This is a bit different wall-hanging. I like it, but am not exactly excited about it’s similarity to the cliched images of a sun. The circle is roughly eight inches in circumference. The center is a brownstone clay with terra sig and a celadon glaze.

I finished up a number of small works this weekend. Here’s a gallery of the works; as before, click on the thumbnails for larger images.

I’m satisfied with the way most of these turned out. I’ve been waffling on how to mount and present these small ceramic works since firing them. Part of me wants them to stand alone — and some of them will — but at the same time a number of them just don’t seem comfortable or finished to me by themselves. This may also be a subconscious desire to mix media. Contrast is a significant interest of mine and I do this in part through the mixing of media.

The one small piece, it’s about 5-6 inches tall, that I’m not sure of is the orange one mounted on a rock that I found in an alley. On the two darkest wall-hung works the thickly applied acrylic paint on the board bubbled as it dried. I usually do this with oils and have no problem. I used acrylic from my small box of paints because it dries so much more quickly and the colors were more like what I was after.

To reiterate, these forms are inspired by my years of observing storm clouds on the prairie. I’m also working with an idea of creating a modern icon, an idea that’s been simmering in my mind in some form or fashion for nearly a decade now but has yet to put down roots. Thirdly, as always, I’m aiming for what seems to me beautiful forms and surfaces. I don’t feel the need to infuse meaning, symbolism, irony — although these are all good things — into every sculpture.

I’m jonesing to actually go photographing storms. There have been a few decent ones nearby in the last week, but I was without a car and there are just so few good places in these hills and trees to observe them. I’d like to do some ink and brush drawings en plein air as well if I can catch a good thunderstorm this summer, and being able to sculpt while watching one would be even better.

We’ll see if I can make that happen.

This post has to be the winner for “Longest Title” among all of the entries I’ve made to this blog so far. From Bloomberg, this is an interesting article about American collectors being called on to purchase Muslim art. Most of the writing focuses on the business aspect of a venture by the al-Shroogi family, who owns the Cuadro Fine Art Gallery in Dubai.

More interesting, however, than the article’s discussion about marketing Islamic art to Westerners — and the fact that there are indeed modern Muslim artists — is some very brief commentary about art and culture:

“Imagine, Muslim artwork hanging in Naples [Florida],” al-Shroogi says through a radio headset. “We need to do more of this,” the Bahraini banker adds as the aircraft laden with modern and contemporary Islamic art makes its final approach on a family expedition to convince Americans that the Middle East is more than a terrorist hatchery . . .

It’s an undertaking born from the al-Shroogi clan’s passion for art, the patronage of Bahrain’s royal family and the conviction that the Islamic nation a few miles off the Saudi Arabian coast has the muscle to build a genuine cultural bridge between the U.S. and the Muslim world.

Can art actually bridge cultures, and what exactly does that mean? Will Westerners think differently about the Middle East if they look at a few paintings by Muslim artists? The possibility exists for this; remember my February post regarding a Jewish atheist deeply moved by a 600 year old altarpiece.

Painting by John Torreano exhibited at the Cuadro gallery in Dubai.

The tactile arts are important to culture and communication, despite the anaemic attitude towards serious artistic endeavors in the American Church, generally speaking. Significant new paintings and sculptures created by artists of faith intently pursuing careers as artists, engaging the culture and furthering their craft, are needed in the Church as an intentional witness to culture here and abroad.

I remember hearing a story at conference in Portland a few years ago about a couple who went into the desert of Africa as missionaries. The wife served as a doctor, and the husband worked as an artist. He set up a studio in a shipping crate and made art for a year or so. At the end of the year he held a show for the community. I don’t know how many pieces there were, what the media was or what they looked like. My impression, if I recall correctly, was that they weren’t simple Sunday School drawings. They were more likely contemporary works. Regardless, the media reportedly conveyed the Gospel to that community in an effective way.

Take note, pastors. Take note, Church leadership and parishioners. What can you do to help make the name of God better through the arts? First off, make certain your own attitude is positive toward the arts. Educate yourself as to the importance of art in culture and Christianity. You don’t need a degree to appreciate art. Understand that it is OK if a person wants to create abstract paintings that aren’t about Bible verses; understand that it’s OK if someone wants to be a full-time artist. This is not a cop-out, it’s not laziness. Yes, it’s hard to make a living at times, but if society changes how it thinks about art and artists this won’t so often be the case.

