Category Archives: symbol

capturing “it”

I was in the Salvation Army thrift store this week fishing through stacks of old frames, ignoring the pictures. But one small piece started me thinking about why folks make representations and hang them on walls. The prompt was a rather darkish watercolor of a flower stalk. It wasn’t badly done, the artist set it up on paper, selected a muted palette, articulated petals, signed it carefully, then framed it for some wall. I imagine she was proud of it, wanted it seen. Now, I reckon that the real flower stalk was more stunning however short-lived. The panting remains. It’s a token or a signifier of something. What motivated the artist to capture this stalk on a piece of paper? What gave her the impulse to copy what was before her? Was it some kind of sentiment?  Or was it something else that would move her to set up and spend time? Is she still alive? Would the painting have prompted a rich memory of a moment? Or was her composition just a thing, a stand alone, made for adornment without any reference?

I muse on this because I wonder about the drive to “capture it” when I am working and when I am thinking about what it is I want to work. It is not representation that moves me. The references, the things I see with my eyes, hear with my ears and am moved by are only jumping off points. To render anything precisely for me misses the point of why I want to fill a frame. To perfectly imitate something on a board presents only a false stand in. It’s a pacifier. For the real material thing I first experienced is way more lovely than the best of copies. There is rather for me something in a glimpse or a suggestion which better captures the mindful “it” so many beautiful moments only allude to.

In C.S. Lewis’ lectures series The Weight of Glory, he uses words to try to explain: “Pictures are part of the visible world… and represent it only by being part of it. Their visibility has the same source. The suns and lamps in pictures seem to shine only because real suns or lamps shine on them; that is, they seem to shine a great deal because they really shine a little in reflecting their archtypes…it is a sign (these representations) and also more than signs for the thing signified is really in a certain mode present”.

The “it” I aim for, what I hope is rendered as “present” here, is the cut-away revealing of something solid. It’s getting the chance with some material stuff to see the gem like exposure planes, the multi facets in common things of earth. This rock wall used to be covered with dirt, but now we can see what is underneath, strong and exposed. It’s also the contrast between illumination and cavernous shadow. It’s in contrast and color planes where forms are distinguished and understood. And for me the “it” is the suggestion of a different dimension that cannot be precisely laid forth on any 2 or 3 dimensional material aspect. Case in point: Jesus prompted his closest followers privately that what they were seeing right in front of them was more than what prior prophets and Kings wished to see.

In other words, even the seeing cannot grasp full import. We need time and thought. The gestures therefore leave you looking, studying, connecting dots, and I hope desiring to apprehend more of what all these beauties are pointing toward.

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sign of the Fig Tree

It’s the time of year when buds are emerging. It’s also the time of centuries, long awaited, of Israel’s coming to fruition. The re-born nation is celebrating 70 years back in her land. “Can a nation be built in a day?” exclaimed the royal prophet Isaiah at the very end of his grand vision. I am convinced we are living in the time of Israel’s glorious denouement. The evidence is obviously visible: the land is blooming. Many trees, besides the broad-leafed fig, show the fruit of Israel’s 70 year cultivation of the land on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean. They are back where they started. This monotype is a reflection of that further becoming.

Like mirrors which echo imagery down a long corridor, has the fig tree been a watchword in every age for those who have read the Jewish prophet Jesus. Many have longed to see what we are seeing now with our own eyes. Many prophets promised it, and many more eager for the fruit yet to appear.

Before the Roman devastation of the 2ndtemple in Jerusalem, Jesus, from the tribe of Judah, used a fig tree as a metaphor for his nation. It was not the time for harvest. And so the “sign of the fig tree” became a sad precursor to the Roman ruin of the Jewish homeland just decades after Jesus. The tree’s unfruitfulness at that time was a prophetic illustration of what was about to come down. 

Now that nation is reborn, and fig trees are blooming again. There is reason for anticipation.

The fig is the third tree mentioned in Genesis, after the tree of life, then the forbidden tree (knowledge of good and evil) that was nonetheless sampled by Eve then Adam. The Fig was the fall-back, not for eating at that point, but for the more desperate need for cover-up. Its broad leaves were grasped and stitched together for now there was an instinctive knowing of inadequacy, a need for costume-ing. It was the first masquerade. 

