Today is one of two weeks of cleanup performed by the city in Siloam Springs. Place anything you want to dispose of by the road and by Friday it is supposed to have disappeared, carried off either by the official crane-truck or by citizens hunting for treasures.

And there are some treasures. Two houses down from my own were two pieces of furniture that caught my eye, one a decent looking table top. Both were gone within hours of being placed roadside. I didn’t even wander down to examine them after thinking about the storage nightmare they would create — this on a weekend I spent cleaning and organizing. In fact the pile in front of that particular house dwindled down to almost nothing before being restocked this morning with a beastly, legless pool table among other odds and ends.

This post, however, refers to the darker side of the twice annual junk-fest. I couldn’t help but think of the wasteful society we live in as I passed by pile after pile of stuff. Regular readers know this rant already. In our mass-producing, mass-consuming culture little consideration is given to how many of these trinkets will end up in landfills. With the environmental movements of recent years this is changing to a degree, but very slowly.

Take the chair in the above photograph for instance. We’ll ignore its lack of aesthetic appeal in this particular dialogue. First off it’s not in that bad of shape. Why is it being thrown away; did the owners trade up? The dog got a hold of one corner and the fabric is a bit faded, but most college students would love to have this in their dorm room. So it might be missing its feet; what are bricks and two-by-fours for!

I can imagine, just by the looks of it, that is a cheap chair — like so much factory fare in our day and age. The company’s bottom line drives design and choice of materials. Everything has to be as inexpensive as possible in order to maximize profits to pad the CEO’s bonus and keep the shareholders happy. Further, the shorter the life-span of a gadget or appliance the sooner it will need to be replaced, thereby ensuring future sales for the company — so long as they can create brand loyalty and/or attract new buyers.

Can’t companies come up with ways to create more enduring products and still make money (Or do we first need to get them to agree to make less money?). Do consumers need to be convinced it’s worth it to spend a little more for a chair or dining room table (or house, for that matter) that possesses some staying power?

Clive Thompson’s Wired column in the March issue is a great testament to working with your hands. He starts the piece by talking about his struggle in trying to put a steampunk clock together; his soldering skills were deficient.

“Why am I so inept? I used to do projects like this all the time when I was a kid. But in high school, I was carefully diverted from shop class when the administration decided I was college-bound. I stopped working with my hands and have barely touched a tool since.

As it turns out, this isn’t just a problem for me — it’s a problem for America. We’ve lost our Everyman ability to build, maintain, and repair the devices we rely on every day. And that’s making it harder to solve the country’s nastiest problems, like oil dependence . . . . “

Wasn’t it just last week I talked about the importance of innovation, wondering where it had gone in America? And a couple weeks before that, didn’t I mention a verse in the Bible that exhorts us to “work with our hands?”

Apparently there is a bit of a do-it-yourself (DIY) revolution here in the states as we speak (or type). Scientists, according to Thompson, have discovered how important it is to use your hands — to be mechanically apt — which uses a different part of our brains than “sitting and cogitating.” I recall something in the news last year that pointed to the success of places like Lowes and Home Depot, typical stops for DIY-ers purchasing products for the projects.

I wonder about the accuracy of applying the word “revolution” with respect to the popularity of steampunk and profit margins of big-box home supply stores. Regardless, this resurgence is good news.

Personally, I feel the need for both sitting and cogitating (which is largely what this blog amounts to) and working with my hands. In a culture supersaturated with electronic media, computers and computer related employment opportunities it can be very difficult to get hands-on time with anything. Our jobs are done in front of a computer and our recreation regularly involves televisions, computers and video games. We are a quite sedentary society, which is unhealthy physically and mentally according to the neuroscientists Thompson cites. We use electronics to a fault, perhaps, instead of treating them as tools they act as a crutch. “Notably,” Thomson concludes, “all this is happening outside our broken education system. America is healing itself at the grass roots — rediscovering the mental joy of making things and rearming itself with mechanical skills.”

This is my response to Tim Jones’ post earlier today on abstract or non-representational art; read his entry here.

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Ah, back to it I see. Fabulous!

See my post earlier this week about delegation of art. In it I posited that concept is more important than craft in contemporary art. If concept is indeed more important than craft (which I think would be easy to affirm), I can easily see how abstract or non-representational art proliferates.

There are corners of the art world that are “rebelling” as it were. Last year I noted on this blog a group in the Northwest that gathered to learn classical painting technique.

