Imagination

Art, Work & Breaking Out of Prison

Creativity, Fear, home, Imagination, Ministry, photography, Prayer, purpose, renewal, salvation, sleep, Spirituality, Stress, Uncategorized, vision, Work

This is a strange & dark veil of bamboo and vines that I found in Garvan Woodland Gardens in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Looking into the sun, the image was backlighted, so it seemed to be a fence guarding against my entry.

I thought about the fences that keep me from progressing in my spiritual and artistic life: some of them are barricades of my own making. I seek perfection, but if I were to seek the good first, the perfect would eventually follow. Because I seek the perfect, sometimes I don’t even reach the good! It’s crazy of course, but that is what happens when one tries too hard.

I belong to a Facebook prayer group. One of the members is overwrought because they are exhausted from trying to wrangle, cajole, force, convince or otherwise browbeat  a member of the family into a better behavior that will indeed save their life.  No doubt quitting the alcoholic lifestyle would save that person’s life and maybe someone else’s life. However, no amount of logic or emotion will make an addict change until they are good and ready. When they lose all they have ever trusted in and all their support systems are gone, then they might change. Or maybe not. It’s not up to us. This member is so worn out that she wanted strength to keep going. I wrote, “when sawing gets hard, stop and sharpen saw.”

At some point in our spiritual and creative lives, we need to stop and sharpen our saws. We can’t keep pouring out all things for others and expect to have any creative energies left. We need to be filled up again. The best life is to be constantly filled, spilled, and refilled.

I was reading an article today on http://www.alternet about the 40 hour work week and the 8-8-8 plan (hours for work, sleep, and enjoyment). After 40 hours, workers begin to react as if they are tipsy with alcohol as their reaction time and production begins to lag.  Their production goes down with each additional 10 hours added to the work week. Even more interesting was the fact that the loss of even one hour of sleep each night had the same effect as adding an extra 10 hours of work to the week!  For folks that labored with their minds, it was even worse!

In this world today, folks are so happy to be employed, they are willing to work any amount of hours to keep a job, but they aren’t happy and they aren’t healthy emotionally or physically.  They also aren’t very productive either.  We could probably put a few more folks to work, cut the work week back, decrease the cost of our health care (the cost is claims based, so fewer claims based on illness is a lower premium), and get this country moving again!

But no one listens to me, I’m just an artist with a spiritual heart who has been crying in the wilderness for a long time! I cried in the 60’s for peace and civil rights, I cried in the 70’s for women’s equality, I cried in the 80’s for an opportunity to lead where my heart went, I cried in the 90’s for the liberation of the human soul, and I’m still crying today for the whole person to become wholly human and wholly holy.  At least today I understand that the forces of evil may try to hold us prisoner, but God in Christ has defeated them! These chains cannot hold us, and neither can the chains of sin and death.

Therefore, perfection no longer holds us.  Instead, we work for the good of all (Gal 6:10).  As a creative project, you might want to photograph fences you see on your walks or travels this week. We all travel the same routes to the store, to work, to our favorite haunts. Our cars can drive themselves automatically, or we can sleep on the subway or bus and know when our stop is about to come up.  Seeing our environment anew is always good practice. Take photos with the cell phone or a single use camera. Note the “fences” and “barricades” in your environment.  They may be a keep out sign, a locked gate, a decorative wall, a privacy fence, or a japanese decorative screen between the sleeping and living areas of a small apartment. What fences are around your heart and soul? Give these over to God in prayer. Joy and Peace, Cornelia

Art, Cabbages and The Spiritual Life

Creativity, Holy Spirit, Imagination, Ministry, purpose, renewal, salvation, Spirituality, Uncategorized

“No good tree bears bad  fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit; for each tree is known by its own fruit.”   ~~ Luke 6:43-44a 

My family was known for its colorful sayings. “You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear” and “a zebra can’t change its stripes” were two of my parents’ favorites. Yet the whole of the spiritual and the creative life is about transformation!  If I took these sayings to heart, I would never have started on the great journey that has been my life’s work!

Both the artist and the person of faith believe that something ordinary, even ugly, might be the raw material for a work of beauty if only it were to be put under a shaping hand that is tapped into the creating and inspired power that is the source of all beauty that moves and cares for the world in which we live. Picasso can take the rusted out bicycle seat and its handles, weld them together to create a bull’s head, and so create a thing of beauty from what once was destined for the junk heap. The master’s hand transforms the useless and laid aside into something desirable and valuable.

