“Art was not made for evangelism”

9 February 2010 by 3 Comments

This is an H.R. Rookmaaker quote that I read on Rebecca Horton’s Passionately Alive blog quite a few months ago. It’s chalk full of pithy goodness on a few different topics.

    So there are many strange problems in our culture. We have to think and work to solve these problems. They are not just Christian problems but problems of culture in general; many people are working on them, and no one has yet been able to find a solution. Now, the solution is never just a little book or a little definition or a little plan, and it will certainly take one or two generations to accomplish. The answer is not another kind of utilitarian art, Christian utilitarian art, because we shouldn’t be prostituting art to become something it was never made to be. Art was not made for evangelism. We should start a new development that bridges the gaps and solves the problem of the unreality of art in the museum. But first we have to pose the right questions. However, we are only just beginning to see those questions.

Filed under Art, Art and faith, Business of art, Christianity, Creative catalyst, Living incarnationally, Modern culture, Public art

On place, moving, living incarnationally

31 January 2010 by 1 Comment

It’s been just over six months since we moved back to Nebraska from the little town of Siloam Springs, Arkansas and

You just don’t know how connected you are to a place until you leave it.

When we moved to Siloam Springs I didn’t expect to become attached to such a small community, in Arkansas, nestled into them thar hills.

What I learned is that it’s easier, in some ways, to become a part of a smaller community. And that it’s the people that make the community what it is in large part. This is no revelation to me or anyone else who’s considered the topic, but living in Arkansas was my first adult experience, so to speak, far apart from a culture that I knew.

Granted, there were some ups and downs in our relationship with the place, but the same can be said for every relationship. And there is a little more to it than just the people, especially to a visual geek (what’s the visual equivalent of “audiophile?”) like myself. For Siloam, it helped greatly to have a liberal arts university, a quaint downtown in the midst of restoration, centrally located parks with a creek running through them etc.

So at this point I’m wondering how quickly a person can become an integral part of a different — and larger — community and by what means. I have an advantage here in Grand Island having lived here for a couple years during high school, but the same could be said for the move to Arkansas, going back to the town where my wife graduated from college. However, we’re not all that convinced we’ll be here for much more than a year as we wait for certain doors to open (or not open).

What we are convinced of is that we miss Siloam Springs — with the exception of the allergens.

Filed under Living incarnationally, New Urbanism, Personal reflection, Siloam Springs

Music and the contemplative life

11 January 2010 by 2 Comments

In recent years I’ve lamented how music has less and less a place in my life, especially in comparison to my college years when I’d buy a new album and listen to it clear through within the first week. Headphones on, uninterupted. In some ways there were fewer distractions back then — no TV, no Wii, no blog or Facebook or Twitter — and more time to give to arts other than my own.

My wife voiced the same lament again, though, in the past month. We probably pay attention to music during the Christmas season more than any other time of year, so it was on her mind. She also comes from a much more musical family than I (my family tends towards the visual arts).

After she said that I had some music on, I think it was Christmas music playing on Epiphany while we took the tree down, and I made note of a link between the enigmatic art of music and the contemplative life. Music can help me focus. Focus will be different depending on the style; that is, Saviour Machine will produce a different kind of direction in thought than Bach.

Music is part of a contemplative life, whether played or listened to.

When we moved back up to Nebraska we knew we’d miss being around some of the musicians we knew in Northwest Arkansas: Traci Letellier, Fool For Now, David Farley, Jamey Clayberg (aka Herva). It was great having very talented musicians in our local circle of friends. Nebraska has its own including Rob Martinson II with The Hatchbacks. Also here in central Nebraska is Leesha Harvey, who I’d like to meet some day.

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3gjqe8FNus]

Filed under Central Nebraska, Living incarnationally, Northwest Arkansas, The contemplative life

The artistry of the day-job artist

15 October 2009 by Leave a Comment

Aspiring journalist Serena Renner put the plight of a day-job artist in pretty succinct terms earlier this week. Below is an excerpt from that blog entry.

    In the past few months, I’ve thought a lot about work — working to live as we all do to sustain ourselves but also the concept of working to work. By this I mean the creative pursuit so many artists undergo: to work just enough to meet one’s basic needs but also reserving enough free time to realize one’s true ambitions. In a perfect world, we’d all get paid a living to do what we love, but in case you haven’t noticed, this is not a perfect world and many fields — especially those artistic in nature — require talent and notoriety, which fruit from years of practice and climbing the ranks.