Saying that the importance of concept is the only reason for the proliferation of abstraction, however, is almost guaranteed to be overly simplistic. I wouldn’t be surprised if such umptions in the art world aren’t also proffered by other parts of the culture, whatever they may be. The use of found objects, for instance, could be a reaction to a wasteful culture. In a society addicted to cheap, mass-produced goods with intentionally short life-spans, it’s very easy to find and utilize (visually and creatively) discarded and disregarded objects. Joel Armstrong does this when creating his small sculptures. The reuse of these found objects adds significant depth and interest to his abstract works.

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.

I just learned this weekend that DRC has a contract on the building my friend couldn’t get, as well as another downtown building owned by the same person. Both of these buildings have been vacant since I moved to Siloam Springs more than four years ago. DRC is also working on three other buildings in the downtown area, although these projects are not as new.

Ron Drake, owner of DRC Investment Group, has talked about his business functioning as a means to improve the overall quality of Siloam since I’ve known him. And it must be noted the DRC has never, to my knowledge, been all that profitable — though it has been sustainable and given Ron a halfway decent paycheck on a monthly basis if I recall correctly. DRC began building new homes along with its remodels about two years ago which seems to have been a profitable move, a move which may have allowed the company to continue with its community improvement ideas.

A few weeks ago I realized something. I’m passionate about living spaces. This isn’t really a revelation. What it is is a succinct way to describe how I’m wired. I’ve been interested in residential architecture since I was twelve years old. This new phrase, however, causes me to think differently about choices I’ve made in the past and will make in the future.

I had coffee with Joel Armstrong this morning. Afterwards we put my bike in his van and drove to his house to pick through the treasures in his garage. From there we drove back towards my place. This is where the story gets interesting — and where it relates to my passion for home interiors.

If I were driving we would have turned down Jefferson to get home. Joel stuck to Main Street, which is not really much slower. Main goes through downtown. It goes right by the Siloam Springs building I spoke of a few weeks ago.

When I looked at the building with a realtor two years ago I saw a piece of furniture, an antique buffet. The buffet stood out in the dusty unfinished second floor space. I almost called the owners and asked if I could have it. I regret not doing that. I told my friend who has a contract on the building I wanted it and he said sure, although neither of us knew if it would still be there when he signed the papers.

So Joel and I drove by said building on Saturday. A sign on the window said “free stuff.” We like free stuff (and I knew the buffet might be in there) so we stopped. We wandered into the building and another “customer” pointed out who was in charge. Just as I was about to get the opportunity to talk to the owners, the ones giving the stuff away, the lady right in front of me found one of the doors from the buffet in a pile of stuff. She asked the owner what the door went with and when the owner pointed to the glorious buffet the lady was almost giddy. And claimed it immediately.

The buffet was in better shape than I remembered (other than one of the four curved doors being off of it). It’s about 40 inches tall. I failed to note the flavor of the exterior veneers, but the inside of the doors were birds-eye maple. It boasted clean shelving and built-in drawers for, I assume, silver. Some of the inlay on the outside of the doors needed attention, but I happen to know that the claimer’s husband is a cabinet maker with an enviable wood shop. This same claimer also goes to my church and lives immediately next door to good friends of mine.

Even after she claimed the majestic piece I asked the building owners where it came from. They said it was left by a tenant who couldn’t pay rent. That tenant was apparently a nephew of the late Wal-Mart heiress Helen Walton. History like this adds incredible value to such an antique, although had I been able to take the thing home I would have kept it. I gave this piece of information to the claimer on our way out of the building, infusing her with another round of giddiness. She hurried back into the building to ask more about the history after calling her husband and telling him to “Come now! Bring truck!”.

If I would have stepped into the building 60 seconds earlier the buffet would have been mine. The claimer said she was willing to wrestle for it. I should have taken her up on this offer.

Of course, it seemed we were a couple minutes too late for any of the good stuff. There were two other interesting pieces of furniture — one a disassembled wardrobe as beautiful as the buffet — that the other couple milling around in the junk already claimed. As it was the building owners (reputed in town for their apparent unwillingness to keep up or sell at reasonable prices the many downtown buildings they own) hadn’t even decided amongst themselves what they were giving away or keeping. The one other thing I really wanted, a little balance scale, they decided they were keeping. I would have used the scale for weighing out materials in glaze-making. I went home with a couple antique-y things for my dad, hardly qualifying as any kind of consolation prize.

