Our society is very trained at this point to jump in with affirmations and platitudes about the quality of my photography or writing or what not. I’m very happy to accept praise, but what I’m trying to make clear is the point that while I am a competent photographer and writer, the fact that I can’t draw a straight line to save my life doesn’t have a negative impact on my ability to appreciate the work of other artists or to even participate in the creation of communal art projects myself. As I try to dance around the subject of what is and isn’t art in the course of writing my thesis, I want to say that I have a very broad view of what can be considered art. That is to say, I increasingly am defining art by the intent of the artist. I’m afraid I’m being rather obtuse so let me try to give an example.

I was having coffee recently with a friend who is also the worship leader at my church. I was saying that one art “installation” I would like to do at a church sometime actually is a removal of something. I want to have a church with a prominent cross up front remove that cross for a period of time. I want this to happen without explanation or mention at first. I want to see how people react and then I want them to express those feelings and reactions. I want the church to have a discussion about what the symbol of the cross and it’s reminder of Christ’s sacrifice means. If people react angrily and are offended by the removal of the cross then that should actually be a good sign, I would be afraid if no one noticed or cared that such an important symbol of the Christian faith was cast aside! But how is this art? I would argue this removal of a symbol is art by subtraction where as providing additional symbols or icons is art by addition. And as much as this is art, it clearly requires no artistic skill on my part.

So what am I getting at here. Well, I’m trying to argue different points to different audiences. To artists, wanna-be artists, and “creatives” I want to say that you should let your creative juices flow and see where they lead. As long as you are being contextually appropriate (animal sacrifice in demonstration of the Old Covenant is probably not something you would want to do on a Sunday morning) play around with the idea of art and what projects your community might be interested in or moved by. And if you are a church without any “artists”, don’t let that stop you! Certainly you have to be sensitive to the culture of your congregation and what you think they can have a meaningful engagement with but don’t assume no artists means no art. I’ve seen images printed on cheap copier paper in the church office then used amazingly in a sacred space display where people can reflect on an idea or theme. As cliche as it sounds, do a collage that contrasts make-up and car ads from Sports Illustrated and Cosmo with images of the floods in Pakistan from Time Magazine. Then put Amos 8:4-7 in the middle and ask people how their caring for their neighbor.

…ok, that last line might have been a little over the top, but I think you get the point. You don’t have to have Picasso in your church to incorporate art into your worship; and just because you aren’t Picasso doesn’t mean you can’t create for your church community! I’m certainly no artist, but that hasn’t kept me from encouraging and participating in the creative process. And who knows, maybe your attempts at creating for the community with reveal a latent skill or passion God has placed in your heart and open up a new and meaningful expression of worship you and the community can enjoy and be enriched by. Weirder things have happened. Trust me.

Great Art is communal and multi-dimensional.

What I mean by communal is that Great Art is meant to be experienced, either in it’s creation or in it’s observation by more than just the creator. No matter how aesthetically wonderful or visually impactful the art is, if it remains hidden away it can never be truly great. Sadly, for the size of the community and the platform are sometimes confused for greatness. Shows like American Idol and Saturday Night Live rarely produce truly great art. Some of the greatest artists of all time weren’t discovered until late in their life or after their death, think of Emily Dickinson or Van Gogh.

Secondly, what I mean by Great Art being multi-dimensional is that it has more meaning than it’s face value. A photo-realistic still life of a fruit arrangement has little chance of being Great Art because while it requires amazing technical skill, fruit is only so exciting. Conversely, an abstract piece that depicts suffering and grief may be difficult to interpret at first glance and easy to ignore. But when we often find that as we study it, because it draws us into an experience and makes us question and grapple with what we are looking at, we can learn far more about ourselves and the artist as a result. This is not to say that every abstract blob of paint on a page has great meaning or that every precise pencil line lacks meaning, simply that Great Art has a message and a story it is trying to tell and it may not always be obvious.

So… what do you think?

