Monthly Archives: May 2015

For Todd Stahl “Art Ache” was more than art…it was prophetic

27 Wednesday May 2015

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40 Days in teh Man Cave cover

Art gives the artist a voice in society, whether the artist is holding a mirror up to what they see or rebuking what they feel has gone awry.

One of Todd Stahl’s pieces of art turned out to prophetic.

Stahl’s print “Art Ache” forms the basis of one of the devotions in his debut book 40 Days in the Man Cave. The story behind the print begins in 2010 writes Stahl on his website:

One night while I had some free time, I went for a walk. That particular day I was extremely stressed so I asked God to show me an idea in order to draw something significant. Before I even got to the end of my driveway I believe God gave me a distinct visual image of a heart with a band aid across it. I could picture the idea in my head instantly.So back inside I went to start the painting…

I believe God gave me a distinct visual image of a heart with a band aid across it.

At the time I thought I knew the reason why God gave me the visual. In my mind I surmised it was the fact that many people in life have very deep hurts. Pain that requires a band aid.  Aches that need time to heal. I also assumed the dark colours I chose were due to the fact my own my heart had become hardened and crusty. Feelings of bitterness were pushed way down deep in my own life.

Fast forward four years to when Stahl, whose full-time job is as a firefighter, began feeling ill. Eventually he was diagnosed with a heart problem which ended up requiring surgery. Writes Stahl:

We will never forget (Dr. Robert Kiaii’s) explanation as he took a pen, opened a pamphlet with the diagram of a heart and began to explain the main issue with my heart. While describing in detail he circled around and around with a pen the exact area where the mitral valve was on the lower left side of the heart. Dr. Kiaii also discussed how there are fine ‘cords’ which open and close the valve and mine in particular he noted had come apart and were all loose and flimsy like a parachute. He explained that since the valve did not seal properly my blood would not receive enough oxygen, therefore resulting in all the symptoms I had been feeling. Lastly, other doctors had told us that I may need a replacement valve while Kiaii explained he felt confident he could repair my valve robotically. He even went as far as to say, ‘it is almost like attaching a strong band aid on your valve’!

I know a few artists who create prophetic art – art that tells forth the word of God. Stahl’s story is the first, that I can remember, of prophetic art that foretold an event. Stahl took the art with him into the operating room and the ICU, using it as an opportunity to explain the “amazing story.

“God had a plan and the story became so much bigger than just a piece of paper and some paint,” writes Stahl.

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You can hear an Arts Connection interview with Todd Stahl on 94.3 Faith FM on Monday, June 1 at 9:30 p.m. ET.

If you aren’t able to tune in, the broadcast will be eventually be archived at www.selawministries.ca.

And you can read Stahl’s story of “Art Ache” on his website: http://www.toddstahl.com/the-significance-of-art-ache

Demystifying the artistic process

21 Thursday May 2015

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Between Friends cartoon 001

Art is hard.

Let me put that another way: creating art is challenging.

The vast majority of arts’ consumers – readers, music lovers, gallery attendees – only see the results. Few know of the struggles artists face taking a piece from conception to completion. This is one of the reasons, when I interview artists on the Arts Connection broadcast (shameless plug: Mondays at 9:30 p.m. ET on 94.3 Faith FM and archived at www.selawministries.ca), I specifically ask them about the process: Where did the idea come from? How long did it take? What was the  most challenging part of the process? What part was the most satisfying?

While the answers vary, they help the artist demystify the process and make the creation of art more understandable and accessible to the consumers of art.

For example, I have a musician friend who has been working on a CD project for the past three years. I’ve witnessed the challenges that have arisen, the frustrations faced and the anticipation of a near-completed project. When the CD is finally released, most of the people who will listen to it won’t have the faintest idea of the figurative blood and literal sweat, toil and tears that went into the CD’s creation. All that will matter is whether or not they like what they hear.

Social media has helped pull back the curtain that separates the artistic process from the finished creation. A novelist friend frequently posts updates on their social media feed about the progress of their latest novel. A landscape artist I’ve interviewed posts photos and videos that show the progress being made on current projects. And I’ve frequently posted updates about the progress on a novel I’m working on.

Demystifying the process also helps artists avoid the standard small talk comments which follow the “‘What do you do for a living?’ ‘I’m a writer, musician, etc.'” opening: “I was thinking of doing that at one point but I decided i needed to get a real job” or “I’m thinking of taking up writing once I retire.”

But there will always be those who think creating art is easy and anyone can do it. Smart phones and programmable digital cameras have made everyone think their Ansel Adams. Desktop publishing programs and print-on-demand publishers have created a plethora of Margaret Atwood wannabes. And the list continues based on the various technologies available such as video editing software, etc.

For those of us who are dedicated to our craft, we know how challenging it can be. We know the long hours devoted to creating a work. We know the pain of staring at a blank canvas, an empty computer screen or an unmarked music score as we wrack our brains for the correct colour, word or note. But we also know the satisfaction of a completed creation – or at least a creation we’re now releasing to the public because we know a piece is never really completed since there’s always a tweak here or there that can be made.

So let’s put paintbrush to canvas, fingers to keyboard, chisel to stone, eye to viewfinder, hand to instrument and create art.

No matter how challenging it is.

Exposing ourselves through our art

14 Thursday May 2015

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Meet You at the Manger scriptLast night ranked among the top 20 of the most exciting and most anxiety-inducing experiences I’ve had as an artist.

