Giving Thanks for a Life in Art

Memories of Coatlaxope (Guadalupe), 1993,
acrylic and copper on wood, 24" x 24"

Twenty years ago, I was in a deep depression. I had left the school where it was clear that I would never get tenure, and had no vision of where to go or what to do next. I felt that I was in a very, very dark place. Then, one day, it seemed to me that God had shone a small spotlight in front of me, illuminating one step that I could take towards an unknown future. That next step was to remember that I was an artist.

I gathered what little energy I had, went to the hardware store, bought some 2' x 2' squares of plywood, covered them with black gesso, and began to paint. Little by little, the image of the Virgin of Guadelupe emerged from the darkness, hidden among tree branches and surrounded by the barest beginnings of flowers. Over the course of the next few days, I completed two paintings that were unlike anything I had ever made before.

As I was completing those works, God lit up another step-stone on my path: the Center for the Arts and Religion invited me to be an Artist-in-Residence at Wesley Theological Seminary. When I accepted the invitation, I had no idea that I would be the director of the Center twenty years later! All I knew then was that someone valued me as an artist when I wasn't even sure that I really was one.

She is a Tree of Life to All Who Cling to Her
(also known as Queen of the Angels of Small Portion)
1993, acrylic and copper on wood, 24" x 24"

Today, I give thanks for everyone who has encouraged me on this strange and wonderful journey, and made it possible for me to spend my life learning, teaching, talking, and writing about art as well as making images that other people value. I am especially grateful to the people who bought those first, two dark paintings that set the themes and images that continue to appear in my work all these years later.

Unfortunately, the only record I have of the paintings are fuzzy, low resolution photographs. So if anyone knows where they are now, please let me know. And, if you can, please take a good, high resolution photo, and send it to me. I will be eternally grateful!

Wild Art

Today at the American Academy of Religion, I attended a session on Outsider Art. Because the session was presented by the Psychology, Culture, and Religion group, and not art historians, much of what was said about the relationship between what in France had been called "art brut" and the early Modernists was very familiar to me. As they ran over the early 20th century territory in which artists like Jean Dubuffet, Paul Klee, Kandinsky, and others became fascinated with the drawings and paintings of psychiatric patients, children, and other naifs, I began to think I was wasting my time. 

 

Things got more interesting, though, when the discussion turned to the question of whether there might be a better term than outsider to describe these works. The usual words were mentioned, like naive, primitive, or visionary. But then one of the presenters said that Roger Cardinal, the art critic whose work made the term famous, never liked outsider art. Rather, it was his publisher who insisted on it as a translation for art brut, which more properly means something like raw or rough art. Or, as the presenter put it, wild art. 

It is, of course, this wildness that appealed to the early avant garde, as they sought to throw off the constraints of an academy that dictated which were acceptable subjects and exactly how to depict them. Since then, several generations of wild, rebellious, young artists have become teachers themselves. Ironically, these new arbiters of the academy have tried to institutionalize the wildness that so entranced them in the artworks of the untutored, even as they drill their students in color theory and the elements and principles of design. As the wildness becomes tamed, though, it too often degenerates into an attempt to shock, a desire to do something original, rather than the truthful exploration of the inner landscape that is the hallmark of the untutored artist. 

Like the avant garde artists of the early 20th century, and, indeed, my own teachers, I am drawn to the idea of wild art, of art that cannot be confined to academies or genres or movements, of art that flourishes outside the boundaries of galleries and museums and art-critical theories. And yet, like my own teachers, I believe in teachable skills, in the transmission of values and techniques from one generation to the next, and in the responsibility of artists to speak into and for the communities that support them. I guess what I want to believe is that art is both the thoughtful, intentional, skillful product of patience and practice; and also the incarnate imagination of the Holy Spirit, which blows wherever it wills, bringing life to whatever it touches. Wild art, indeed.

The Arts, Money, and the Future of the Church

My father with his twin brother
and my grandfather in 1931

More than 25 years ago, one of my daughters was accepted as an acting student at the then-brand-new Los Angeles County High School for the Arts. At the orientation session, a teacher waved her hand in the direction of the students gathered in front of her, and said, “Parents, you are looking at the future of the American theater!” Looking at the hopeful, young faces and hearing the passion in the voices of the faculty, I was swept away with emotion. What a grand vision we all shared in that moment!

That daughter went on to study acting at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, and now is a film executive in London. My son, who attended the equally-ambitious Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Washington, DC and the Berklee School of Music in Boston is now an Emmy-award-winning sound designer in Hollywood. I have been supporting the performing arts for a very long time.

To those who know me well, none of this is surprising. The arts run deep in my family. My father’s family were musicians for as long as anyone could remember. I, myself, was a dancer before I was a visual artist. So when I heard that teacher talk about the future, my heart sang. I wanted to help that future become real.

