lyrics re:contrast

These lyrics from the new Sov Grace Fuse CD reminded me of New Life.

The Mystery of Your Love

Verse 1
When I was a stranger You took me in
When I was an outcast You called me friend
When I was a rebel You bled for me
And when I was a leper You made me clean

Chorus
Oh the mystery of Your love
The mystery of Your love
The mystery of Your love
Fills me with wonder

Verse 2
When my heart was darkness You gave me light
When my eyes were blinded You gave me sight
When I warred against You You conquered me
You took me as Your prisoner You made me free

Mark Altrogge © 2003
Sovereign Grace Praise (BMI)

the conversations.

fyi everyone - rob gave me the awesome pieces he made for the 12" x 12" conversation pieces. bill and i will do four between the two of us, then we're passing on to alison.

also, something i thought of at church this morning - part of being new involves thinking on the death, but not dwelling on the death (our sin) but really living out the new. kind of basic, but it is something i'm chewing on.

being 'reborn' is not once & done, but so amazingly mysteriously graciously ONGOING -
we are being renewed, we are being made new [present and active tense, by grace.]

Please Read**--Dimensions

Though I realize we are all in progress and probably haven't started all the pieces that we hope to finish…

Can you guys email me dimensions of the artwork that you hope to make for the show?

You won't be tied to [or limited by!!!] what you tell me now. But it would be helpful for the crew that's designing the space to have in mind canvas sizes and sculpture dimensions, etc, to be expecting.

Eric and the Na team is excited to have us making art work for the show and many hands and brains are working towards making a wonderful space to show it off.

Hanging the Na Artshow

We're recruiting volunteers to set up the art show and other aesthetic elements of Na starting on Friday afternoon, the day before Na starts. Who's got gallery experience and would like to help hang this show? Alison? Email me if you are interested & able.

Also, we need some volunteers with a "design eye" that could oversee some other set-up aspects. Anybody game?

pondering weighty things in solitude

hi all!

here is an example of what i like to do, and something in the vein of what i plan to do for the gallery. big white pages with lots of messy handwritten prayers.

alison- i loved your writings about the dead plant in your apartment. it is something i feel very connected to. i have a lot of plants in my apartment too. i wrote about it in the image here, but it's really hard to read. just about how you can't really watch a plant grow - it's a slow process, slower than we know - but there are wonders happening beneath the surface - beyond our vision.

so i have been 'pondering weighty things in solitude' as piper says in 'future grace' and thinking about what it really means to 'mortify the flesh'. i think i have some work to do in thinking about this before i can appreciate the beauty of being reborn.

Hi Julia!!

welcome.

...

hey all. I totally forgot to bring the conversation series to church this past weekend along with the messages. please forgive me. I have finished the first 'square', did one painting for regeneration and one painting for the 'circle theme' thats all I have for now. I am thinking about doing a drawin on mylar and then doing an experimental book. honestly, I feel like I don't have the time or the drive or creativity to complete the work. it will happen though
-r

2 month peptalk

Okay team…A little barometer check...How’s your concept coming together? Do you have a strategy in mind? If you plan to participate, have you put aside enough time in the next 2 months to devote to achieving your goals?

if you’re getting off to a late start...hey look, I want you to feel no guilt or condemnation . But I do want to challenge you to the hard work that it takes to steward your gifts well for the service of others.

If anyone is stuck…with concepts or motivation or even fears…hey, lets allow others to bear our burdens, whether by blog or email or conversation. How often do we get to make art in community, benefiting from the Godly resources of each other? And to be doing it for the service of others, even.

So let’s go do some hard things…

Fears and Art

Why haven't I made lots of big paintings since college? here are some of the honest temptations that I fight re: making paintings. [They're stupid, really. but sin and pride and fear of man are all illogical and dumb, besides being offensive to a much-more-worthy God.]

Fear of failure. Fear of not living up to my own likely-inflated views of my own talents. Fear of not getting the approval of the people i want to impress. Fear that others will see how awkward and unresolved my painting skills are. and that they'll think less of me.

Basketball players aren't expected to make every shot. Why should every drawing and painting an artist makes be a slam dunk? And why should the artist care if others understand this or not?

So yep, here's to making awkward but honest artwork.

visual aid

I have this plant in my apartment. I've been in denial about it for something like 2 weeks or more- that it's dead. For awhile I kept watering it, because it had been a plant I really loved, but it was pretty hopeless- all the leaves were shriveled and brown. I gave up watering it but still didn't have the heart to throw it out. So it's been sitting on my windowsill, this dead plant, for weeks.

