One of the few television programs I try and catch regularly is This Old House. I’m watching, as I write this, the last in their present series where they’ve renovated a shotgun single in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans ravaged by Hurricane Katrina. While it’s been one of the less interesting series for the show in my opinion, I kept watching because the house was owned by a ceramic artist named Rashida Ua Bakari Ferdinand. A blurb from her vessel gallery about her process is worth reading:

I create my ceramic earthenware vessels using an Ipetumodu Nigerian coiling technique. I then apply terra sigillata, a fine particled slip to my forms to achieve a soft, colored sheen on their surface. After bisque firing, I reduce my pots with oxides, salt, and combustibles, to result in a dark, smokey pattern from the carbon reduction. My spirit vessels are metaphorical representations of bodies as objects of physical, as well as spiritual containment. The emerging and introspective faces on the vessels evoke serenity and bring spiritual peace to my work.

It’s exciting to find someone who hand-builds and uses terra sigs. This isn’t as common as ceramic artists throwing and finishing with glaze or raku firing. These kinds of finishes seem to prevail in most craft fairs and galleries lining the streets of places like Eureka Springs or Hot Springs, Arkansas. I like her sculpture, although I’m not really following her comment about “spiritual peace.” The following piece is called Beholden Vessel.

The work is 10 x 10 x 10 inches, from 2008 and made of fired earthenware clay. She also has a page on her website, Currents of Clay, detailing some of her mixed media installations. She writes this about her installations:

I work in installation to transform spaces into living environments. As extensions of my clay vessel forms, my installation works are continuances of spaces which reflect the possibilities of our inner power as human beings. My multimedia installations pay homage to my ancestors, as I seek out deeper understandings of my existence. They are my attempts to share my belief in the interconnections of all life forms and the power of God’s presence in our world.

The following installation, March of the Tapetum Lucidum, stood out among her mixed media works. It’s from 2006 and uses clay, glass mosaic and wire.

She also has galleries on the website with examples of her “tree totems” and masks. In my opinion, her vessels are the strongest works. The mixed media mixed into the tree totems seems a bit awkward, and the masks lack the visual complexity and interest of her other pieces. The vessels are very nice overall. The shapes and finishes are wonderful, and the metaphor — combining containers and faces — is strong and intriguing.

Another brief post with some nice links as I catch up from being in Indiana last week. I have two-and-a-half weeks home, during which I need to start and finish the building of a bed with matching side tables, before another week up north for brother’s wedding and sister’s graduation.

I saw via ArtsJournal this morning an L.A. Times article on temporary architecture. This article was in part prompted by an internet rumor of a temporary mushroom-like observation deck that was to be added to the top of the Eiffel Tower. From the article (beginning with a reference to the aforementioned mushroom):

If nothing else, the timing was perfect. Architecture has entered another of its periodic bouts of fascination with impermanence. Maybe it’s the anxiety produced by doomsday predictions about the state of the environment and, lately, the economy. Maybe it’s the quicksilver quality of digital culture, closer in character to sand or water than bricks and mortar. Whatever the source, architects are playing up the idea of temporariness, and even finding solace in it, to a degree not seen since the 1960s and ’70s, when several experimental design teams explored what Peter Cook, a member of London’s Archigram, called “expendability” and “throwaway architecture.”

I’m not sure I like where Peter Cook’s comment in the paragraph quoted above could be going, though I don’t really know the context of his words. “Expendable” or “throwaway” architecture, even the phrase “temporary architecture,” doesn’t resonate well with me. This is, simply, on account of my distaste for the cheaply built environment we put up with on a daily basis in so much of the United States. Regular readers will know I encourage better designed and more well-built structures than most of what gets thrown up along American streets these days.

However, on closer examination these structures are more like installations, more like sculptures than buildings. Installations are something I’ve long been interested in, but they don’t get much talk time on The Aesthetic Elevator since they are more difficult to pull off. They take more time, space and money to create and display. Not many artists seem to go this route. Off the top of my head I can only think of three: Sandy Skogland, Dale Chihuly and Christo. OK, so that’s more than I thought I’d be able to list off the top of my head, but the challenges in creating and marketing installations remain.

Architecture is inherently sculptural, three-dimensional, so for architects to be thinking in this way makes sense to me — as long as quality of construction in the more permanent built environment continues to improve.

A mosaic of the three kings from Ravenna (The Basilica of Sant’Apollina Nuovo). Photo from the Telegraph.

This is too funny not to repost from the Washington Post:

The Associated Press
Tuesday, October 2, 2007; 5:35 PM

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — The leader of an artists’ cooperative has been sentenced to probation for setting up a secret apartment inside a shopping mall’s parking garage as part of a project on mall life.

Michael Townsend, 36, said he and seven other artists built the 750-square-foot apartment beginning in 2003 and lived there for up to three weeks at a time.

The artists built a cinderblock wall and nondescript utility door to keep the loft hidden from the outside world.

But inside, the apartment was fully furnished, down to a hutch filled with china and a Sony Playstation 2 — although a burglar broke in and stole the Playstation last spring, Townsend said.

There was no running water _ instead they used the mall bathrooms.

On his Web site, Townsend said he was inspired by a Christmastime ad for the mall which featured a “an enthusiastic female voice talking about how great it would be if you (we) could live at the mall.”

He built the dwelling “out of a compassion to understand the mall more and life as a shopper.”

Townsend said plans to make the apartment “super-sweet” with laminated wood flooring and other perks fell apart last week after he and a visiting artist from Hong Kong walked into the room and were greeted by three security guards. He pleaded no contest to a trespassing charge.

Providence Place Mall spokesman Dante Bellini Jr. described the living space as little more than “an area with stuff in it.”