Tonight, I attended a benefit cabaret and auction for the Theatre Lab. I wrote about their Life Stories project a few weeks ago, and tonight’s event reminded me of the excitement I felt when I heard about the work they are doing with people in homeless shelters, prisons, assisted living facilities, and other places where people feel marginalized and hopeless. Although no one said those words, as I watched talented, hard-working young people transform themselves into Cosette from Les Miserables, Midsummer Night’s Dream’s Puck, and other familiar and unfamiliar characters, I once again felt myself to be in the presence of the future of the American theater. And when Deb Gottesman asked us to support Theatre Lab’s work financially, it felt right and natural to make a bigger donation than I had planned to when I walked into the room. 

On the way home, I thought about how the arts have the capacity to open not only hearts and minds, but wallets. Part of my job as the Director of the Center for the Arts and Religion is to raise money so that we can continue our work, but I have struggled to find the right words to explain to potential donors why they should support a program in the arts in theological education. Tonight, at last, I think that I have found those words. Let me try them out on you:

If the Word of God is more than mere words can convey, then the church needs the arts in order to help people experience and express God’s life-giving, astonishing Word. The arts bring scripture to life, make worship vibrant, and keep people awake and aware of the world around them. The arts are the future of the church, and we at the Center for the Arts and Religion at Wesley Theological Seminary are providing the skills and resources for that future. Please give.

Eileen Guenther |at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts

Yesterday, my colleague and friend Dr. Eileen Guenther owned the Kennedy Center Concert Hall stage, playing a masterful one-hour program on their new, Rubenstein Family organ. The organ console was placed front and center on the otherwise bare stage, so that everyone could see as well as hear the confidant hand- and footwork with which she drew such beautiful sounds out of a beautiful instrument.

While I have heard Eileen play countless times here at Wesley, the console in Oxnam Chapel is hidden from view, thus effectively hiding the musician, as well. Last night, for the first time I was able to appreciate not only her musicianship, but the athletic range of motion that playing the organ requires. It was as though she were dancing, and the music and the dance were one.

From the moment that she took the stage, resplendent in sparkling black with golden trim, until the thundering, standing ovation as her daughter handed her a huge bouquet as she walked towards the wings, Eileen held the appreciative audience in her accomplished, sensitive hands. Since I am not capable of writing sensibly about the music itself, which was mostly unfamiliar to me, I can only advise you to watch the video of the entire concert, which the Kennedy Center has thoughtfully posted as Eileen Guenther | Explore the Arts - The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts

The Extravagant Gift

a view of the gallery,
with paper lace trees and silverpoint drawings

 Our own Amy Gray's extraordinary, lovely, peaceful, and mysterious installation, The Extravagant Gift will grace the Dadian Gallery through the end of the semester. Although I could add my own inchoate and extravagant thoughts, I think that Trudi Ludwig Johnson, our clever, insightful, hard-working Curator has already said what needs to be said. Trudi writes,

The Dadian Gallery has been transformed by Amy Gray’s Extravagant Gift.

All Roads Lead to Dounby, silverpoint
and watercolor on wood, 90" x 48", 2013

 Traditionally, a ‘gallery’ is a room or building devoted to the exhibition of works of art, where people look at paintings, sculptures or other art objects.  Some of us have even (uneasily?) experienced a gallery as a business ‘dealing’ in works of art, and we expect to be approached by someone who has something to sell.

But this Extravagant Gift is an installation; it is not an object per se, it is an opportunity.   It is not just a grouping of two- or three-dimensional things, but a site-specific four-dimensional experience. 

Amy Gray’s Extravagant Gift offers visitors a place, some time, and a cloistered space, to shed extraneous mental chatter.  We are allowed to wander amongst gentle, giant, swirling vortices of paper lace, pause under a twinkling tent of heaven, and ponder evocations of nature created by repeated flicks of a stylus filled with a semi-precious metal on prepared ground.  

perforated painted paper becomes the tent of heaven

The creative process murmurs  here.  This ‘wonder’ land didn’t just magically appear, but evolved and morphed over three seasons.  Contemplating, configuring, revising, drawing, cutting, stitching, placing, hanging, lighting . . .  its impermanence is equally poignant.  The paper will be pulled down and recycled; the drawings dispersed, the gallery space restored to ‘normal.’   But for a few weeks, wanderers may be swaddled in the elegant, subtle, prodigal generosity of this contemplative passage on their faith journey, allowing the possibility to reconsider, refresh, renew, re-invent, resume . . .

May the viewer may be transformed by this Extravagant Gift:  worship in the making, joy in the receiving.

So, come see the show! If you can, come hear Amy talk about her process and her perspective as an artist working in a theological seminary at noon on Tuesday, October 29. You, too, may be transformed!

The Extravagant Gift, paper and thread, 12' x 12' x 12', 2013

The Dadian Gallery is located in the Kresge Academic Building at Wesley Theological Seminary, 4500 Massachusetts Ave NW, Washington, DC. You can see more photos of this installation at http://www.wesleyseminary.edu/en-us/lcar/gallery/exhibitions/past/extravagantgift.aspx

Another Offering

All the elements are waiting to find their proper place.