Is it insane to obsess so much over a dusty old piece of furniture? I spent the next few hours thinking about this whole scenario. First of all I wondered why God, in whom I believe strongly and trust to take care of me (even if this is in ways I don’t understand), would allow me to even see the “free stuff” sign. Why did He pick this Saturday for Joel to insist I go back to his house? Why didn’t I suggest Joel take Jefferson instead of letting him keep driving down Main Street? If we wouldn’t have seen the sign I would never have known what I missed out on, that I was less than a minute from getting this wonderful piece of furniture for free, a piece of furniture I had longed for for two years or more. I would have assumed, after my friend signs the contract on the building in September, that the owners took it with them. It was never guaranteed that I would get it.

And it would have been less torment if we arrived at the building later, after the claimer drove off with the buffet. The claimer who I will now see every week at church, reminding me of my loss. It says in the Bible, in the book of James, that we are to rejoice in tribulation. For me this is tribulation.

I hope I came across as civilized to the claimer. I didn’t take her up on her wrestling challenge. I tried to say encouraging things, although I can’t remember exactly how any of them came out. I remember saying something like, “Well, I’m glad there are other people in Siloam with such good taste.” I’m not sure if this came out in a positive or negative way to the hearers. I did call my friend, the claimer’s neighbor, and suggest he go next door and lust after the beautiful object (said mostly in jest, of course). My friend didn’t do this, which I suppose I should be thankful for.

Part of my interest probably stems from being a dumpster-diver, from my keen interest in salvage and restoration. This was a find, an incredible find. And the claimer knew it. And I’m sincerely happy for her. I’m just quite sad for myself. And my wife, who was with me when we saw the buffet two years ago, is almost as sad.

What will I learn from this experience? Am I supposed to learn something, or am I just supposed to give grace which in turn will make God look good — which I’m perfectly OK with and which God deserves from us. Or maybe I was supposed to wrestle this woman, probably only five years older than me (roughly). Maybe my wrestling her for this beautiful piece of furniture would be kind of like Jesus’ anger at the vendors in the Temple. After all, I do believe that my passionate interest in beautiful, tactile things is a gift from God.

I know, I know, that last one is more than a little bit of a stretch. Truth is I have know idea why God allowed this to happen in my life. I may never know.

Part of the humor in the whole adventure was that Joel didn’t come away with much free stuff either, and he’s as much of a salvage monkey as I am. He kept asking for the junkiest and most obscure little items — an old sign, spools of wire — which the owners of the building decided on the spot they were keeping. Old, half-used spools of steel wire they keep, and significant, wondermous antique furniture formerly owned by the Walton family they give away! How incredibly strange this seems to me!

I know that I will look back on the morning and laugh.

Once I get over my insane sadness. Once I stop kicking myself for not being more aggressive, for not walking into the building and yelling “Where’s the buffet that used to be upstairs? I want it!” which, my wife will tell you, isn’t all that much out of character for me.

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

Some of Brent Houzenga’s works seen in a downtown Des Moines coffee shop, taken with my cameraphone:

“Idiom (True lover’s knot)”

“Last breath”

Seen this a few different places now:

A Chinese farmer has made his own solar-powered water heater out of beer bottles and hosepipes.

“I invented this for my mother. I wanted her to shower comfortably,” says Ma Yanjun, of Qiqiao village, Shaanxi province.

Ma’s invention features 66 beer bottles attached to a board. The bottles are connected to each other so that water flows through them.

Sunlight heats the water as it passes slowly through the bottles before flowing into the bathroom as hot water, reports China Economy Network.

Ma says it provides enough hot water for all three members of his family to have a shower every day.

And more than 10 families in the village have already followed suit and installed their own versions of Ma’s invention.

Reblogged from Ananova.

The following is an interview with Cosette Cornelius-Bates. Cosette’s undergaduate work was in art and writing. She is presently finishing up her thesis at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia, in theology and the arts. She is knitting her thesis.

I see your undergraduate work was in art and English. What prompted you to go to graduate school?

The need to know more about Christianity and further explore things as a artist who is also a Christian. Also, graduate school is a great place to keep on doing your art.

Yeah, disciplining myself to create after graduating — since I wasn’t pursuing art full-time — has been tough. Did you ever consider pursuing an MFA from a Christian university?

Nope. I was very much interested in learning about both theology and art at the same time.

Ah, sure. I found myself in a very similar position. I remember, albeit vaguely, seeing Regent’s theology and the arts program when I was looking for an MFA program at a Christian school (around the year 2000). I was consindering an MFA at the time with the thought of teaching at the college level. What has been your impression of the program there at Regent? Is it adequate, is it relevant to the needs and desires of its students and the Christian community? 