In the simplest and strictest sense, does an artist need to be in church on Sunday morning. On that account I would most definitely argue no. Artists are by and large eccentrics. Heck, right now I’m sitting out on my parents deck at 2am writing this because I’m not tired and it’s a good 10 degrees cooler outside than inside. I think one of the problems between artists and the church has been that we dont’ fit well into rigid structures. If a church makes attendance to a 1 hour service at 9am on Sunday morning the quid pro quo for recognition as part of the community, artists will rarely if ever be part of that community. However, I do believe it is vital that artists be part of SOME Christian community.

I realize this might sound a little like I’m trying to have my late night cake and eat it too, but returning to the metaphor of artists as prophets helps clarify this point. Just as there were artists in the Old Testament, there were also temple priests. Both served important role, but both lived in far different circumstances. Where the priests were highly revered and a central part of life in the temple and courts of the king, prophets lived on the periphery. While priests were charged with guiding the people of God on a daily and weekly basis, prophets only spoke when commanded. They certainly had the fear and respect of the people, but they lived outside the city gates, sometimes even in the wilderness away from others for extended periods of time.

So, do artists need to be present on Sunday morning in order to speak with authority about the life and health of the Church? I would argue no. But at the same time, I would caution artists who want to sit on the sidelines and throw stones, do not be shocked when your intentions and sincerity are questioned. It is not because you are being persecuted, it’s because you are not living in community as God has called you to. Artists must make their hearts known to the Church and the Church must accept them, unconventional though they may be, because they often have an important message to deliver.

I also recently watched a documentary called ‘Danielson: a Familie movie’ about a musician named Daniel Smith. Where Picasso was a giant in the art world, Smith lives and creates his art and music largely in obscurity. However it is quite clear that the same level of creative fire burns inside of Smith as it did in Picasso. But where Picasso’s art found a broad and eager audience, Smith remains unknown. What makes the film great is it doesn’t paint a picture of Smith as a tragic hero (even as Smith’s music career stalled, he was helping to launch the career of his close friend Sufjan Stevens). Rather it shows Smith as a true artist who creates because of a bursting forth from his soul. That is to say, Smith creates because he can’t NOT create. Even with an audience of just himself and God, Smith must remain true to the movement of the spirit through his heart and head and hands. It would be easy to cast Smith aside as crazy because of his single minded passion to create; and while that is what makes some of his music inaccessible it is also what gives it a distinctiveness and a uniqueness that sets it apart from the work of other artists. One of my favorite scenes from the movie is Smith trying to explain to a radio DJ the relationship between his art and his faith. While Smith has a clear grasp on it (and it made perfect sense to me) the non-religious DJ found much of what Smith was saying to be silly, if not crazy.

So what do these two have in common? What do a dead Spanish master and an indie musician from New Jersey have in common? I think both of them have that compulsion all true artists have to express themselves through creation. Picasso could have joined the protesters who were marching in the streets of Paris after hearing about the bombing of Gernika. Daniel Smith could get a ‘real job’ and stop touring. But neither of these artists considered it for a moment. In response to the world around them they chose to create. And they don’t make ‘safe’ art, they make art that must be dealt with. Art that raises questions about what it means to have convictions, to believe in something, to exist. The reason I think some, if not most, great creative minds seem to be a little crazy is they see the world differently from others and they also respond to it differently from others. I think it is the curse of all artists to see the world through a lens that few others understand; and it is the degree to which that vision of the world is different from ours and the degree to which they are able to explain it to us through their work that determines our willingness to accept their vision, or reject them as insane.

When I hear designers like Jon Kolko talk about design and how it changes the world I feel we have come at the problem of global poverty from the wrong direction. So many of our solutions and programs are based around western economic paradigms of aid and relief. Designers sit down and look at things from a problem solving point of view. They com up with simple, elegant, and effective solutions to problems that stump economists and politicians. I feel in some ways where the computer programmer was the poster child of the 90s and 2000s, the designer is the Renaissance man of the 2010s. Men and women looking at the world and saying, ‘wait a minute, we can do this better if we just look at it from another angle.’ I don’t think designers can drill better wells than engineers, run better micro-finance programs than economists, or grow better crops than horticulturalists, but we absolutely need them at the table!