    Journalism is not unique in this regard, although we like to victimize ourselves, particularly amid the current economic climate and media transformation. But actors, fine artists, designers, musicians, as well as creative writers and the like all have to start at the bottom, working random jobs or unpaid internships — living on couches or in closet-sized apartments — until they build up their skills and portfolio enough to get noticed . . .

    The bottom line is working just enough to pay the rent but not too much to lose sight of what you really want to do. Maybe that means working a pretty well paying part time job and writing on the side, or working full time for a while to save money for an upcoming hiatus . . . Whatever the case, produce, produce, produce and have faith in yourself that your passion will eventually pay off some day, some how.

This isn’t news, to me or to most readers of this blog, but it’s worth restating because I know a lot of people do not understand (in the remotest sense) the tension many of us creative types feel in the context of our culture. And because Renner did a good job presenting it in her article.

I can’t really speak to the inherent aspirations of accountants or CEOs, but I know first hand the hard-wired nature of an artist. Most of us are not lazy — far from it despite the stereotypes. We just don’t fit into the more common and socially accepted workplace model, and for that we are judged.

Friends and family and even casual bystanders find it strange when we forgo the pursuit of a [supposedly] comfortable life — reliable, better paying jobs, the suburbs etc — in favor of a lifestyle less familiar to them. Creativity, for us, is more than just a hobby.

It has to be more than just a hobby, or we go stir crazy.

And, more than that, our local and national cultures would be in sad shape without artists earnestly pursuing their crafts. As Kathleen Norris rightly pointed out in her book Dakota, broad swaths of a culture are lost to history without writers and painters and sculptors working out of that culture.

Filed under Art, Business of art, Living incarnationally, Modern culture

Where people are relocating to

23 June 2009 by 1 Comment

MSN hosts an interesting article from Business Week calculating the ten best places to relocate to in this sour economy. This doesn’t seem to easily fit any of The Aesthetic Elevator’s established categories, but the story caught my eye since my wife and I are in the throes of relocation (even though it’s not directly related to the economy).

    No state is totally buffered from the downturn, but several have gotten a boost from the energy, military and agricultural sectors. The healthiest states include Alaska, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas and Wyoming. In the Washington, D.C., area, federal government and defense jobs have given the economy a boost. And Iowa, which has seen its economy somewhat deteriorate, has also benefited from agricultural and alternative-energy jobs.

The top ten list is as follows:

    1. Anchorage, Alaska
    2. Provo-Orem, Utah
    3. Kennewick-Richland-Pasco, Wash.
    4. Yakima, Wash.
    5. Omaha, Neb.,-Council Bluffs, Iowa
    6. Richmond, Va.
    7. Winston-Salem, N.C.
    8. Colorado Springs, Colo.
    9. Amarillo, Texas
    10. Washington, D.C., Arlington-Alexandria, Va., plus areas in Maryland and West Virginia

The article on Business Week actually lists the top twenty if you’re interested. To a degree lists like this are usually pretty subjective, but still interesting.

Omaha

Downtown Omaha, Nebraska. Image from Wikipedia.

Filed under Living incarnationally, Modern culture

Shoeboxes, spec homes creating ignorant Americans???

11 June 2009 by 6 Comments

The wife and I talked last night about real estate, newer homes versus older homes, realtors and so forth. And it got me wondering:

    Has the glut of poorly designed spec homes thrown up in the U.S. from, roughly, 1960 on created a cultural deficit in that Americans look for the wrong things when choosing a place to live?

Since we’ve started looking for houses, actually since our friends began buying [mortgages for] houses five-plus years back, it’s been interesting to observe their choices and listen to their reasoning for said choices. There are some who, like my wife and I, crave the character (details), craftsmanship and environs found in many older homes in established parts of a city, but many people seem to be exclusively interested in newer homes.

From what I’ve been able to deduce, this usually stems from a desire for a maintenance free home (which, by the way, does not exist). Buyers want newer appliances and utilities and roofs. What they often fail to realize is that you’ll end up in the same boat as if you’d bought an older place that’s been cared for after just a few years. Appliances and utilities aren’t built as well as they used to be and, unless you plan on living in a house for only five years (give or take) you will probably end up needing to repair and/or replace the heating element in an oven, install a new water heater or buy a new air conditioner. I finally replaced the shiny stainless steel fan/light/heater in our bathroom last year which was likely original to our 1955 bungalow; the new one will probably die in less than ten years and is hideous in comparison to its predecessor.

