I am excited to announce that 4 of my pieces will be published in the upcoming issue of Cre Magazine in Sweden next month. I love how connections happen sometimes. I was contacted by the magazine folks because they heard my interview from my show at IAM in NYC last year. It certainly was a surprise and a blessing. Please check out the Mag here...and if you read Swedish, can you tell me what it says? One of the prints they chose was this one I created recently for the 62 Doors "Evolve" exhibition that they put on in conjunction with MSU's Darwin Day. While it was set on Darwin's birthday, the event is really centered on the confluence of Art and Science.
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This fall, just prior to my NYC show at IAM's Space 38/39, I started a new little series that I had been thinking about for a while now. My goal, with this little venture was to identify and isolate a select few of similar images from the archive. My hope is to return a small amount of humanity and connection to them from the masses of images presented elsewhere in the show. The last photo in the batch is how they were hung in NYC. I enjoyed this little bit of truth and mockery of both Nickleback and Instagram
Check it out here. A theology of fashion? Why bother with such a trivial subject you ask?
Perhaps its not all that trivial. Perhaps, if your response is similar to the one above, we do well to consider why it is seen as trivial. During my trip down to Iowa in October to speak at Dordt's Christian Evasion of Popular Culture conference, I bumped into Bob Covolo who is doing work at Fuller Seminary on the topic of fashion. Unfortunately I was so exhausted after my paper I did not have an opportunity to hear his paper. After reading an article someone posted on the new black dandies in higher education, I decided to look Bob up on the interwebs and found this great article on Cardus. Bob's article surveys a variety of approaches toward fashion and encourages the church to engage in thicker readings and engagements with fashion. Fashion has always been a sort of guilty pleasure for me. As an artist, clothing has always been another form of expression for me, but has always been subverted by the typical sorts of critiques that Bob alludes to coming from the church. I suspect that fashion, like the visuals arts, are often seen as trivial, and utilitarian in nature (one for covering the body, the other for Evangelism). I think Bob is on track with the breadth of questions that fashion raises for church. But, I keep coming back to...what seems to me is a avoidance and escapist sense of materiality (including the human body itself). Perhaps its just remnants of my own Dordt paper coming out, but the whole Gnostic escapism thing really could resonate with why the church devalues things like fashion and the arts....they are fleeting, of this world, and distract us from our spiritual duties, until we can leave this place behind. If we dont take bodies seriously, how much less of an emphasis do we place on those things we put on our bodies and around us in our homes and such? But that being said, there are resonances (at least in my mind) between our fields. However, I suspect that Bob is up against even tougher critics that rely upon biblical prooftexting Waiting. It seems this time of year is filled with it. We wait in longer than normal lines at stores, at stoplights, gas pumps, and movie theatres. Some wait to hear about jobs, other about tests (both academic and medical). We anxiously await seeing friends and family over the holidays. Children and adults wait, patiently and some impatiently for their presents.
But we are also entering Advent; the first season of the liturgical year. A season designed specifically for waiting and anticipation. We wait for the comings of God. Yes…plural “comings.” We are certainly well acquainted with celebrating the historical birth of Jesus. And rightly so, but the biblical readings of Advent, point us beyond the historical story, toward the future return of our Savior as well. As the first week’s reading from Luke 21 reminds us, “the day of redemption is drawing near.” Our longing and waiting to celebrate the birth of Christ needs also be the hope filled celebration of a promised particular future. In the meantime of anxiousness and waiting, we pray, “Come Lord Jesus.” Once, shortly after seminary, when my wife and I had moved to an Episcopal church community, a former classmate asked me if I was still an "evangelical." I reluctantly answered "Yes." but wanted to clarify that answer with, "but not by your definition." Intoned in his question was a judgement about who was and was not evangelical. Often, I feel that from the conservative Baptist position, anyone outside of the local church and denomination are questioned because they dont play the party line on these doctrinal positions. It becomes interesting to me when this gets mixed with politics. I just read this article by Jim Wallis who describes a shifting of the definition of who and what makes up evangelicals and their commitments, both theological and political. He says, ""Nov. 6 was an even deeper disaster for the religious right’s leaders, because they will no longer be able to control or easily co-opt the meaning of the term 'evangelical'...The biggest mistake the religious right made was to make the word 'evangelical' a political term. Evangelical is a theological commitment, not a political one." This is music to my ears in one respect...and dread in my heart. Let me explain further... Wallis continues, "It’s about the centrality of Christ and the authority of the Bible. It’s following Jesus and our obedience to the Scriptures that leads us to defend the poor, protect the most vulnerable, welcome the stranger, seek racial reconciliation and justice, be good stewards of the environment and peacemakers in a world of war. This election signaled an important change in American public life and a transformation in the meaning of the word “evangelical.” This transformation resonates so deeply within me...it, in one sense, brings me back from beyond the pail...the periphery of the right's delineation of evangelicalism. This new and emerging sort of definition is one that I will claim. One that I feel represents a majority of my Christian friends. One that we are not embarrassed by. And for that...I am thankful. Perhaps times and old definitions are changing. But there is dread...these definitions will not easily change. They will not be loosed without a fight...and that one will continue to be an internal fight that not only will push many, both inside and outside the church, further away. While a more inclusive definition of evangelical is to be lauded, the process of getting there, I fear, will leave many behind in an uncomfortable wake of growing resistance, apathy, and One of the joys of this fall has been getting to know the faculty at Minot State where I have a one year Visiting Instructor position. Due to the housing crunch in Minot, Micah Bloom and his family opened their home to me. Their hospitality has been overwhelming. I have enjoyed getting to know Micah, seeing his work with students, and seeing his own art projects. Micah is trained as a painter, but has recently taken on a very interesting video project rooted in Minot and its recent flood. Micah is a bike commuter and on one of his trips encountered these books strewn about by the flood...they were deposited along the road way, through the trees, in the tree branches, along the train tracks etc.. It was something that caught his artistic vision, but also was near to his heart. Micah speaks about books as if they are a sort of sacred object...to be treated with care. Thus for him to come upon hundreds of books decaying in the dirt, sun, and snow for nearly a year and half sparked something within him. Codex is the resultant project. He enlisted the help of several MSU students and set about recording and documenting the books for a larger video and installation project. Well, I've said a lot about it...take a few minutes...listen to Micah, watch the trailers, and if you can help out with funding, even a few bucks, puts him closer to completing this vision. Take a look at it here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1984027192/codex This morning I woke up in the Upper West Side of Manhattan. I now sit on my couch in Grand Forks, ND. It is a strange contrast of cultures and views. I love both...I love visiting NYC. I love coming home too. It was a great trip...good food, the Met, Guggenheim, and lots of walking. But the highlight of course was my own opening at Space 38-39. Given Sandy's destruction on the island the week before, we had no idea what to expect. But I was happy with the turnout and some great questions and conversations about the work. I am so thankful for the opportunity to show at IAM's gallery and certainly to Meaghan and the staff there for the publicity and work that goes into putting it all together. 2 weeks ago I took my Advanced Photography class out on a little field trip to this wonderful little church near Rugby, ND. With the help of Dan Smith, an area photographer who knows the region well, got us permission to enter the church and a nearby homestead. There are many abandoned houses and buildings in ND. I have mixed feelings about them. They are great photographic material...detail and decay. But there is much more to North Dakota than a decaying set communities on the upper prairies. |
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