Tonight in Lexington Travis Shaffer will have the closing reception for his exhibit "Every Church in Fayette County."   Yesterday, I had the opportunity to meet him at the gallery and talk to him about the show.  The exhibit marks the final project of his masters degree at UofK.

By searching the phone book and google maps, Travis found every church building in Fayette County (surrounding Lexington) and then went and made a photograph of the exterior.  Over 200 prints are displayed in grids.  A painted map with pins marks the locations of each church building and each individual print shows the GPS coordinates of where the church is located.

As part of the closing reception tonight at Land of Tomorrow Gallery a performance element will be added to the exhibit when Travis will hand out 'giving envelopes' much like you might find in a church.  For whatever amount a visitor would like to pay, they can exchange the 'offering' for a print, and take a piece from the exhibit home with them.  Travis explained to me that he hopes this clever financial exchange will provide insight into the reasons that art institutions are constantly in need of money while many churches thrive.  By offering a pay-what-you-want option for art buying he's able to open the purchase of art to a much larger audience and hopes that his own artmaking might become sustainable in this way.  He also hopes to open up the Every Church project to other cities where he can imagine making it a collaboration with other photographers, not making all the pictures himself.

The outside of the gallery.  Travis added the steeple.

Family Curse: Desire by Alan Vales

Sojourn artist Alan Vales just found out that 3 of his assemblage artworks will be included in the new CIVA traveling exhibit Curse or Calling? At Work in God’s World.

The exhibit opens in August at Evangel University and then will go on to travel around the country for up to three years. I'm sure we'll get together a whole crew to go attend the exhibit opening. I'll post the invite here when it gets closer. This is a big deal and we definitely want to celebrate with Alan. Alan hopes to one day make a living with his art, so this is a strong step in that direction.

About CIVA

CIVA stands for Christians In The Visual Arts and is the largest organization of its kind. Their mission is to explore and nurture the relationship between the VISUAL ARTS and the CHRISTIAN FAITH, a pretty great mission if you ask me. And they've been around since 1979 so they've got a track record. They put together exhibits, workshops, and conferences. They publish books and a quarterly magazine called Seen which recently has focused on really interesting contemporary work.  In the fall CIVA Seen I'll be answering some questions about what a gallery director/curator looks for from artists.  Generally, CIVA does whatever they can to support Christian artists and churches, so I'd recommend becoming a member and getting involved.

Astoria Scum River Bridge from Jason Eppink on Vimeo.

This video describes a great example of how artist Jason Eppink used artistic creativity make real, physical social transformation happen.

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.

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?

Recently, I was given the task of writing up some notes for how 'the artist' can be a metaphor for leadership. Once Mike Cosper and I come up with the final draft, maybe I can post it here, but for now I'll just share my first thought. The first thought I had when trying to wrap my mind around this topic was to remember Adam's first words upon seeing Eve for the first time.
"'At last!' the man exclaimed.
'This is bone from my bone
And flesh from my flesh.
She shall be called woman,
Because she was taken from man."

Adam, from the start, was leading his family well from the well of joy he was experiencing. His poetry was a blessing to Eve and a spontaneous praise to God who created her.

Artists are leaders. They are at the front lines of cultural trends and artists create the contexts in which we all live our lives. Architects shape the space of our living. Visual artists can change the mood of a whole room with a small piece of artwork. Musicians shape the emotional range of our work places and our homes. Of course, the emotional range created by artists can set the tone for bitterness, or fatigue, or mindlessness, but I think it's also possible for artists to shape contexts into a tone of joy.

I chose the picture above of Jason Crigler during the installation of his current exhibit 'Ethiopia' at the 930 because I think he and the other artists that worked on that exhibit created a context for joy. Partially because of Jason's contagious smile, and partially because of his deep understanding of joy in the midst of poverty, I think the Ethiopia exhibit and the artist behind the photographs lead us toward joy.

As Sojourn is in the process of 40 days of prayer, an artwork keeps coming up in my mind.  Sojourner Michael Diaz made the sculptural piece ‘The New American Standard’ for the Holy Lands exhibit at the 930 gallery earlier this summer.

This artwork looks exactly like a traditional prayer kneeler found in any kind of Christian chapel.  There is a simple wooden cross on the wall.  The only other objects that are part of the piece are a new Bible, New American Standard version, and a small shelf with three plastic Viewmasters.  If you aren’t familiar, Viewmasters are toy slide viewers that allow you to click through a series of small illuminated images when held up to light.   The commercial use of Viewmasters in the 70’s and 80’s, at least as I remember it, was to sell postcard-style images of Disney World or Sea World.  For this piece the artist has found a way to make his own Viewmaster slides of images from holy sites in Israel.  The images are mostly of market places surrounding the Holy Sites – hundreds of holy water containers for sale, endless rows of saint statues, and money changing hands.

