Monday, February 27, 2012

Writing and Art


Many years ago, when I taught in an art department in a state university, one of the catch-phrases was “writing across the curriculum.” The academic community had collectively realized that incoming students had done so little writing in high school that a single, freshman course in English composition did not give them enough practice in writing thoughtfully and coherently.

While professors continued in general to follow the pedagogical practices proper to their disciplines, we were expected to assign at least one research paper, critical essay, or other serious writing project in every class, regardless of whether the subject matter were art, science, mathematics, or anything else. Thus, students in my studio fundamentals course found themselves required not only to develop the manual skills involved in mixing and applying paint, drawing with a wide variety of pens and pencils, cutting mats, and building models out of foam-core; the visual acuity to distinguish subtle difference in color and form; and the aesthetic ability to manipulate the elements and principles of design to evoke meaning and emotion; but also to engage the artworks of others in writing, uncovering significance through careful description of the work in itself and in awareness of the artist’s historical context.

For most of my art students, the discipline of writing was as unfamiliar and as difficult as making an artwork is to most students in theological seminaries.  Accustomed to thinking in images and forms, they struggled with the requirement to put their thoughts into words. This struggle was often rewarded with new insights and understandings. Forced to use the discursive, linear, logical portions of their brains to describe what was intrinsically imaginative, experiential, and expressive, they discovered a unexpected source of creativity in the interplay between the two.

It seems to me that a similar process happens when students in more discursive disciplines are asked to think imaginatively, expressively, and aesthetically about what is typically presented to them in propositional form. By experiencing artworks made by others, they learn about other places, other times, other ways of thinking, experientially, through the evidence of their senses. By immersing themselves in the uncompromising demands and opportunities that working with physical matter requires, they discover that the metaphors they find in scripture or theological writings acquire a deeper resonance, a fuller reality, than when they are encountered simply in words. By trying to embody their intellectual ideas about God, the created universe, or themselves, in poems or paintings or movement they learn certain truths at a level that cannot be approached through propositional statements about things like incarnation, suffering, or joy.

Friday, February 17, 2012

More than Words


On Tuesday, Valentine’s Day, our students, faculty, and staff came together to celebrate the arts with dance, music, poetry, drama, biblical storytelling, and cookies and hot chocolate. For the first hour, people stood in the foyer outside the gallery, in rapt attention as Kathryn Sparks danced the 150th Psalm; Dana Olson told the story of Hagar and Ishmael; a group from the drama class took on the personas of women that Jesus met; 
Kathryn Sparks, Psalm 100
Ruth Kent danced to “Oh Freedom”; Lauren Blitz recited her original poem, “Communion’s Choir”; Eleanor Colvin offered her monologue, “On My Knees”; a wind ensemble played Alexandra Crabtree’s arrangement of “All Creatures of our God and King; Jeannie Murray danced “Finding Your Voice”; and Tracy Radosevic told how the Aramaen attack was thwarted from the Second Book of Kings.

Eleanor Colvin, Michele Walton,
Annette Morgan, and Mary Bates-Washington,
"Among the Women Jesus Met"
Kyle Durbin and Tim Gouchenour,
"Wittenberg"
Then, everyone moved into Elderdice, where we watched Michele Walton and Vanya Mullinax do a short scene from Michel’s drama, “Jane”; Jesse Holt Jr. sang Donizetti’s “Una Furtiva Lagrima”; Sherri Ellerbe recited her original poem, “A Parable of Creation”; Drew VanDyke Colby performed his original “Ballad of the Gerasene Demoniac”; Dave Stewart recited two of his original poems; Kyle Durbin and Tim Gouchenour reprised a scene from last year’s performance of “Wittenberg”; Kathleen Henderson Staudt read her poem, “Holy Spirit”; Madelyn Campbell told Luke’s story of the birth of Jesus; and Kathryn Sparks returned to dance the 100th Psalm.


Drew VanDyke Colby,
"Ballad of the Gerasene Demoniac"
Dana Olson, "Hagar and Ishmael"
If it all sounds exhausting, it was. It was also exhilarating, funny, inspiring, touching, irreverent, tender, and moving beyond words to see so many people together, sharing their gifts and receiving one another’s offerings in a spirit of joy. There were both tears and raucous laughter,  as well as jaw-dropping astonishment at the skill and dedication the performers brought to each 3- to 5-minute piece. Like the visual art in the gallery and on the walls of Elderdice that formed a backdrop to the event, this festival of performing arts was a testament to the importance that the arts have in the life of Wesley Theological Seminary, and, ultimately, in the life of the church outside our walls.

Jeannie Murray-Kostryukov,
"Finding Your Voice"
Alexandra Crabtree, Rebecca Torres,
Kay Rodgers, Sean Smith, Paige Wheeler,
"All Creatures of Our God and King"


 
  
What people experienced in the Heart the Arts Festival was not sentimental, false, propagandistic “church art.” It was not a talent show. This was the real thing – art that made us think, opened our hearts, and brought us to our feet applauding, grateful for the gifts and talents that God has bestowed on members of our community, and for the hard work and energy that bring those gifts and talents into our midst.

So I want to thank everyone who read or danced or sang or played an instrument or acted a scene; and for everyone who worked behind the scenes to make it all possible. I especially want to thank Alexandra Sherman and Amy Gray, without whose tireless efforts neither the show in the gallery nor the festival would have happened. And I am grateful to everyone whose foresight and support have made Wesley a welcoming place for the arts, a place where everyone knows that the Word of God is more than words.

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Heart the Arts

Megan Burd-Harris, 3-in-1 God, wire
Towards the end of 2011, the Luce Center for the Arts and Religion began to dream of Heart the Arts, a festival of the arts encompassing dance, drama, poetry, music, and biblical storytelling as well as highlighting the current show in the gallery, The Seminary Celebrates. On Saint Valentine’s Day, just a few days from now, that dream will be a reality. Not only will the Dadian Gallery foyer and Elderdice Hall be filled with the sounds and sights of performing artists in the late afternoon, but chapel that morning will include many of the same elements.

Why do we do this? Why should a theological seminary care so much about the arts?

I believe the answer is that the arts are an important part of theological education because the Word of God is more than words.

Paula Nesbitt, The Women with the Issue of Blood, mixed media
This is easy to forget, especially in a place that specializes in discursive words about God. Our students – and our faculty – read books, write papers, and give sermons, trying to clarify what we believe about God, ourselves, and the world around us. But it is easy to get so lost in the words that we forget that it is not the words of scripture, but the One is revealed to us in those words who is the true Word, the One who is not mere words, but Jesus, the Christ, the Word who existed even before creation. As those familiar verses from the opening of the Gospel according to John tell us,

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being….And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory… (John 1:1-3, 14, NRSV)

So when we say, “the Word of God” we already mean something more than just the actual words on the pages of the Bible, something more than the ordinary, literal meaning of the term, “word.” The Word of God is more than the words on the pages, more than the words we read aloud.

The arts help us remember that. The arts help us experience the presence of God in our bodies, in our emotions, in our hearts, in ways that books and scholarly papers cannot. When we feel the rhythm of the song, our hearts begin to beat as one; when the truth of story is embodied in the  actors before us, our eyes overflow with tears; when we feel the pulse of life in the poet’s verse, we know that God is present with us. It is then that we know for sure that the Word of God is more than words, and lives among us and around us and through us.