Some men don’t want anything to do with painting the outside of a house as the sun and snow take their tole on soffits and siding . . . which reminds me that I need to post this picture,

vinyl siding

a stunning example of why vinyl siding is not really better than wood. This was on the garage of one of the houses we looked at in Nebraska. It was shaded, as I recall, and on the East side of a house — not exposed to hot afternoon sun. I’ve also seen the stuff pop, warp, fade and crack and it’s just beyond me why it gets used so much. Painting every ten or fifteen years (assuming you use good paint, not the Walmart brand) is a lot easier than replacing siding every twenty-five years in my opinion. Further, slapping vinyl over existing finishes seems likely to encourage mold.

Does cultural wealth factor into this equation, where newer homes in the suburbs are representative of a certain affluence that some older neighborhoods don’t allow an owner to brag about? Perhaps young mothers are under the impression that the ‘burbs are safer for the kiddos. Maybe the entitlement some of us feel after growing up surrounded by such an affluent culture leads us to believe we deserve shiny new houses.

Regardless, I have to wonder if the suburban architecture perpetuated over the past five plus decades has resulted in a more ignorant culture. Is it possible that we don’t know what good design looks like anymore? We don’t realize what wasted space or good traffic flow is? And that we’re (somewhat intentionally) losing the ability to care for our own property under the guise of the “maintenance free?”

Older homes, by contrast, often excel in design and craftsmanship over new ones. Lumber used to build them was straighter and drier, and sometimes above and beyond what was required for the job. The 830 square foot house I was drawn to on our recent house-hunting trip employed 2 x 10s for floor joists. No wonder the place was so marvelously square after 75 years! Less space is wasted in homes of that age, generally, and built-in storage was more abundant. Sure, closets might be smaller, but are walk-in closets really all that great? Luxurious, yes, but they also encourage clutter in our consumerist culture.

Seasoned homes are normally, subjective as this may seem, more pleasing to the eye. It doesn’t take an inordinate number of complexities to make a house or community pleasing to the eye. Apparently a book titled A Pattern Language talks about how a house can be successful yet appear to be a fairly simple design (from the outside). I’ve been told many times by different people I need to read this book. It is on my Amazon wish list!

None of this is meant to imply that we should cease new home construction. Obviously, as populations increase and older homes that were not cared for (or weren’t built so well, or that highways or big-box stores are paving over etc etc) are torn down new dwellings will need to replace them. Why, though, should new homes perpetuate a bland, cheap, and unenduring suburban aesthetic? They shouldn’t, and they don’t have to. A friend of mine here in Siloam Springs hopes to found a residential construction company that will bring back the details and craftsmanship of the early 20th century. He started with his own home which includes such details as a breakfast nook and drawers built into the risers of the staircase.

Will my friend find enough of us who appreciate the details in a craftsman home to float his business? Americans seem to be dangerously content with lousy dwelling design. We’ve become afflicted as a culture with the Texas Syndrome, where as long as something is big or impressive it’s credible (Yes, I know that link isn’t precisely backing up my assertion, but it’s related and a good article.). We’d rather have a poorly designed 2,500 square foot house than a thought-through 1,200 square foot bungalow that functions just as well as it’s bigger brother. Shoeboxes with holes cut out for doors and windows litter new subdivisions and we eat them up. McMansions (and their smaller cousins in more modest subdivisions) flaunt ludicrously steep and wasteful rooflines, which wouldn’t be all that wasteful if the attic was actually used as living space. But it’s generally not.

My concern is that suburban design of the past fifty years has infiltrated our psyche, and that our aesthetic expectations have subsequently been wounded without our being aware of it. Some of this sentiment, thankfully, might be changing as Downtown, U.S.A., is revivified and younger generations move back into the heart of cities. But from where I sit, we have a long ways to go in many parts of the country, and a lot of people in the younger generations still aspire to a questionable suburban aesthetic.

Thoughts?

(As always, there are exceptions to the generalizations I’ve made in this post. Keep that in mind when commenting.)

Filed under Aesthetics, Affluenza, Architecture, Entitlement, Living incarnationally, Modern culture

Busyness hindering community in America

22 May 2009 by Leave a Comment

Quoted from my friend Tony’s blog, Rockstanding:

    I read a book on stress a few years back, and the author made a side comment that I thought was so insightful. He said that the highest value of materialistic western culture is not possessing. It’s actually acquiring.

    If you’re a go-getter you never stop. And so the guy who is lavishly successful doesn’t quit, because there are greater levels of success. “My house could be bigger, I could drive better cars, I could have more power, I could have more money.”

