One thing that makes art making so difficult is that there are endless opportunities. Not only are there blank canvasses in the world, but the whole world is open to exploration and reformation. It seems to me that these vast horizons of possibility are just now being realized by Christian artists, who have too often limited their art to particular functions such as illustration and contemplation. The possibilities of gospel-motivated art calling for social justice are wide open for Christian artists, but I'm not aware of these possibilities being pursued. Certainly art calling for social justice isn't a major part of the Christian art tradition, but it's one of the most exciting areas ripe for creative development.
In the context of today's contemporary art there are so many artists who are doing art that serves to love their neighbors. I expect most of these artists are not followers of Jesus, but nonetheless a consideration of their work can hopefully help open up the realms of possibility for Christian artists who have limited the aims of their art making too much.
Jon Rubin describes his project 'FREEmobile' like this: "Every weekend during the summer of 2003 a custom modified 1968 Chevy step-van, with the word FREE boldly painted on it's sides and a funk-based soundtrack coming from it's speakers, toured through one south Seattle neighborhood (Hillman City) much like an ice cream truck. But instead of selling ice cream, the van hosted local residents or families who shared, for free, what they like to make or do with their direct neighbors.
Each weekend a different neighbor drove through the neighborhood in the van handing out free homemade stuff like hand-printed t-shirts, a personal coffee mug collection, homegrown pansies, and crotchet bookmarks, or free personal services like: hair braiding, psychic readings, bike repair, dance lessons, bird calls, and personalized poetry.
The project publicly acknowledges the idiosyncratic hidden talents and resources of the neighborhood. Like a moving museum that goes out to meet its audience, the FREEmobile was a dynamic venue for exhibiting and distributing local folk culture. The truck also became the stage for a weekly interactive performance. By allowing neighbors to share what they are naturally passionate about, the FREEmobile presented a comfortable way for people to meet each other. Each host individual or family was introduced to a larger segment of their community and visa-versa. The FREEmobile also presented a model for bypassing the commercial market system of mass-produced goods and services by keeping the entire project local and homemade, handmade, or homegrown."
See Jon Rubin's other projects at http://www.jonrubin.net/index.php
picture from the midway series by Chris Jordan
Digital artist Chris Jordan has done a lot of work dealing with consumption. In his newest series, called Midway, he has made photographs of albatross chicks who have died due to eating too much plastic. These birds live over 2000 miles from any mainland yet there's enough bottle caps out there to kill more than 10,000 of these birds each year. Chris Jordan has figured out that the capabilities of photography and of digital imaging can make statistics overpowering. His wall-sized prints from the series 'Running the Numbers' show things like '28,000 42-gallon barrels, the amount of oil consumed in the United States every two minutes (equal to the flow of a medium-sized river)' and 'one hundred million toothpicks, equal to the number of trees cut in the U.S. yearly to make the paper for junk mail.'
See the images on his website, http://chrisjordan.com/
Another example of a contemporary artists expanding the possibilities of art making and loving neighbors (my words, not the artist's) in the process is a personal favorite, Harrell Fletcher. Harrell is known for developing what he calls 'art + social practice' which gets himself and other artists out of their individual studios and working in a social setting. Often the most important part of his work doesn't exist as an art object, but rather the relational situations he creates.
In the project 'Lawn Sculptures' he partnered with other artists to make ceramic portrait lawn ornaments of his neighbors. These were given to the neighbors after being shown in a gallery. The idea for this project came about after the artist noticed that a neighbor had one of his previous lawn ornaments vandalized.
In 'North Beach Parking Garage' he and artist Jon Rubin gave each parking spot in a garage a different fortune, transforming the utilitarian garage into a creative space.
Check out Harrell Fletcher's work at http://www.harrellfletcher.com/index3b.html
These are just a few good examples out of many. Sadly none of them come from an artist who is known to be working from a Christian understanding of the world. For some reason Christians have not yet widely found a way to make art that is (1) motivated by the gospel, and (2) fulfills a social need outside the concerns of the art world and religion.
Does anyone have examples that prove otherwise?