But for the gracious kindness of a seeking God, that is not where the whole story ended, though it could have. And that is precisely why this sign interests me. It wasn’t the poor tree’s fault to be a sign of leafy futility. The fig tree that Jesus spoke of remains a metaphor of what was and what is yet coming: Isael’s long term future toward fruitfulness. He finishes everything He began.

Fig trees are blooming again in the land. And the God of Abraham is still walking around. He’s still asking any who want to care the very first question he posed to mankind in another garden: “where are you?”


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hidden and plain view

Like me, you’re probably metering out what you’ll make visible, and what you happily keep to yourself. Social media has us all learning and adjusting in this balancing act of exposure vs. privacy. And visible international reach offers so much more exposure too, for good and for ill. I can see the stats on who views this page and it is worldwide. So, here I’ll just say “hello!” to those of you who read this out there in the great beyond.

I highlight today a piece I made several years ago. It’s sister is in a big current show in our University museum. But this is the quieter of that duo and I want her to get some time in the electronic sun as well. For you see, this piece is visualizing something hidden yet promised.

I am digging through the book of Revelation, that last book of the Bible where the recorder is told to write down “the things you’ve seen, the things which are and the things which shall take place”. This book has me and I’m paying particular attention of late to Jesus’ words to the historical church. He has warnings, direct rebuke in specific cases, and words of penetrating comfort in others. Jesus knows the score. He is the coach. And He is about to end the game in time, “I am coming quickly.”

After the rebuke words, there is instruction and promise given to the “overcomers” who hold fast in their particular struggles. Jesus, with eyes of flame, promises in one case to give certain overcomers “some of the hidden manna”. What in the world is manna? Exactly. Manna literally means in its original Hebrew “what is it!?” Manna was a historical miracle of provision for the tribes of Jacob in the wilderness of Exodus. The stuff came down from heaven, landed like dew, and fed them continuously for 40 years. Now, in that case it was a public feeding, everyone went out and gathered it.

In Revelation the manna being promised is hidden, and it is given individually. For Jesus addresses a singular “He who has ears to hear…to him who overcomes, I will give some of the hidden manna”.

This much is clear from both instances of manna’s provision: The stuff is mysterious and it is given to sustain. It comes from God to us. In this later case of Revelation it is a private provision and very precious. The receiver would likely keep it that way.

But I am making this known, by displaying this beckoning visual. Did you know there is such a thing as manna available from God? Here’s the upshot about it from the text in Revelation: such a thing as manna is promised to certain ones. Jesus is the one who promises it. Such a thing is real and on the table; it will be fulfilled by Jesus. And whoever is fed by this will be sustained in the times to come. This is a picture of private assurance.

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near and far

My interest in landscape, or more specifically “what is out there!” began very early. Before I had much language or even any life experience I was captivated and heartened by what I could glimpse out the window from my nursery. Doubt me if you choose, but I have a visceral memory of this. The years have only reinforced this sense of ‘the beautiful bigness beyond’. I recognize, now in hindsight, that this memory is early indication of some kind of spiritual quest.

My mature work is driven by an informed and sorely tested confidence in the promise laid out by the maker of the horizon, the maker of the warming sun, the maker hidden behind all these things. And these ‘made things’ speak forth deeply through their substance.

As the year turns (and 2018 has been such a big one for us) we don’t have much idea at all about what 2019 holds. We can see some near things, but not what follows.

So today I’ll highlight here an oil sketch I did this past May. I love so the horizon in this piece: so dimly suggested but sure — though some distance beyond the entire articulated foreground. That’s why I will keep this one, for the contrast between the known and the yet unknown is a symbol to me. What is just over the next rise is what draws my attention. And because my heart has learned to rest in the capable hands of my maker, I am not afraid.

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still life or “reality show”

I’ve been thinking again about the tension of living between the quiet voice and the urgent alarm. If you lived in Hawaii this past weekend you’d still have alarm withdrawal going on in your psyche. Nobody would say we shouldn’t have blaring alert systems, even after one misfired and people panicked. But we cant live with the heightened noise level that seems to be so much of the modern “reality show” of life in this nation now. I don’t know how I would have handled the alarm, but I know I would have prayed.

With some friends a while back, we were looking at images at an exhibit, when each phone in each pocket started echoing an Amber Alert. Beyond the walls, someone was in real trouble. Devices were pulled out, screens looked at, a couple prayers whispered. . . and then silence. The phones were put away, some turned off. The alarm was frightening; the quiet voices in response much more sustaining.