Further, encourage aspiring or practicing artists in your congregation, and make sure they know there are others like them. Organize exhibits of paintings and sculptures; organize small groups so creative people can encourage one another. Allow the artists you know freedom to push your own boundaries. Yes, there are appropriate limits, but creativity begs new ideas and reminds us of how we are created in the Creator’s likeness. Don’t poo-poo something just because it makes you uncomfortable or isn’t your own taste, and feel free to engage in significant and witty critique in order to better understand such works.

I have to laugh every time I glance in the youth room at our church, where a mixed media work I donated hangs. When I first saw it there — instead of in a more public space such as a hallway or foyer — I wasn’t in the least surprised, but I was disappointed. It’s well crafted and blatantly Scriptural. My hope was that it would be hung in a place visible to anyone in the church at any time as something to meditate on.

Moth Mend, 2006. Moth-eaten sweaters, new red silk, paint.

I can laugh at the typographical triptych’s placement within my own church because I expected it, sadly, but I hold no grudge and hope that the kids who see it on a weekly basis are encouraged by it. I also hope, however, that the American Church soon comes to realize that segregating the palpable world from the spiritual world is just bad theology. It is OK to be “in” the world, even if we aren’t supposed to be “of” it. It is OK to be a part of culture in a non-pious context — in fact, it’s good to be involved in this way. How else are we going to show the love of God to the skeptics, to the people averse to church or Christianity?

I originally saw the Bloomberg article on Iconia.

I smoked a few pieces this afternoon, or at least tried to, in the kiln since I don’t have my little brick unit put together in the backyard yet. I finished two of them.

I’m using the gallery here and it’s still not working properly. Click on the thumbnails, and then click on the images again to see the photos which actually did upload correctly. I hope they get the bugs worked out of this feature soon, because it really is a nice little tool.

Each terra-sigged ceramic element is about the size of a fist, the orange work being larger than the other. The wood in the hanging elements is myrtle wood, which my brother brought back from his honeymoon in southern Oregon. I finished the myrtle with beeswax, giving it a wonderful sheen.

The orange piece looks a lot like a heart. I’m not terribly fond of the glaze, but it works here. The red inside the small “cave” is an underglaze.

The beige piece is glazed inside the small “cave,” and set in that glaze is a sapphire cabochon. Its edges are also glazed, and as you can see in the detail the smoking process attached itself to the glaze, to my surprise, and now looks a lot like something that came out of a wood firing. A happy little accident.

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.

I wandered through the Taylor University art building this afternoon and took a few photos of some interesting works with my cameraphone. The newspaper wasp nest was particularly intriguing. I’m also somewhat enamored with the tall, narrow painting of read flower-ish forms.

This is also a good excuse to try out the new gallery feature on WordPress 2.5; I’m not sure why the tool has spread the photos out like it has in Safari (on my own screen), somewhat randomly. Using Firefox on my wife’s MacBook, all of the thumbnails are in a row across the post. As I recall, this is how the WordPress demo showed them.

My impression was that these are all student works with the exception of the collage, which may have been a professor’s piece. The student works were in the hallway of the art building; the collage was part of a show in the college’s small gallery space. This is some pretty solid work from a student in my experience. Craft and concept are, very pleasantly, beyond what I’ve come to expect in recent years.

Adding: It seems this was, with the exception of the collage, a senior’s BFA exhibit. I learned this after going back to look at the aforementioned painting I liked so well. The painting was gone along with all of the other works, and another senior show was going up. Unfortunately the new works were covered in paper. The artist didn’t want them to be revealed until the 7 p.m. opening, which I wasn’t around for. I had half a mind to see how much (or, sad as it may be true, how little) I could purchase that painting for. Maybe I’ll call up to the art department if I remember. From what I can tell on the Taylor website, the name of the artist whose work I did see is Lindsay Schiller.

My good friend Joel Armstrong recently started his own blog. He’s a prof at John Brown University teaching drawing and illustration. His own work is more three dimensional in nature — other than his art cards. He “draws” with wire and creates small iconic wall sculptures out of small found objects, such as the following “Rust Bird.”