The parable goes on to say “figs aren’t gathered from thorns, nor are grapes from a bramble bush” (6:44b). This is obvious to anyone who knows where food comes from! When my daughter was eight years old, I served a small church on the southwest side of San Antonio where many of the truck farms are located.  She saw a field of bright green balls, all growing in straight rows and sitting directly upon the soil. “What’s that?” Cabbages.  “Why are they on the ground?” That’s how they grow; they’re plants.  “Ugh! I’m never eating cole slaw again!” More for me. Your loss, my gain. All plants grow in the ground: carrots, lettuce, potatoes, watermelons. “Disgusting!”(I figured when she got good and hungry, she’d get over her disgust at where real food comes from. Everyone needs to know that real food doesn’t come neatly wrapped and clean in cellophane or a box at the grocery store.)

Jesus says “the good person out of the good treasure of the heart produces good, and the evil person out of the evil treasure of the heart produces evil for it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks’ (6:45).

So are we born good or born evil, with no hope of changing, like the zebra with its stripes? If this is so, then why did God bother to send us a Savior? Transformation must be possible, for we can be saved, and saved to the fullest! We aren’t trees, sow’s ears, or mere zebras. We are born in the image of God, made in his likeness and we are destined for eternity. The God who loves his creation will not let his creation fall again into hopeless despair.

Like the artist, God takes our rough materials, even those that have been thrown on the junk heaps of life, and reworks them into something new and beautiful with his recreating power.  Even the worst of us, who have destroyed our lives and the lives of those around us, can receive forgiveness and renewal.  We can be transformed by God’s recreating power! Where our nature and fruit might have originally been for evil, with Christ we can now be and work for good.  A greater hand than ours has touched our hearts and lives.  That transformation by the master Artist will shape us until we are the masterpiece God wants us to be.

We won’t live the life of a great work of art hidden in a climate -controlled museum, surrounded by a gilt frame or guarded by security. Instead, we will go out to share our beauty with the weak and wounded of the world. We will be a living witness to the work of transformation, not only in our creative work but also in our lives.  We won’t be like cabbages wrapped in cellophane waiting for God to take us up to the heavenly banquet. Instead we will be the living, breathing fruit of God’s tree of life bearing fruit for God’s kingdom until Christ comes in his final victory!

Our practice this week is to find images of transformation in your world. You could take photos and post them to your Facebook page, you could make a collage from magazine photo cut outs, or you could write a poem of the images you find in your life. Offer this experience to God and give thanks for the new creation that is at work in your life!

Joy and Peace, Cornelia

Twinkie Dust & The New Creation

Creativity, Holy Spirity, Icons, Imagination, Love, Prayer, purpose, purpose, renewal, salvation, Spirituality, Uncategorized, vision, vision

“Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. 

I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth; do you not perceive it?” 

~~ Isaiah 43:18-19

My favorite time in Vacation Bible School was the plaster handprint. When I was a child in the 1950’s, we were given our choice of one color to paint “our hand to serve Jesus.” When my daughter went to VBS in the early 80’s, her little hand had a rainbow of colors exploding all over it!

Those ladies are the unsung heroes in every generation, for they mixed and poured plaster into recycled pie pans and let all of us children put our hands into that goop so we could bring our “helping hands” home to our parents. They also cleaned us up afterward.

One summer Art in the Park teacher brought some real turquoise and real silver wire to a bunch of hot and sweaty kids sitting at a picnic table. My 10-year old hands make a piece of “jewelry,” which I still sometimes wear.  My Saturday art teacher took me under her wing as soon as I was able to write my name in cursive. I also have to thank my Mom for driving me all over town so I could do what I love the most.

Each one of those teachers stretched me as a child, but none stretched me more than two of my teachers at Georgia State University: Mr. Sitton and Mr. Perrin.  One week the head of the department would stop by and ask, “Are you working for me or Mr. Sitton?” Each time I would only reply, “I’m working.” Not letting that noncommittal answer go by, Mr. Perrin would keep asking until I had had enough of being interrupted and I burst out, “Neither of you! I’m working for myself!” It was the answer he was waiting to hear.

I do remember how these two pushed me to strive beyond myself and to grow as an artist. They encouraged me to find my own voice, my own style, and to not be an imitator of others. I could learn from others and study them, but to become an artist, I had to discover my own true vision.  So I had to press on to the new thing as yet unseen, and let the old fall pieces away behind me.