I hope that my informal design education has helped make me a creative thinker who will take the time to find parsimonious and elegant solutions as I look forward to a future in the non-profit development field. What do you think? Are there other fields of thought or other professions you think are having really interesting debates right now?

Jon Kolko-Keynote: My Heart is in The Work from IDA

Art and worship stand together on the common ground of the unuseful. And this is why our attitude toward art ultimately has a great deal to do with our attitude toward worship. Much is at stake in whether we think that our worship is a free response to grace or an exercise in persuasion, an effort to get either God or people to do what we want them to do. If we ultimately have a utilitarian attitude toward art, if we require it to justify itself in terms of its usefulness to our ends, it is very likely that we will end up with the same attitude toward worship, and ultimately toward God.

- Andy Crouch

What I wonder about though is why. Why do I–why do we–have this compulsion to do something that ‘matters’? Why am I not content to take photos of trees and mountains? Why am I not content to work a desk job? Why do I want to feel like I’m living my life working toward a goal or a higher purpose that is outside of myself?

I think it is easy to confuse this notion with calling. I’m not talking about what work I feel called to do–I think calling is pretty specific–a specific career or geographic calling. I have no idea what I’m called to do. But I know I want to, no, need to do something that matters.

When I started writing this post I wanted to bring it around to some happy little platitude. Some little theological nugget about God and Jesus. Some answer I can give that makes sense of this little part of what it means to live. The best I can do this a cliche from Nachtwey himself, ‘If we don’t, who will?’

Click here to view the embedded video.

Stop dreaming and start failing.

No, seriously. Stop dreaming about the perfect job, the perfect house, the perfect life and go create a magnificent failure. It just might change your life.

Before you do though, read this post from Merlin Mann.

Then, seriously, go and create something so amazingly awesome that even if/when it fails, you’ve found happiness/fulfillment/success greater than you ever could have dreamed.

I guess the point of all this is I want to ask if we would live our lives differently if we started thinking now about our legacy, rather than waiting until we’ve spent a career doing whatever it is we do? Part of this is just me thinking out loud. I don’t think we should necessarily obsess about what people will say at our funeral when we’re in our 20s, 30s, 40s, even 50s–we all easily have at least 30-40 years before that point. I guess part of my struggle is against culture that promotes legacy in terms of material goods; climb the ladder, buy the homes, the cars, be remembered for your wealth. I feel like our world needs a kind of Ebeneezer Scrooge moment where the ghosts of our past rattle their chains and remind us of the legacy of empire we have built. I think if we live our lives in a way that strives always to build a world in the image of the Kingdom of God, rather than being preoccupied with our legacy and righting past wrongs at the end of our lives, we can look forward instead to the time when we hear “well done my good and faithful servant.”

“Like the biblical prophet, the artist is often an outsider, one who stands apart and delivers a challenge to the community. The prophets of old employed many of the same tricks used by writers and artists: lofty rhetoric, apocalyptic imagery, biting satire, lyrical evocations of better times, and subversive irony. To be sure, the true prophet came not to proclaim his own message, but that of the Lord.”

- Gregory Wolfe, IMAGE Journal editorial statement

Because in recent decades there has been a push back from artists who don’t want to sacrifice autonomy to be a mouthpiece for the church, it is important to clarify how the artist can help the church community without sacrificing their integrity.  Wolfe’s presentation of the artist as a prophet helps to clarify the role of the artist as a conduit through which God speaks to and moves in the world. Elizabeth Gilbert in a TED Talk related how traditionally the creative ‘genius’ was seen as something outside of the artist—something that came and went—making the artist the conduit through which the final piece manifests itself. I believe artists are in some ways more attuned to the whispers of the spirit and thus are compelled to give voice to those whispers in their work. Artists, like prophets, can be conduits for the Voice of God.