Amy hangs up the backdrop

The time has come again for the Center for the Arts and Religion to make another offering into the life of the Seminary community. The Day of the Dead ofrenda has become a much-anticipated annual event over the years, since Artist-in-Residence Lauren Raine first invited us to help her create a temporary place to remember those who have joined the great cloud of witnesses of those who have gone before us. This morning, Amy, our student assistant Narae, and I gathered the odd collection of candles, silk flowers, fabrics, icons, calaveras, and other objects from our offices and the studio, as well as Chip’s always-expanding contribution of things he has collected on his various journeys, especially in the US Southwest. This year, we were delighted to find a sugar skull that looks like it came directly from somewhere along the Mexican border.

Narae untangles some strings

One of the innovations this year is that the ofrenda is asymmetrical. When Amy climbed up on to hang the backdrop of tissue flowers and paper lace that Narae had made by adapting patterns she found in a book called Day of the Dead Crafts, we discovered that the screws in the wall would not allow it to be centered over the table. With only a few words and gestures, we understood almost simultaneously that the visual weight of the hanging on one side could be balanced by piling all nichos on the other. 

The basic structure

Once the basic structure was in place, we began placing the smaller elements, all of us working in an easy, non-verbal, collaborative dance. An accomplished artist and graphic designer from Korea, Narae had seemed a bit confused last week as to why we were asking her to do this simple craft project, but by the time she was untangling strands and arranging silk flowers this morning, I think it made a lot more sense. After all, every culture has some tradition of making offerings, of remembering loved ones who have died.

The ofrenda, ready for the prayers
and memories of the community

When we finally finished placing the last, gaily painted, wooden shoe, the ofrenda still looked a little empty. And that, of course, is the intent – we only provide the framework, the outline, the starting place for something that only becomes complete when other members of the community participate. This morning, the ofrenda belonged to us artists, our years of studio practice guiding our aesthetic decisions. Over the next couple of weeks, other people will put photographs and mementos and memories wherever it seems good to them to set them down. As the Feast of All Souls approaches, the Wesley community will fill in the blank spaces with their prayers.

Process

Artist-in-Residence Peggy Parker graciously invited me and another faculty member to sit in on a recent session of her course, Drawing to Woodcut. As I told the students, I was there because somehow I missed learning woodcut when I was in art school. Ever since I watched Trudi Ludwig Johnson work on her huge plate for “Venus, Cupid, Folly, and Time”, which I wrote about here and here, my hands have been itching to feel the bite of blade into wood, and to learn how to turn the image in the block into a print on paper.
   
So I began to prepare a few days before the planned class session by cutting paper into 6” x 4” pieces, the size of the practice block that Peggy said we would be working on, and drawing variations based on this photograph, which I took in Guatemala. When I first saw the plant, I thought it looked like a cross between bird-of-paradise and banana. After some searching it is called heliconia, and is, indeed, related to bananas. Although I was first drawn to the contrast between the deep, green leaves and the bright magenta of the flower, I became increasingly intrigued by the birdlike shapes as I began to think about its possibilities as a monochrome print.

The next step was to transfer the basic drawing, using tracing paper to draw over the lines so that the image would be reversed on the block and show up the right way on the resulting prints. Periodically, I would lift up the paper to make sure that the lines were really there. Then, as I recall, I went over the lines again, to make them clear. Finally, I was ready to start cutting.
   
I had expected that cutting into the wood would be difficult, but, to my surprise, the sharp, v-shaped blade glided easily through the thin layers of a special plywood called shina. There was very little resistance, more like drawing than cutting. After some timeless amount of time, I had the main outlines, and it was time to ink the block and pull the first print, using a big, wooden spoon to press the paper onto the ink. Here’s what it looked like:
   
When I pinned the proof onto the wall and stepped back, I was dismayed at the big glob of white at the end of the small branch below the leaves. Going back to knife and block, I added ribs on the leaves, white tips on the flowers, and the wavy, freehand lines that evoke vines and tendrils without trying to describe them literally. A few days later, under Peggy’s watchful eye and careful coaching, I tried again, using the same back-of-the-spoon technique, first on a rather stiff, opaque paper and the second one on a softer, more translucent one that allowed me to see the ink adhere. Finally, Peggy encouraged me to ink the block one more time and run it through the press.
   
The play of rich, even black and sparkling white seems like magic to me, even as I see all the places where the cutting is clumsy, the line is awkward, and the composition not quite right. Now, I cannot decide whether to spend more time with this block, fixing what I can fix, knowing that it will never be quite right; to try again with the same basic drawing, making a better block with what I have learned in doing the first one; or to start something new, finding new mistakes to learn from.  It’s so much fun that I will probably do all three.