This is easier said than done. It’s much more comfortable to repeat a form than to move onward to the next one. The old one feels safe because it is known; the new one has risks because it is as yet unbirthed and unseen. It may arrive still born, and the work will seem as if for nothing. However the effort expended isn’t wasted, since the artist now knows that this path is a dead end and can try another with more confidence.

So, why is it we spiritual people have a hard time living this new and different life once we make our profession of faith in Christ? The world calls us “hypocrites” because we seem to live the same old lives as we once did before we knew Christ. There seems to be no outward transformation to match our inward change of heart and relationship. We do not become magically and radically different, but instead progress slowly into a newer and more perfect life in love. No wonder we have a hard time attracting the unsaved into our new way of life or into our congregations.  They don’t see a visible witness that our faith in Christ has made a difference in the person we are or in what we do.  We might “steal a church member from another congregation,” because they already know the drill: show up, go through the motions, and maybe one day, I’ll change into a better person. People of faith are afflicted with chronic optimism, for we “walk by faith, not sight” (2 Cor 5:7).

Now if “going onto perfection in love” really operated in this manner, I could just go to the gym and laze around, anticipating that one day my body would magically become buff and lean.  Having spent the better part of two years on a mandatory lifestyle change that has included giving up junk food, processed foods, lattes, double dip ice cream cones, large pizzas, and learning how to cook from scratch, I can say that there is no magic Twinkie Dust for weight loss.  Going to the gym means sweating, not standing around posing and looking nice.  I’m not very pretty when I leave, but I now understand the meaning of “working out your own salvation” (Phil 2:12).

Our bodies do not magically transform themselves anymore than we become perfect Christians by a mere profession of faith. We need spiritual guides, just as I have a trainer and a physician who help me through the rough spots of my remaking of my health and my life.  If I want to lose more than the 50 pounds and the 6 dress sizes I’ve already lost, my dietitian friend says I have to cut my calories to 1500 per day because of my age and medical needs.  This will require discipline, persistence, courage, faith, and suffering. It is a biblical model:  “And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Rom 5:3-5).

This might be a fun week to try out a new craft or a new theme in your art. You could try praying with the holy icons. I have an ICONS photo album on my Facebook page ARTANDICON that you can view on the computer or smart phone (they are for sale also). Spring is the time for renewing the Spirit!

See and Live

Creativity, Fear, Imagination, New Year, renewal, Spirituality

“In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you will also live.” ~~ John 14:19

Descartes the philosopher said, “I think, therefore I am.” We who are artists say, “I create, therefore I am.” Creating is what makes us feel alive because we connect to the God who created all things and to his Word through whom all things were created (John 1:1-3). “What came into being was live, and the life was the light of all people” (1:4).

No work of art can exist without light: a photograph needs light or it won’t change the film (old school) or register digitally in the camera. A sculpture needs light to display its curves and shapes; the wrong lighting can destroy its forms, but the right light can emphasize its shapes and turns. The artists of the 17th century used a technique called chiaroscuro in which they placed portions of their paintings into deep shadows, but brightly lit the important areas as if the canvas were a small stage and their subject was a moment plucked from a larger drama.  To render a three-dimensional form on a two-dimensional surface, the artist must use the techniques of light and shadow to give the illusion of form even though the surface is truly flat.

Our spiritual life is what brings our flat, ordinary lives into a new reality, a third dimension if you will.  “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it” (John 1:5). Just as a painter must control the light source and take care not to hides his/her whole painting in the shadows, we need to seek out the light in our lives. Sometimes the world can be too overwhelming: the lists of the things we want to do keep getting pushed aside for the lists everyone else wants us to do for them, we too often say “yes” when we should say “no” or “later,” our work no longer excites us but our volunteering lifts us up, our family dramas are like non stop reality TV shows or soap operas, or we have a long-term challenge to deal with  (health, retirement, grief, disability, bankruptcy, job loss, etc.).

We can let our painting muddy out until there is only grays and no contrasts of dark and light.  We can overwork our painting so that we lose focus on what the main theme was that called us to our easel in the first place.  We can forget to cleanse our brushes completely so that our colors begin to look the same.  We fail to step back and let the wet areas dry but continue to work over and over the same places until the whole has lost any freshness and spirit.  Indeed, it looks as dead as we feel inside.