So our materialism, consumerism, affluenza is a result of our workaholism? New thought to me, definitely worth pondering. Personally I tend towards the go-getter end of the spectrum, which is talked about in the above quote. I am not — thankfully — of the mind that “My house could be bigger, I could drive better cars, I could have more power, I could have more money.” My goals and dreams in life, the way I measure success in life is not relative to status or material possessions. Regardless, the idea that busyness hinders community resonates with me.

Filed under Living incarnationally, Modern culture

On public transit and urban community

17 April 2009 by 1 Comment

Rebecca Tirrell Talbot wrote an article titled Of Public Transit and Human Nature for today’s issue of The Curator Magazine. Fascinated as I am by transit (and in some ways the city of Chicago) I read the whole article, not too long and not too short for an internet publication.

Talbot makes some interesting observations concerning the trains in Chicago and their riders, how different lines possess different personalities, how riders in general react (or don’t react) to certain behaviors. I’ll let you read the article (linked to in the first paragraph) for the details after saying one thing: People in the city really wear iPod earbuds like they’re implants. I noticed this on the trains in New York back in February. It’s something we — and by we I mean American culture — made fun of a few years back. Here in our tiny midwestern town you don’t see it very often, hardly at all actually.

cta_red_line_rerouted

Photo from Wikipedia by Daniel Schwen.

Filed under Living incarnationally, Mass transit

On picking a place and putting down roots

9 April 2009 by 5 Comments

These might be things I’ve already said, or at least alluded to, on the blog before, but since we’re in the throes of the selling-moving-buying game I thought I’d share some recent observations.

No good place to find rentals online
On our break yesterday afternoon — playing bocce ball on the office lawn — my boss quizzed me on the direction my wife and I are going. He was under the impression the search for a house was driving our plans, and wondered why we weren’t looking at rentals given some of the details surrounding our circumstance.

Without getting into the boring details, I’ll just say that renting for any length of time doesn’t seem feasible to us. Part of this may be the difficulty in finding quality rentals, with garages for my studio, using the internet. Finding houses to buy online is easy. Websites touting decent results for rental properties, nil.

Dealing with realtors is tricky business
So far my wife and I have dealt with three different realtors while looking at real estate in the same city. Last night she astutely noted that there’s no training to be had in realtor etiquette. How right she is. I like going to the listing agent to get more and more accurate information more quickly. She likes the idea of a neutral party showing us a house, as an advocate for us the buyer. We have good reason for the communication we’ve had with each of these women, and each has given some of their time. Inevitably, at this point, two of the three — and possibly all three — will not get paid for their time.

From where we sit, that’s just part of their business. Compare it to a trade where, for instance, a carpenter bids on a project but doesn’t get it. He took the time to survey the situation and submit a proposal, but in the end won’t get paid for that effort. That’s just part of the business. Real estate seems to be more competitive in nature than carpentry though, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we make one of the three aforementioned realtors a tad mad.

Listing the qualities of a place you desire to live
“Why buy if you don’t plan on being in a place for more than two years?” the boss wondered over bocce yesterday. As I mentioned, a garage — or some kind of studio space such as a basement or outbuilding — is one of a few things on our list of what we want in a place we live. Unless there’s a decent co-op in a city, apartments and condos just won’t cut it. And by decent, I mean a place with inexpensive enough dues, a soda kiln and space for carving on wood. Painters, it seems to me, have it easy in comparison to us three-dimensional types as far as what qualifies as useful studio space.

A few other things on our list include living on the plains (we both like the wide open spaces), a decent church in town, somewhere further north than Arkansas and a nearby selection of gluten free groceries to accommodate my wife’s diet. We’d really like to be in a place with a liberal arts college and — as consumerist as this may sound — nearness to a Kohl’s and Old Navy is on the list. This latter point is practical for us, after living in a town of 14,000 for six years without a decent clothier. Walmart doesn’t count, and we just don’t want to drive 40 minutes one way to gander at the sales every other month.

On putting down roots in a particular place
I met Rebecca Horton in the bookstore at the IAM Encounter conference back in February. She was pointing out The Architecture of Happiness to some people, and I couldn’t help but chime in to affirm the book. Our all too brief conversation took off on that note, since it’s a somewhat obscure title that not very many people have read, in general.

