Tag Archives: Christians and the arts

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

Exploring Jesus’ journey from Gesthemane to the tomb through art

06 Monday Apr 2015

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For the second year in a row, Guelph’s Lakeside Downtown invited about a dozen artists to use their talent to depict the Stations of the Cross on Good Friday. One of the unique things about Lakeside Downtown is the number of artists – writers, poets, painters, musicians, storytellers, graphic designers, etc. – that are part of the  congregation.

This year, about 500 people walked through the downtown church plant of Lakeside Church (http://lakesidechurch.ca/) and experienced the various interpretations of Jesus journey from the Garden of Gesthemane to the tomb.

By way of disclosure, Lakeside Downtown is my home church. And my part in the Art of the Cross event was to create a photo journal of what was going on. I’m posting a few of the photos here and the rest can be seen on my Facebook page: http://tinyurl.com/kbv3swh)

Phil Irish 1Elora artist Phil Irish created this depiction of Jesus’ betrayal by Judas. Most of the pieces of paper with lips on them came from those attending the event. Phil provided the paper and lipstick and those attending provided the lip prints – making this an interactive piece. For me, it made me wonder if I could, or have, betrayed Christ as easily as Judas.

Community Choir 3The Art of the Cross event was the debut of the Lakeside Downtown Community Choir. Comprised of members of the congregation and the community, the choir provides an opportunity for people to share choral music no matter their faith, or non-faith, background.

Community participationA large cross, made from kraft paper, took up a good part of the floor in the Lakeside Downtown’s gym. Those who came, adults and youth alike, were invited to create their own interpretation of either the event or the Stations of the Cross, making it a truly interactive time of meditation and reflection.

Phil Irish - paletteThis shot of Phil Irish’s palette, for me, sums up everything about the event and my experience as a writer and photographer. It represents the chaos of the artistic process, from the discordant sight-reading of a new piece of music to the mixing of color for a painting. But out of this chaos, through practice, practice, practice – be that rehearsing a section of a piece over and over until it rings out in harmony, painting over a section of a canvas, experimenting with exposures and f/stops, or working on the umpteenth draft of a story – that chaos begins to form a cohesive work of art.

And those cohesive works of art can touch people in a way nothing else can. It can stir emotion. It can evoke questions. It can bring healing. But most of all, and especially in an event such as this, art can reflect to us the cross of Christ.

Is the message more important than the medium?

12 Thursday Mar 2015

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Here’s a conundrum: how do you critique “bad” art without coming off as someone who doesn’t understand that the “message” is more important than the work?

Let me define a couple of words in that sentence first:

“Bad” is being used in the context of art that still needs work. Art that probably could have used a bit more skill or technique before being presented to the public. Or art that simply doesn’t make the grade.

“Message” is being used in the context of the Gospel message and/or general biblical message.

I’ve often found myself in this conundrum. When I was worked at a secular newspaper, I had to attend the performance of a local, amateur musical theatre group which specialized in Gilbert & Sullivan musicals. This particular performance of “The Pirates of Penzance” was truly terrible. Most of the singers were past their prime and if you can’t hit the notes, G&S musicals are unforgiving. Fortunately I didn’t have to write a review, but just report on the fortitude of the players in producing the play.

I’ve also found myself in this situation as a Christian journalist, and now blogger. Theatre performances that just didn’t hit the mark. Books that could have used better writing or editing. Musicians whose songs could be better written or CDs better produced. In most cases, I’ve tried to be gracious in my comments, often biting my tongue to keep my more cutting opinions from being voiced.

Occasionally I’ve found a few people with whom I could share honestly. In many cases they’ve actually recognized the shortcomings and have learned lessons to be used for the next time. And the conversations we have about improving the art form have both been encouraging and enlightening.

Most of the time, though, when I’ve voiced criticisms, I’ve be accused of missing the importance of the message in the medium. I’ve been told it’s not important the book be better written or the play be better performed. People have been exposed to the Gospel and that’s all that matters.

The implication is that God can use art in spite of the quality, or lack thereof. There’s truth in that philosophy. E.g. God used an ass to get his message across to Balaam (Numbers 22: 21 to 41). Therefore God can use bad art to get across His message of salvation.

But why should He have to? When I look at the scriptural record describing the construction of the Tabernacle or any of the versions of the Temple, I see artisans who were so humbled by the responsibility that they produced the best work they possibly could.

My intent has never been to be curmudgeon or to disparage the art or artist. But I believe we can all strive for excellence in our art. Any choice to be satisfied with less than excellence dishonours God and dishonours our art.

C. S. Lewis on “Christian literature” (or art in general)

05 Thursday Mar 2015

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I’ve been a C. S. Lewis fan for decades but I almost didn’t buy this copy of Christian Reflections at a local second-hand store. I wasn’t in the mood for a collection of Lewis’ essays, knowing that they can be tough slogging at the best of times.

But I’m also continually watching for works that help define, express or make comment about the intersection of faith, arts and culture. So when I looked at the table of contents and saw the first essay was titled “Christianity and Literature,” I changed my mind.

Here’s one of the things Lewis says about the topic:

I knew, of course, that Christian story and sentiment were among the things on which literature could be written, and conversely, that literature was one of the ways in which Christian sentiment could be expressed and Christian story told; but there seemed nothing more to be said of Christianity in this connection than of any of the hundred and one other things that men made books about. We are familiar with, no doubt, the expression ‘Christian Art’, by which people usually mean Art that represents Biblical or hagiological scenes, and there is, in this sense, a fair amount of ‘Christian Literature’. But I question whether it has any literary qualities peculiar to itself. The rules for writing a good passion play or a good devotional lyric are simply the rules for writing tragedy or lyric in general: success in sacred literature depends on the same qualities of structure, suspense, variety, diction, and the like which secure success in secular literature.

It’s the last sentence of that paragraph that struck me: “success in sacred literature depends on the same qualities of structure, suspense, variety, diction, and the like which secure success in secular literature.” I’d suggest (not Lewis) this principle can be applied to any of the arts: success depends on following the particular disciplines of that art form.

What do you think? Do you agree or disagree with Lewis? Why or why not?