This is a new year, and we can make a new beginning, a fresh start.  When I’ve sat with one of my old paintings, I have a chance to really see it. After a year, it might fall apart. There might be an area that is good enough to keep, but not the whole. It was a learning experience, but not good enough to keep in my body of work.  It isn’t representative of my best efforts.  It might take two or three years to fall apart, but the end result is the same: I will take that canvas off the stretcher strips and put a new one on. Time to try again, try better, since I know more I have the opportunity to fail better!  I’ll cut up the best parts of the old canvases and recycle them into another painting to make them worthwhile.  When a painting doesn’t show signs of life, it’s time to recycle it.

Why are we so afraid to let something we have produced in our studio be destroyed? Why do we hang onto it? For that matter, why are we afraid to let our past go and set out afresh and forgiven? If we have faith in the one who is Light and Life, we can be assured that if we give ourselves to him, the darkness cannot overcome us. We will create in beauty and we will walk in beauty.

Dreamscape: Hope

Creativity, Dreamscape, Imagination, renewal, Spirituality

“Where then is my hope? Who will see my hope?”    ~~Job 17:15

On the Tuesday following the Low Key Arts Open Houses, I woke up dreaming of oranges and people walking. I haven’t even had time to wash my “Dreamscape” sheets, but the open house event of the last weekend is still fresh on my mind.  Job says, “If I look for Sheol as my house, if I spread my couch in the darkness, if I say to the Pit, ‘You are my Father,’ and to the worm, ‘My Mother,’ where then is my hope? Who will see my hope?” He thinks of the underworld of darkness and death, the place where shades and ghosts “live” but it’s not a place where flesh and blood exists or prospers. The Pit is another name for this place, as the grave is often called, for it’s a place of decay and degeneration.  That pretty much describes the old Mountainaire Hotel our group of artists re-made with our site-specific art installations. No wonder so many of us chose to relate to the darker side of the building, for its mold, peeling paint, falling plaster, and leaking ceilings all spoke to its former glory and its current waste. I heard that this building even has a history of murder associated with its past ownership! If this building could speak, it would cry, “Where then is my hope? Who will see my hope?”

Thankfully, some of the artists did see the hope: on an upper balcony there was a papier mache girl watering paper flowers, and flying from the roof was a silly nude male balloon with full anatomical viagra enhanced appendage. As the party entered the fourth hour, no one reeled him in for his emergency room visit, but he was only a balloon. A visitor from Little Rock said what he enjoyed about coming to Hot Springs was that the artists here were “funky and had fun. They weren’t so deadly serious all the time.” My bedroom also had hope–a dream of restoration and renewal, not only for the old Mountainaire, but also for each of us and for the world. People said it was the “lightest room” in the building, as the other visions and installations were dark. The other artists saw it as it is, while I saw it as it could be.

Vision is what we artists are all about; our media is just the means by which we express that vision. If we have nothing of substance to say, if we have not looked upon the world and reflected deeply upon its ways and its meaning in the grand scheme of things, then our art has only a surface prettiness and won’t have any soul. We become decorators of the spaces, but we aren’t artists. Artists have soul, depth, passion, and feeling. They have engaged both the great joys and the deep despairs of the world. If they have discovered that their own strength and energy are inadequate to the task of living and working with power, then they are ready either for death or for life. The ones who choose hope, choose God and begin to live fully, for God’s power is stronger than our power, and his vision is bolder than our own!

I lay my bed in a house of darkness and I invited people to share in the hopes and dreams of a better world. The old Mountainaire Hotel is like our bodies and our lives: they may be wasting away because no one has loved or cared for them for a while, but God has a vision for each one of us, “a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” (2 Corinthians 5:1). This house is in the process of being made even now, for God is working in each of us by the power of the Holy Spirit to make us new and whole again. I can hardly wait to dream again, and to share in the hope of the new thing God is doing!

Dreamscape: Valley of the Dry Bones

Creativity, Dreamscape, Imagination, Ministry, purpose, renewal, vision

“The hand of the LORD came upon me and brought me out by the spirit of the LORD and set me down in the middle of the valley; it was full of dry bones. He led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were dry. He said to me, ‘Mortal, can these bones live?’ I answered, ‘O LORD GOD, you know.’ Then he said to me, ‘Prophesy to these bones, and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the LORD!'” ~~ Ezekiel 37:1-4

Two Fridays ago, I spent four trips back and forth between the decrepit Mountainaire Hotel and my lakeside condo’s well-maintained structure as I attempted to put the final touches on my Dreamscape installation. If my friend Sharon hadn’t been with me, I wouldn’t have been able to go clean myself up for the opening party.  I was on the go for nearly twelve hours straight, a reminder of my old days in ministry. As I was leaving at 9:30 pm, I stopped to chat with the young folks who were still going strong. About halfway through our little goodbye, my tired body gave in and Erin began to laugh: “You are SO tired! all your professionalism just washed out of you in one big flush!” Oh yes, when I go, everyone can see it!