Last night I got back to my apartment after being elsewhere for the weekend and I noticed my plant- it was still as I had left it, a pot of brown and dead leaves, but sprouting up in the middle of it was a single green shoot, a furled leaf!!!! I think it was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. (If I had a digital camera I'd send y'all the image, but alas I do not.) But it was such a direct communication of new life out of something that was dead...
PRAISE GOD...

ded neal

connie, I find the last compostion of your sketches the most interesting. I love the angle that it is from. I finished the first "conversation series" piece. Who do I give it to now? Any takers? alison?
Rob

began canvas 1 today

a few attempts at some dead neal poses below:

Gallery space at Na

This week Hannah & I sketched up some ideas for the community room. this huge space will include the bookstore, registration, prayer room, and yes, gallery space for the art show. So I'd love your input on the gallery space idea.

Our idea is to have the gallery space in a circle shape in the middle of the room. Imagine a 70-ish foot diameter circle on the floor with canvases on the perimeter facing inward and sculptures in the middle. Canvases would hang suspended from the 24 ft ceiling. Floor to ceiling fabric panels behind the canvases will create partial "walls".

Now, any of this could change at any second so we hold onto nothing tightly. But I'd love to hear your ideas.

Live!

So last night after he preached at a CovLife singles mtg, I shook Mike Bullmore's hand and thanked him for his functional centrality message. And then I explained how an art show evolved from some of his comments during that teaching and that it would be up at Na. When I mentioned that we've been discussing imagery related to New Life he suggested checking out Ezekial 16. Its pretty sweet, striking imagery. But I won't ruin it for you, go see for yourself.

2 outfits

Alison, can you elaborate on this idea a bit? the 2 outfit thing...

New Life functioning

[Alison, that prayer is so informative. Thank you!]

So I've been driving around listening again to Mike Bullmore tell me about the functional centrality of the gospel. and I think this whole art show thing is really helping me to do this.

i mean, i've got these images in my head that i'd like to paint...a dead guy foreshortened, informed by Eph. 2 that we were DEAD in our tresspasses & sins. But God, rich in mercy...made us ALIVE...etc. Its pretty simple, and we've all heard it plenty. but it's deep, pondering that I was DEAD. Dead. gone, vacant, lack of life.

And this has informed my proud thoughts this week, as I've been trying to talk to myself, "stupid, don't think so highly of yourself, you were DEAD until God moved. you bring nothing to the party but DEATH. So give God all credit for anything good in your posession."

So yes, since we're seeping ourselves in these thoughts of what regeneration is and the many images that may portray new life, let us ask the Holy Spirit to help us apply these truths to our day to day temptations and allow the truth to operate and conform us.

How are these images going to inform the days of our Spring?

the fruit of new life...

leaving a mark on the viewer...

having eyes to see... the prayer (below) presents us without God as ignorant, blind, lacking senses... I think of a person wrapped up, in some kind of stretchy fabric so you can see them moving but there is no way for them to really function. I've seen a beautiful clip of film of someone inside a sheer-ish red-ish fabric cube; it felt like a womb as they moved around inside it- their appendages would show resistance against the surface but not break out.

(I think that video was more inspiring than most things I saw in New York on Friday... and we saw A LOT of art... nothing really shook me though. Some "interesting" things but not much that said "Phenomenal!" "I'll know it when I see it...")

Back to the idea of death into life, and thinking about the idea of outfits relating to who a person is... what if there were 2 outfits; one that was associated with the "dead person" and one that signified "new life" in some way? What if it was the same outfit (in design) but made with completely different materials? Just tossing it out there...

also the thing with starfish and regeneration had crossed my mind too, but it seems like, "what can you do with that??" It's kind of a stretch or maybe too literal but I was thinking also of God's promise to Abraham, that his offspring would be more than the stars or sand... regeneration/foreknowledge/promise. stars. starfish. wasn't it called "spontaneous regeneration"? hmmm.

I think the 144 lightswitches has potential... keep the ideas coming, folks!

Also Connie I was wondering, does it matter when we arrive at NA? (Thinking of booking flights etc.)

valley of vision

Hey, check this out... there's a prayer in The Valley of Vision that's called Regeneration. Here's some snippets from it(Okay so almost all of it):

O God of the highest heaven...
Thou art worthy to be
praised with my every breath,
loved with my every faculty of soul,
served with my every act of life.
Thou hast loved me, espoused me, received me,
purchased, washed, favoured, clothed, adorned me,
when I was worthless, vile, soiled, polluted.
I was dead in iniquities,
having no eyes to see thee,
no ears to hear thee,
no taste to relish thy joys,
no intelligence to know thee;
But thy Spirit has quickened me,
has brought me into a new world as a new creature,
has given me spiritual perception!!!
has opened to me they Word as light, huide, solace, joy.
Thy presence is to me a treasure of unending peace;
No provocation can part me from they sympathy,
for thou hast drawn me with cords of love,
and dost forgive me daily, hourly.
O help me then to walk worthy of thy love,
of my hopes, and my vocation.
Keep me, for I cannot keep myself;
Protect me that no evil befall me;
Let me lay aside every sin admired of many;
Help me to walk by thy side, lean on thy arm, hold converse with thee,
That henceforth I may be salt of the earth and a blessing to all.