But Providence Police Maj. Stephen Campbell said he and other detectives were so intrigued they visited the apartment to see for themselves.

“I was surprised at what he was able to accomplish,” Campbell said. “But what he did was clearly criminal. The mall is private property.”

From Propel, an article I wrote:

For those of us who’ve heard the Great Commission’s call and are being led into full-time mission work, the ease of getting plugged in varies. For some, the perfect opportunity presents itself in such a way that to say “no” would be like Jonah not going to Nineveh when he was so clearly instructed
to do so.

Other people possess clarity of calling but can’t seem to get plugged in. Reasons for these circumstances vary, from the right opportunity not being out there to, I believe, God keeping some back — who truly desire to go — in order to mobilize.

My wife and I have experienced both of the above scenarios. We were clearly led to be a part of Mission Data International, and we acted on that. Before this, however, I agonized (and still do) over the lack of opportunities created and offered by mission agencies for visual artists, opportunities other than graphic design, illustration and photography.

It seems as though I just don’t fit into the whole missions thing. My own interest lies with the tactile arts of painting, sculpture and ceramics. Very few openings with established sending organizations exist for people who feel led to serve in long-term missions while using their talent as a potter or printmaker.

Existing opportunities
Organizations like PIONEERS give teams and individuals the flexibility to create their own strategies, employing a variety of skillsets in order to create dynamic church planting efforts. Last year I exchanged emails with a PIONEERS team eager to have an artist serving with them in Southeast Asia. This is encouraging and gives me hope things are moving in the right direction. However, job descriptions are often lacking in these circumstances. Someone trying to find their place in such instances must possess an entrepreneurial bent to get involved this way. Not all people led to be missionaries are such self-starters.

Arts Link, a three year old division of Operation Mobilization, is devoted to getting visual artists into missions. In this way artists who want to use their gifts overseas aren’t the ones coming up with the opportunities. Within the current American mission structure, efforts such as Arts Link are a must.

Going for going’s sake
I can imagine some people saying that if you are led to serve overseas, every effort should be made to participate in any way possible. There are needs, all kinds of needs all of the time, among mission projects all over the world. Pious work is pious work, right?

I met a missionary family some years back who arrived in Spain expecting to oversee a camp. When they got to the camp the current director decided he wasn’t ready to retire just yet. The family was reassigned to a nearby church plant, where they felt entirely out of place. After seven years of service at this awkward post, the family learned the camp director would now retire, and they finally took their post at the camp.

Some will argue this was part of God’s bigger plan. Perhaps the family wasn’t ready for certain challenges presented by the camp administration; maybe God was testing their faithfulness as he did with Abraham and Isaac. While time may give us a better idea of the reasons behind certain trials,
we can’t always know the meaning of things like these in the moment. And regardless, such arguments don’t allow us to forgo making appropriate plans before we build our tower — or go to an unreached people group with the Gospel.

Serving for the sake of serving is commendable and sacrificial, but it’s also poor strategy and a waste of God-given resources. Scripture tells us that different members of the Body are given different talents. An eye can’t do what the hand is able to; the Body must work together.

Solutions
So how much patience is required on the part of the missionary candidate? How long should a person planning to go into full-time missions work search and wait for the perfect opportunity? Or is not finding the perfect and most strategic opportunity the same as a closed door?

I’ve been reminded a few times in the last month of how one person cannot rightly judge the circumstances of another. Seeking counsel is Biblical and important, but wise counsel will understand that they aren’t the ones walking in your shoes. No one else can tell you how the Spirit of God might be leading you.

Instead of closing with a true yet cliched proverb, I want to encourage readers who find themselves on the outside (per se) to press on. Oops, I guess that’s a bit of a platitude as well. Still, press on! Press on by supporting existing programs that focus on your calling, even if they aren’t exactly what you’d like to be a part of. Brainstorm new ideas with people of similar passion and research what it would take to get them going. Stay in touch with people who share your ideas. Your work will not be vain.

Must be the week of reBlogging, although this isn’t really my intent. As I’ve said before on this blog, I post whenever something catches my eye; the past couple weeks those eyecatchers have been news-snippets. Here are a few more:

Some industry big-shots are trying to change the way they can define chocolate. Apparently they want to replace cocoa butter with vegetable oil. According to Salon, “The Grocery Manufacturers Association, Chocolate Manufacturers Association and 10 other food industry groups want more flexibility in those rigid standards. They seek broad permission to add ingredients, use different techniques, employ new shapes and substitute ingredients — something the standards currently don’t allow.” Yuck. I can barely stand a lot of chocolates anymore after establishing my addiction to Lindt’s 70% chocolate bar. I hope Lindt isn’t a part of the aforementioned compainants.

In Siloam Springs news, the city approved new asphalt on Main Street. This is all well and good, but what happened to widening the road and putting in a median? It’s supposed to be the gateway to the city; two years back they added signage and a puddle with fountains where the road meets the highway, supposedly the first stages of improving Main Street. Where did the city take a wrong turn and forget this aesthetic improvement?

People in New Zealand think Facebook.com is a CIA conspiracy. Where would we be without conspiracy theorists! Which I am myself from time to time. I highly, highly doubt this particular theory has any truth to it, however.

And finally this morning, happy birthday to someone on the corner of Twin Springs and College in Siloam Springs today (via the following installation, which I took to be candles, photographed with cameraphone while biking to work):

Interesting morning links:

Left-wing bloggers try to unioninize: Oh brother

Why people buy the Toyota Prius: Image is everything

Trash art installation in New York City: Oblivious pedestrians

Study says walking worse for the environment: But better for your health