We exchanged business cards and since then I’ve followed her blog, Passionately Alive, and found today’s entry quite captivating. She talks about her life in Washington D.C., after growing up in a small town, and concluded the post by asking some good questions:

    What impact does place/community have upon the way we choose to live our lives? What impact does our location have upon the things that we value/esteem? These are questions that I’ve been pondering significantly over the last several months . . .

    “A community, unlike a public, has to do first of all with belonging; it is a group of people who belong to one another and to their place.” (Wendell Berry, Sex Economy Freedom and Community, 147-148)

Undeniably, where we grew up and where we live presently shapes how we think and act. Kathleen Norris speaks to this in her book Dakota: A spiritual geography, comparing her life in New York to life on the northern plains in a community of 1,300 people.

The house that’s too good to be true in a place that’s, well, ugh
So yesterday we received a flurry of information about a house we thought had potential, based on the online listing. Turns out it could be just about perfect for us and our present needs; the only catch is that it’s in a flood zone and we’d have to pay for flood insurance, the bank owning the house and all, us paying the mortgage.

We have good reason for moving to Enid, Oklahoma, where this house is situated, in the short term. Neither of us want to live there for the long-term though. Per our above list there’s no liberal arts college — although there is a two-year college where I kind of hope to be able to teach a class or two in their art department — and it’s too far south. In a recent email conversation with a friend about our present pickle he said this:

    It is hard to picture you feeling settled in Enid, but I think to some extent that is due to the question of what the proper habitat of an artist is: creativity in collaboration? (the usual answer) or creativity as a a gift of beauty and perspective in a place where both are lacking? If the former, Enid sounds like the desert. If the latter, an un-tapped mine.

Well put, and things my wife and I have not left unconsidered. He did well to use the word “gift,” and also touches on my growing interest in how to get the arts to thrive in smaller communities, those “untapped mines.”

Part of the larger pickle is, though, that we don’t know exactly where we’d like to settle. I know that I would like to put down some roots, become a part of a place for ten years give or take and see what God does with me there. I want to be part of a community, which takes time.

Putting down roots seems to be a lost art in the United States. I’m not suggesting that the flexibility afforded by modern transport which Americans so often take advantage of is a bad thing in and of itself, but we seem to have forgotten the value of time and place.

Filed under Living incarnationally, Modern culture, New Urbanism, Personal reflection

Getting over an American dream

28 March 2009 by 7 Comments

My wife and I are, in essence, being forced again to think about moving. We’d like to believe we have a variety of options, that we can go anywhere we want to put down new roots on a whim. That’s part of our American culture, isn’t it, the freedom to be transient?

We considered cities and small prairie towns. We talked specifically about moving to a community known for the arts, and thought about moving north to be in a colder climate more conducive to my wife’s knitting and crocheting.

So when the best we can come up with after wrangling with ideas for six months or more is moving back to the nondescript midwestern town in which I graduated from high school, the whole scenario feels regressive. The American dream entails either moving to the city or to an estate in the suburbs (not that I’ve necessarily ever aspired to these). Plains communities of 50,000 people just don’t qualify.

Why this would bother me to begin with I don’t know. I’ve never really been a fan of the progressive ideal — which seems more like an excuse to embrace any and every new philosophy that comes along than an ideal. But last night, in a half-asleep and slightly irrational 5 a.m. moment, it did bother me. It kept me awake for more than an hour. I tossed and turned and tried to get it out of my head altogether. I just wanted to go back to sleep, knowing the paranoia would dissipate at an hour proper for humans to think about serious matters.

And it did.

We’ve rehashed the thought of moving again and again. Real estate in Grand Island, Nebraska, the Plains city in question, is very inexpensive, particularly the building we have in mind which would serve as our apartment and my studio — a large studio — with 1,000+ square feet of retail besides. It is further north, which is good for my wife’s craft and for my allergies. It’s on the prairie which is great for storm chasing. Point being, it’s not just the easy way out, moving back to where the family lives.

Further, I’ve become more interested in the past year at how the arts can really thrive in smaller communities. In some ways, ways that aren’t as immediately accessible to me here in Siloam Springs, moving back to Nebraska will allow me to play a more integral role in that city’s artistic nexus.

I suppose I’ll just have to live with being a regressive person. Drat, and blast. Of course, in the scheme of things, isn’t part of the progressive ideal being counter-cultural? And if I’m bucking the American dream and know it, isn’t that counter cultural and thus progressive?

Such wonderful logic.

gitornadopic2

Photo of the 1980 Grand Island, Nebraska, tornado outbreak. From Wikipedia.

Filed under Living incarnationally, Modern culture, Personal reflection, Siloam Springs

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