lightswitches

i was thinking about these this morning. i love the object. in fact, i spent some time drawing them and thinking on them a year ago. but once a lightswitch turns on, for our purposes it should always stay on. or it should have only a one-way function. no U-turns.

responses from c

Some of my responses

• wow rob, you’re really exploring the generative potential of those concepts.(grin) thanks for throwing your ideas onto our little space here.
• I’m challenged again, [just like last weekend after visiting you guys, esp. Alison’s studio and the DIAlogue artist] to think outside the canvas. Or off the canvas. I lean more towards drawing and painting, as in making marks on paper or 2-D surface. But I’m increasingly willing to enjoy these more post-canvas kinds of art making. Especially when the conceptual connection is strong and the visual is strong.
• So yep, I’m one of those traditional-ish art people, except I lean more towards a direct responsive ways [think plein-air or expressionist] than classical approach. But I've grown up a little since art school. So hey, enlighten me.
• re: Alison’s black box: Sarah Jeff & I read through your post Thursday night and we talked about how intense the experience would be. I like the giggle idea. Timing and pacing of course would be huge.
• Ya, I like the new life idea in contrast to death. What if we read through the whole NT color coding references to life and death. green or black. i think theres so much more here to explore. we were DEAD. then because of Jesus we were given LIFE. how extreme and different could the two be?
• Dead-men walking. Infants. Grim reaper/angel of death. kids dancing.
• what links does this have to vanitas genre, the brevity of life. mortality.
• how does heaven connect?
  
• And resurrection! Bring on lazarus!!
• The plant thing has potential, but can you make it more complex? Like what should it be growing out of? What kind of shell or discarded carcass might it contrast to? Maybe consumerism rubbish? Though I love skulls they’re too obvious. Maybe they grow out of dark or rusty shapes. Used up, retired trash heap.
• Alison, tell us what you saw in NYC & what inspired you!
  
• I saw a big Basquiat show today before I left Houston. I was struck with how bold he was to throw down on canvas. He just piled up little drgs or sometimes photocopies of his drgs and added and subtracted right there on top. i wanna make fearless drawings as if I had a huge pile of pages to fill up.
  
• Toe tags grab my attention.

yet another

I also was thinking tonight about how people identify themselves with clothes. Perhaps Melissa would be more qualified on this one. Perhaps its just me, but I feel like I can step into 'character' depending upon the outfits I wear. I own a derby hat, and when I wear that with an outfit, I transform into a different person. although, due to artistic integrity, I remember my friend Breonna having the idea to do something with hats that symbolize how people change based upon the hats they were. Guess it slipped into my unconscious. Strike this idea. But it may lead elsewhere. Also thought about having different pairs of glasses - having eyes to see.

Rob

duh

I just wrote in the previous blog that space and time don't permit me to share my ideas. I just did. sheesh.

regeneration part....lost count

Hey all, believe I have some ideas. Any of you remember the process that starfish go through when I believe the regrow their limbs? If not, its called REGENERATION. Perhaps there is something there. I came up with a bunch of different ideas tonight. Space and time don't permit me to write, but I'd love to chat with the Philly folk in the not so distant future.

One of the ideas I had tonight that stuck with me is light switches. Jesus says that we are the light of the world. "Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand and it gives light to all who are in the house." What always struck me about this verse is the phrase "light a lamp" How true, we are lamps that have been "lit" by God. God lit us for a reason - to shine! We are not saved to just escape hell, nut saved to serve, saved to work, saved to worship God, saved to shine. We are just vessels that are used by God. This is my idea: I want to somehow find/buy 144 pure white light switches. And arrange them to a wall at the conference in a perfect square 12 x 12 obviously. Why you ask?
144,000 thousand is a number used in revelation to symbolize God's elect. It is a perfect and complete number 12 x 12 x 1000. This signifies that God will save and preserve everyone of His elect. Their will not be one missing. Jesus will lose none that the Father has given Him and no one can snatch them out of His hand.

So, since a 144,000 is unrealistic, I'm thinking 144. And I want to arrange them in a perfect square on the wall with all of the switches turned "ON"
To symbolize lights that have been lit, saved, recreated, turned on. I really like this concept, and I am not sure how feasible it will be to create.
I was also thinking of terms like new life, raised from the dead. I thought doing something with the toetags that are on corpses would be cool. Sort of doing something to them that signifies death being abolished. Death where is thy sting! Thought about this whole idea of being recreated. Would be interesting would be to find an object that is utterly useless, pointless, and stupid, and place that on the floor. Then next to it reconstruct that object into something that works, is beneficial, good and is useful.
Another concept I have been toying around with is the whole verse that says "make the tree good and it will bear good fruit." "You will know them by their fruits" Lets face it a new life is a consequence, evidence of new life. You are completely changed, not physically, but yet the change is so drastic that people will say "You are a different person" Somehow to show the fruit of new life would be awesome.