That night I really enjoyed interacting with the artists and the people who came to visit the Low Key Arts So Many Open Houses. I got to talk about my art, my space, my dream, and my ministry of ARTANDICON, where art and faith meet at the crossroads of life.  We connected because all of us share a love for these old beautiful buildings, we all need restoration and renewal in some way, and we each need a dream to give our lives a purpose and a focus. I realized some folks knew my name because of my cousin, some had seen my article in the Arkansas Free Press, and others were excited that my work would continue beyond this event.  Perhaps it was the personal connection I was making with the visitors to the Dreamscape Bedroom, or maybe it was the spiritual ambiance of the space, but many spoke of the peace and calm they felt in my room, and the renewing, hopeful energy that they felt.  They felt I had the “best” room in the building, in the sense that it was the cleanest and the best smelling. I did come down every week the building was open to clean my room, to spray odor-ban and room freshener in it, and I also did a final spiritual cleansing with sage smoke in the American Indian tradition.  My music for the Dreamscape contributed to the room’s positive energy and had themes most of us have in our Dreams: love, peace, prosperity, relationships, hope, justice, and spiritual connections.

My bed sheets–The Dreamscape–have so many great dreams, and some very ordinary ones, but I am enjoying dreaming and sleeping on this community work of art. By opening myself to the hopes and dreams of others, I offered my gift of art and prophecy to a dry valley, to people who want to hear a fresh and inspiring word, brought in a new way, that lets them come alive again.  One lady recently lost her husband and has moved here to Hot Springs; her dream is to “live significantly.” Another wants “peace in the Middle East & people to use their turn signals.” The younger people let their bodies be traced to sleep and dream on the bed with me, the older ones would write their dreams on the bed. Some wrote Christian hopes, some wrote spiritual hopes, some wrote their name, and some wrote their pain. May God bless our dreaming and our waking, our sleeping and our working.

Worry and Fear

Creativity, Fear, Imagination, Love, Spirituality, Uncategorized

“For whoever was called in the Lord as a slave is a freed person belonging to the Lord, just as whoever was free when called is a slave of Christ.  You were bought with a price; do not become slaves of human masters.  In whatever condition you were called, brothers and sisters, there remain with God.” ~~ 1 Corinthians 7:22-24

Some of us are slaves to fashion, always having the latest outfits or the newest technology.  That’s not me, but I do like to dress nice, and recently my losing weight has caused me to upgrade my wardrobe every season.  Technology is a different matter, as I like to wait until the market gets penetrated deep enough for the price to drop and the equipment/operating systems to settle their turf wars. It’s not that I am afraid to buy new clothes or make a decision on the technology, I just prefer to wait on the big-ticket items until I am closer to my goal weight and the price/technology wars are settled for a while.  But it’s the times of creative drought that really get to me, and then I feel like a slave living in fear.  Can I top the last artwork? Can I bring my ideas to fruition? Will I make progress or regress? What if no one likes my work well enough to buy it? Then I will be stuck with large artworks and no good place to show them.  And my list of fear/worries is longer by far!

I can imagine many fears, as I have a vivid and creative imagination. When I am bound up in this spirit of fear, I use my creative powers to negative ends by dreaming up negative outcomes if I begin to work! By going away from the work, I clear my mind from thoughts of work (it’s all negative at the moment anyway), and fill my mind and eye with the beauty of God’s nature. After clearing my head of all the “slave to fear” thoughts, I can go back freely and let God open my heart up to pour something positive and worthwhile on my canvas.

In a like manner, as people of faith, we too often live our lives as “slaves of fear” rather than as children of God. we imagine all sorts of dread problems, worry about things God has already taken care of, agonize over sins God has already forgiven, and remember misdeeds God has already forgotten.  No wonder we fail to live in the present as his beloved children! We are too busy remembering and reliving our old lives of slavery! We were bought with a price! We have been set free from the chains of sin and death. Christ gave his life on the cross to give us life and love.  He rose to make us one of God’s adopted sons and daughters. This redemptive gift has made us free for life, love, art, and joy and peace. We are slaves not to sin, but to Christ, for he is our new master.