I’ve dabbled in theatre, starting in high school as an extra with the Ridge Players, which started out with Gilbert & Sullivan works, eventually expanding to contemporary musical theatre. I started out as part of the chorus in my first couple of musicals, graduating to Boy #1 in the next two. I took part in church-produced production as an adult and became part of a church drama team.

Even though I enjoyed treading the boards, writing was still my first love and began writing sketches and plays. All, at the moment, unpublished and unproduced. But God intervened last December when, through an Arts Connection broadcast, I met Kim Pottruff, artistic director of Audience of One (http://www.audienceofoneguelph.ca), a new Christian amateur theatre group in Guelph.

While researching the company’s website, I noticed they were looking for playwrights. So I mentioned to Kim that I had a few plays gathering dust in my computer and wondered if she’d be interested in reading them. By the beginning of February, I was writing the script to a musical which, if all goes well, will be staged in December.

Which brings me to Wednesday, May 13, where nine people gathered to read through, aloud, for the first time the script of Meet You at the Manger.

You’d think after three decades as a journalist and author, I’d be used to setting my words free for others to read

You’d think after three decades as a journalist and author, I’d be used to setting my words free for others to read – never knowing what readers thought of them. A table reading is an entirely different experience. You’re sitting there, with your words exposed by another’s voice, disappointed when a particular word or phrase didn’t quite work and excited when people laugh at the right time.

But that’s the tension we face as artists. Without a reader or an audience or a viewer, the book or play or movie or music or painting are simply exercises in self expression that will gather dust. And for those of us who are trying to impart a Christian worldview through their art, that message is muted and our calling is unfulfilled.

While we may worry about the reaction to our work, we can’t let that prevent us from making it public. We do need to make sure our art has been polished and perfected as much as possible. But there’s a point when we have release our art even if we don’t think it’s perfect.

And that’s the point I reached with Meet You at the Manger . I know it still needs work. But I also needed to hear other voices speak the words of the characters. And I dreaded the first read-through. I feared the changes that might be suggested. I worried they wouldn’t understand what had been written.

All in vain.

For the most part, the readers gave positive feedback. Except for a few words or lines here and there that needed to be changed, and a section that relies more heavily on the still-to-be-completed song than the script, they liked it. They really liked it.

This is only the first step setting the play free. There’s still opening night and the play’s run before a live audience. And the jitters that will come.

For now, it’s back to proofing and polishing.

Exploring the “why” of art with Calvin Seerveld’s “Redemptive Art in Society”

07 Thursday May 2015

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Redemptive Art in Society cover

In the paean of those who have provided philosophical and theological underpinnings for the role of art in faith and culture, four names stand out: Hans Rookmaaker, (Art Needs No Justification), Francis Schaeffer (Art & the Bible) and John Franklin (Imago).

The fourth is Calvin Seerveld, professor emiritus in Aesthetics at Toronto’s Institute for Christian Studies, who had a six-volume collection of his “sundry writings and occasional lectures” published buy Dordt College Press last year.

One of those volumes, Redemptive Art in Society, needs to be on the “to-read” list of anyone involved in the intersection of faith, arts and culture. The lectures, papers and articles date from as early as 1993 to as late as 2010 and were presented in venues as varied as: the Christians in the Visual Arts (CIVA) conference at McGill University in Montreal, the Christians in the Theatre Arts (CITA) conference in Chicago and Barcelona’s “Arts Gathering” conference in Spain.

In Redemptive Art in Society Seerveld provides artists with the “why” of art. I’d suggest that many of us are so busy with the “how” of our art, we often forget the “why.” We become focused on what we should create, what role our faith plays in creating art, where our art should go and who should be exposed to our art – often forgetting the foundational question: why do we create art?

The peculiar, subtle creaturely glory of artistry (can) be reinstated as an ordinary diaconal ministry: artists skillfully, imaginatively collect nuances in God’s world and present them like manna to their neighbors.

One answer is found in the chapter titled “Necessary Art in Africa: A Christian Perspective,” originally published in Art in Africa, where Seerveld suggests:

“If artistry is built-in human nature, and if artistic imaginative activity is so fundamentally at work in personal, family, and public societal life, though often unobserved, then artistry with its cultural potential left in the hands and to the whims of a godless direction will go to hell. An overwhelming portion of the contemporary Western artworld – painting, song, cinema – has indeed lost its way, I think, because disciples of Jesus generations ago ignored the terrain, or merely domesticated the least offensive varieties of the secularist fashion…

Artists who follow Christ are called to forge a community with faith-brother and faith-sister artists, aestheticians, art historians, art critics, art patrons, an artistic communion within which artistry can be reconceived and reformed from what passes as normal, so that art’s presumed privilege or art’s esoteric adventitious capriciousness be ended, and the peculiar, subtle creaturely glory of artistry be reinstated as an ordinary diaconal ministry: artists skillfully, imaginatively collect nuances in God’s world and present them like manna to their neighbors.” (italics in original)

Christian artistry, suggests Seerveld in “From Ghost Town to Tent City: artist community facing Babylon and the City of God” (a keynote address to the CIVA conference), “does not have to add something to art; it is simply competent artwork presented with holy spirited insight, the way God wants it done.”

Seerveld packs much food for thought into each chapter. But once the reader has a chance to digest his thoughts, they come away with a greater understanding of the role artists who are Christian can have in society: creating “artwork that presents nuanced sorrow or joy with the imaginative relish of an understanding bouyed by hope.”

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Calvin Seerveld, Redemptive Art in Society, Dordt College Press, 2014, 328 pages, www.Dordt.edu/DCPcatalog