I also thought about words and thoughts. We are born again not by corruptible seed, but by incorruptible seed by The Word of God. Jesus' words are spirit and life and we are born again of water and spirit. Ezekial 36 spoke of the new covenant "I will take your heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh and put my Spirit in you to cause you to walk in My ways and keep my commandments" "God works IN you both to will and do for His good pleasure."

Words by God caused us to be born again. Would be a nice visual, but not just throwing scripture verses on a wall. Perhaps a tape recorder just quoting "verses" the whole conference.

also, thoughts are another biggie. Lets face it, we are transformed by the renewing of our minds. and we renew our minds by God's word and His words shape our thoughts, which shape our ways. Thats why controlling our thoughts are so important, cause they dictate our ways.
A way to show a spiritually minded person would be great a well.

Another thought (no pun intended) is to have a plant. Actually just the pot with the soil and seeds in it. It would be left out for the whole conference. Given proper lighting and water it will grow. What a nice way to illustrate the concept of new birth through the use of a plant growing before their eyes. Of course time is limited, perhaps a Chia pet. What good about the plant is that given proper condition ie light, food, water it will mature. So true with us. We will grow spiritually if under the proper conditions.

just throwing my thoughts down. Feel welcome to comment, critique, add or whatever you feel led to do.

Rob

response to Alison's black box idea

I think thats definitely cool concept. I like the idea of this being very small and claustrophobic inside and of course dark! although I'm biased towards things that tend to be dark, as you know. I think the idea of flashing images very fast would definetely be more successful than just showing these images of "life" being created or beginning. The danger is that it can be too obvious. the baby giggling strikes me. or even crying, cause babies cry when they come out of the womb. perhaps there is whispers of wind, followed by tornadoesque wind the abruptly interrrupted by a loud cry from a baby. almost these story of us being born of The Spirit/wind and being born as children of God. Even little children. Jesus says we are to be converted and become like little children to enter the kingdom of heaven and whoever humbles themself as a little child will be greatest in the kingdom of heaven. so the baby crying - loudly I believe - can be a very powerful tool and brings much "wow" factor and interaction with the viewer. Lets face it, we are trying to leave a "mark" on the viewer and perhaps change their perspective or even enhance their view on the theme of regeneration.

the series is coming your way

Okay, one of the square series packages is coming towards Philly today. (with a pit stop in Jersey) What do you guys think of calling it "the conversation series"?, as in, "Hey Bill, have you made art yet for the conversation series?" Anyways, there are directions attached in the package, like we discussed. And the Functional Centrality CDs are in the same package. You can pester Rob to give you one.

For my local friends, Hey lets get together next week and I'll update you on all the latest. Can you guys make it to Art Night at the Martins next Thursday? I'll share goodies with you guys, too.

imagine...

Connie, I love the dinosaur-in-plant images! They're great.

FYI if anyone in Philly is interested, I'm heading to New York on Friday with Jay Walker and another girl from school. We're planning on visiting galleries, so if you're looking for some aesthetic inspiration there are 2 extra seats in Jay's car. We're leaving in the a.m. and coming back that evening, so let me know if you want to join in.

So I had a crazy idea the other night, don't know if anything will come of it, but if nothing else maybe it'll spawn more ideas for people.

imagine... a black box, large enough for only you to walk inside...the interior is black as well as the outside...when you're inside it is dark, but you hear whispers of wind blowing...then the wind kicks up, wildly blowing, all around you, and all at once images flash before your eyes- time-lapsed images of a seed blossoming into a plant in full bloom, a bird hatching from an egg, someone pitching a tent, maybe a potter forming something from a lump of clay, maybe someone communicating 'new life' in sign language. (All of these images would stream simultaneously and take maybe 5-10 seconds. All of them would be time-lapsed except for the sign language; maybe that one would be slowed down.) So that takes about 5 seconds and then there's a bright flash of light (like the kind they use for professional photography) and everything goes dark, and you hear a baby laugh.
That's it.

So maybe it's a little out there....let me know your thoughts.

"And he who was seated on the throne said, 'Behold, I am making all things new." (Revelation 21:5)

...dinograve

the valley of Giant Lizards, cool
this may sound dumb, but i have discovered the glory of an acetone print
a simple photocopy, can become an sweet looking grainy print with just some acetone applied,

very quick very fun, soon im gonna try some on a painted canvas and see what happens

valley of...?

Oh what visual generative potential this concept has!

(i'm a nerd, i know.)