something. Hard-edged limitations can counter-intuitively allow for creative solutions. The cross is our company, the thing we bear, the thing we wrestle with. Grace is present, buried under loss or grief, woven into its fabric. Here for a brief moment, then gone, every breath, even the last breeze that carries off the dust of the work of our hands a gift of a God who abides even (perhaps especially) in the places we claim God’s absence. To create is about letting that gift pass through me.