Over dinner this weekend my friend Joel Armstrong was talking about some of his own experiences relating to “Christian artists” and the “Christian art” they produce. I don’t remember precisely the context of the conversation, but the crux was this: For whatever reason, the works created by “Christian artists” almost always lacked in craft, regardless of the subject matter.

This begs the question “why?” Do Christians consider subject matter more important than appearances? Do they not take art seriously, even if this is what they study in college — and, if so, is this mentality a product of the Church’s short-sighed sacred-secular mindset of the last century plus? Do they lack motivation knowing that the Church, however incorrectly, places a higher value on pious activities? Do they lack motivation knowing that the Christian community in general doesn’t value good art, believing they can get away with cliched paintings of crosses and angels?

Any other ideas?

Just after graduating, I was very leery about my own potential as a professional artist, but I still strove constantly to better my craft in the work I continued to create. Even in my impatience compared to many artists, I always aim to improve on my processes and products.

The next show in the JBU Gallery will be the banners of Wayne Forte. I got a sneak-peak of the exhibit on Monday. Forte’s work is new to me; I must say that I like his process — the layering, the use of texture and mixed media — which redefines a traditional liturgical implement. A lot of his pieces looked to me like southern folk art I’ve seen, an unrefined (in terms of craft) phenomena I’ve yet to personally understand. However, tucked into these more generalized and expressive lines were very well-crafted subjects. The best example was the white flower central to this banner:

I’d be interested to know why Forte chooses to create works that appear less refined when he possesses the ability to create works that would more widely be viewed as well-crafted. This is not to say that his paintings are not well done, only that the general population will probably perceive them to be sub-par. People with less knowledge of artistic process than I will probably give his work a cursory glance and quickly conclude that he’s no Thomas Kinkade (”Applause”) — whatever that means to them.

I fear I’m rambling at this point. Note that I’ve put this entry into “Personal reflection.” It is by no means authoritative.

I more or less finished a few pieces this weekend, some new wall sculptures out of my new clay work. The wood (or horizons, if you wish) was all salvaged in this case. I used Gorilla Glue to stick the clay and wood together; it was my first time using this adhesive and I think it will do really well. It does expand, however, so using too much can ruin a piece.

These works are very similar to my work from five years or so ago, when I last had access to a kiln. I like the way they turned out. It feels good to have some finished sculptures as products of the kiln. Finally.

None of these are titled yet.

Clay with inlaid cabochon sapphires, mounted
on salvaged, rough-sawn mahogany;
8 x 17 inches.

In our emails earlier this week, University of Arkansas ceramics professor Jeannie Hulen mentioned a series of symposiums which helped bring her program into national recognition. The next such symposium is 31 January through 2 February of 2008. An invitational exhibit during the event included a list of artists which I perused this afternoon. One of the artists is Nicholas Kripal.

Before today I knew nothing of Kripal. Learning more about him hasn’t proved all that easy either; his name appears on quite a few websites, but none of them are his own. A number of places listed of his degrees and exhibitions, the Pew Arts website contained a brief bio — although from what I can tell this write-up is about seven years old.

Kripal is “Professor, Chair of Crafts Department, Head of Ceramics Area” at Temple. He earned a BFA at the Univeristy of Nebraska at Kearney in the 1975 — the same school my brother and sister recently attended — and an MFA from Southern Illinois in 1979.

Two things drew me into this man’s work: First of all, he’s a ceramic artist who’s work will be exhibited in my very own MSA (aka “metropolitan statistical area) in less than two months; secondly, his works seems to often deal with or draw from Christian imagery including cathedrals and labyrinths.

The above example is on the faculty page of the Temple website. While I know nothing of Kripal’s personal faith, his subject matter — what I’ve seen of it today via Google anyway — comes across as overtly Christian. They also often appear architectural in their own right, irrespective of what their inspiration may have been. He is mentioned, apparently, in a catalog titled Faith: The impact of Judeo-Christian religion on art at the millenium.

I hope I can make it to part of the symposium this winter, which is focusing on how “artists who work primarily with clay, a material stigmatized by technique and process, go beyond this stereotype to express concepts.”