The combination of symbols in this artwork offers a lot of directions for interpretation.  The context of the white wall gallery and the plastic oddity of the included Viewmasters make it clear that this is not a typical place for genuine prayer. The images hidden inside the Viewfinder tie the meaning together and reveal the substance of this artwork’s ambition.  The title, ‘The New American Standard,” further clues us in to the irony intended by the artist.  The New American Standard is a specific English translation of the Bible, but the phrase also is easily understood to represent the high standard of American living and the ever increasing felt pressure to meet that standard. The artist is tying together American consumerism with Israel’s tourist economy and showing how religion, and specifically prayer, is thwarted as a result of ‘the lust of our eyes’ and the subsequent release of finances.

Coming from a Protestant background, in a tradition that is weary of the ‘stuff’ of religion, Michael Diaz has pointed out the inevitable results of comingling the search for God and stuff.  We end up with a spirituality attached to plastic and detached from any environment conducive to genuine prayer.

Someone recently shared with me a definition of prayer I like very much.  As understood by philosopher Dallas Willard, “Prayer is talking to God about what He and I are doing together.”  Surely the American standard of seeking new stuff all the time gets in the way of healthy communication to God.

The mailman kindly brought me a very nice postcard a couple days ago, sent from my photographer friend and hero Michael Wilson.  You might be most familiar with Michael Wilson's photographs of musicians.  He's done most of the album art for Over The Rhine and has photographed all kinds of famous musicians like Wilco and B.B. King.  He made my favorite little art photography book (I See That Hand).  Also, he was one of the first artists we showed at the 930 and he'll have another exhibit at the 930 this fall.

But the big news with his work right now is that he's got a mid-career retrospective called 'the day of small things' showing at the Weston Gallery in Cincinnatti's Aranoff Center.  It opens April 10th and there's a gallery talk May 6th.

I'll be checking it out soon and will write up a response - glowing with appreciation I'm sure.

Coming up in the Cultivate Beauty exhibit opening March 27th, you'll be able to see a few of James Michael Starr's assemblages and collages at the 930 gallery.  As the director of the 930, people often ask me how we choose what to hang on the gallery walls. The artists I choose to show come to me in a variety of ways. For the upcoming Cultivate Beauty exhibit, I invited Texan artist James Michael Starr to ship us a few pieces.  I came to hear about his work by doing an internet search of the words "art for God's sake." I did this search because of the book of the same title.

That internet search turned up an article about Starr in the Dallas Observer called "Art for God's Sake." The article really articulates the art world's feelings toward religion pretty accurately: "Most people don't want their art-going experience mixed up with God. To them -- to us -- the separation of art and church is a modern-day luxury we've grown to take for granted, necessary for keeping our high culture clear of any brainwashing effects of organized, God-fearing religion." That sounds about right to me.

By the end of the article though, the writer actually argues that the religious themes in Starr's work are actually what give the work its power.  "It's religion all right -- more religion than mere spirituality -- and in this case, the art world would do well to give him this space. Instead of squirming with moral discomfort, just let yourself enjoy the work of one truly gifted. The best artists are driven by real impulses, by the need to say something. That Starr's voice springs from his devotion to a certain messiah and the perspective he gained from this conversion not only seems perfectly natural here, but gives his work its power."

Tomorrow evening during the first friday gallery hop, be sure to visit Swanson Reed at 638 E Market to see Scott Scarboro's exhibit.  He'll also be playing some wild music incorporating circuit bent noise makers, electro fried canjoes and other bits of archaic technologies.  Scott's art often has a lot to do with aliens and past visions of the future and modified toy robots.

I found this interesting bio for Scott on his website www.junkabilly.com:

Scott Scarboro is a Multimedia Artist and Entertainer from Louisville, Ky who creates kinetic junk art and electrified home-made Instruments with a Fat Albert and Rube Goldberg meets Lester Flatts and Earl Scruggs anything goes kitchen sink esthetics.

He attributes his main source of inspiration to childhood memories of his Grandfather, who would often solve everyday house hold problems in highly creative ways.  The sight of his grandpaw attaching a Falls City beer can to a mouth harp with wire to remedy the lack of the teeth needed to play the instrument, changed Scott's life forever.  Other sources of inspiration are Dr. Seuss, Kiss, Batman reruns and Rock-A-Billy musician Hasil Adkins.

He's been a kindergarten teacher,  a lamp repairman and a prop builder for clowns at the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College in Venice, Florida.

Exhibit runs to March 28

Swanson Reed Contemporary

638 east market Louisville ky 40202