Regent’s history lends it to cross-disciplined Christianity, starting from the belief that we are all ministers no matter what we do. It trained (and still trains) lay people to combine their vocation with Christian thinking. That said, Regent’s program is not an MFA program and people coming into it will be incredibly let down if that’s what they expect. You’re expected to already be a professional artist coming in. You may have to fight a bit for your education here, but it is well worth it.

I do not like the word relevant as used in the Christian community, so I will use the word necessary.

It is certainly a loaded term, but the best I could come up with for the situation!

Regent is a great theology school, albeit spread a bit thin. What they are trying to do and accomplish is necessary to both the growth of the church and to the people who go here. Like all institutions, it has its problems, but they do not yet trump what they have to offer.

What is the balance between theology (presumably lectures) and studio courses in the program?

The program is first and foremost a Masters of Christian Studies, so it certainly leans towards the theology. You have to have a love of your art and know how to keep doing it when very busy to get any art in the first year. My friend Jim (who is doing his thesis show with mine) and I both got nothing done our first year here. Or maybe that is necessary too.

How is knitting related to theology?

For me, everything is theological. Knitting in particular strikes me as connected on many levels. At the very bottom, it is something we can do to be creative in our everyday lives. One of the questions I am asking in my thesis is how we live as people made in the image of a creative God.

At its best, knitting is also relational- not only in that we take seriously our role as created by a creative God- but also in that knitting is inherently about other people. It is about care, love, warmth, prayers and wishes. It is also about people getting together, talking, telling stories, being productive and creative together.

One step deeper along this path, knitting is about stewardship. It is about sheep and alpaca, llama and goat. It is about taking the time to know why these are amazing gifts from God, caring about how the animals are treated and appreciating the gifts of creation.

As you can see, knitting is a deep practice. It harkens back generations in a world that is obsessed with shallow consumption. It takes into account other humans, creation, and God in a culture where we are told that none of that matters, only our purchases. Practices like knitting, living theology, are essential to our world right now. They help to preserve and give meaning in a world in which it is often absent. Knitting is an example of what philosopher Albert Borgmann calls a ‘focal practice’-a practice that brings things out of the muck and business of the modern world and into a place where we can see again.

What made you think of knitting your thesis?

When the time came to decide, I had a class called ‘Vocation of the Artist.’ I brought in my paintings, my poetry, and my knitting. Everybody was especially taken by the knitting and that was when I knew that knitting had a power that I did not expect. So I decided to explore knitting and theology more.

Do your projects visually reflect theology? If so, how?

Nope. I do have a scarf called the holy spirit scarf.

You use a lot of recycled yarn — a very important part of your work. Does the theological idea of restoration show in your work, or play out in the process? 

The recycling is certainly playing with the ideas of restoration and redemption. I’m subverting the modern norm of mass producing too many animal product sweaters and not taking the product seriously. In re-knitting, I am holding the animal fiber yarn up as something more valuable that needs to be considered. On another front, I am also, very practically, recycling sweaters and fibers that no one is willing to call lovely and precious and making them lovely and precious. Just doing my little part in the incarnation.

Most (in fact, all that I can find) of your knitting projects result in functional objects. Have you ever considered using this craft to draw, paint or sculpt non-functional objects?

I have considered it. On a personal level, I don’t think I can subvert a medium that I love so much. I am too attached to the practicality of wool and to all of the women who came before me. I am planning a painting and lace shawl project, but the shawls will still be ultimately useful. For me, wool is for warmth. When not used for warmth, it almost seems a waste to me. That said, I would totally buy a weaving or what have you for my wall. I don’t mind if others do it, it’s just not my thing. When you become so deeply involved with a medium while making art, I expect that you’re probably using it in good ways.

How has the art community approached and/or viewed your knitting?

I am more a member of the crafting community than the art community. The nice thing about knitting is that everyone understands it. People naturally know what it means. Many of the people who originally were so moved by my knitting are fine artists, but, yet, knitting seems more primal to me. That said, I can’t imagine it going over well in the high art community. It does go over well with random people on buses though.

Your Etsy store is doing very well according to your blog. How long have you used Etsy? How did the store become so successful?

I have been on Etsy since June 26, 2006. I really have no idea how my store became successful. I hope that I do good work and do it well and I hope that is what people are attracted to.