There are two very different realities going on in our time. One is slow, steady and uncelebrated. The other is an irritating, very troubling scramble for attention. One is loud and obnoxious. We all hear it. We’re all sick of it. There’s another sounding, but you have to tune your ears to hear it

I slammed my computer closed this morning. The click-bait headlines have me so wearied, sickened. You can point fingers, but we’re all in this thing together. So, I did the next thing in my little life. I went to the grocery store. I had to do this anyway today, but I got there early and started to relish the simple tasks of handling and selecting real live things that will make a difference in our well being this week. I got to choose. I chose to enjoy the steps, the colors, the kindness of the produce man. I don’t think I have ever enjoyed a grocery trip more! I came home with several bags of supplies, and arranged some on my counter like a Dutch still life. Art is not imitating life here. Real life was already happening. You could rather say Life is imitating art of a sort. This is some of the gleanings I’ll use up this week.

I think of the Northern European “vanitas” paintings, where commodities (due to increased trading and middle class means) would be arranged in a collection, then painted in oil. The intention of vanitas, was to show symbolically that the everyday things (like an orange half peeled) were all stand-ins for moments in time. And bigger than that was the idea that the temporal things would decay but the moment would be marked as a time of reflection and joy. That’s small voice stuff. That’s the kind of thing that reality shows can’t show you.

Come tomorrow. Come what may. I’ll be listening for the quieter voice.

 

 

 

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to craft

A recent article explored the question “Why does craft matter in a digital age” The insights there are worth a look. Here are some snipets from artists trying to explain: Craft is “a way of thinking”, “beyond the cerebral… and through our hands”, “it slows everything down”,  “it’s close to the body”.  Japanese glass artist, Yoshiaki Kojiro: “Craft is an event that starts with a physical sense of relationship between materials and people.”

All this and more fascinates me for the Creation account in Genesis 2 has God Himself getting his hands into the dirt, in time, on the ground to make things. Then we are tasked, after His exampling, to make things. It’s in the making that seeing is enhanced. It’s in the time taken and slowed down where relationships are better understood. It’s work, but strangely hope-filled.

Yet conversely, in what we call ‘real life’ we talk of “sound bites” and “visual grabs”, about “fake news” and “photo-shopped reality”. All the while we’re racing past what is real, missing the bigger things worth considering that will last all this.

I have been crafting. I’m working on a large oil on paper piece for a show. If I can get it where I want it, I’ll show it here first, maybe in the next post. I also have been crafting a small book. I pressed “approve” this morning, and soon this webpage will offer it for your consideration. The reason for the writing (and it’s taken 6 long years) is because the One who got His own hands into the dirt moved me to take the materials within my grasp of understanding and see if I could make something of it.

 

 

 

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considering shadows

abbysshadow_smallMy granddaughter asked “what’s that?” as I was wiping up pumpkin mess. I looked up and saw her pointing to the wall and the round gray mimic cast by our big orange beauty. “That’s a shadow! Do you see how it moves as I slide this over? And if I turn the light off. . . it goes away! Isn’t that amazing? The light is what causes that shadow and the pumpkin is just blocking light on the wall. See, you can do the same thing with your hand: move your fingers and see how you can block the shine and change the shadow’s shape.” So, she got totally engaged with that exercise, and kept twinkling her fingers while I twinkled with thoughts.

Shadows are signs, you see. They are faint things that point to something else more real. The Shadow doesn’t exist unless there is a real thing. It’s a signifier, then, that something else is near. Shadows are ephemeral markers that something substantive exists. A mystic I am reading said “all things are shadows, but Thou art substance. All things are quicksands but Thou art mountain.” Shadows point to something way more consequential, if we attend to them and investigate further.

But we don’t typically like facing any idea of this “Thou” character, the light caster, the shadow maker. We would rather stay hidden in our caves of shadows, borrowing from Plato’s parable. We may see the shadows on our walls but will firmly dismiss hints of more in a realm beyond our darkening walls. “The world bathed in the sunshine outside is off-limits and strictly dismissed as fiction.” Writes the Christian philosopher Os Guiness. We are moderns and post-moderns you see. We “know” better, no longer indulging fantasies that involve a God or any possibility of signs. We rather blindly dull-ly remain in cave-bound captivity.

A little girl noticed something interesting and asked “what is that?”

 

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Handwriting on the wall

You’ve heard the phrase. Do you know the story’s source?

Long ago, during a time of national upheaval, a time of disintegration into mockery, there appeared words written ominously on the public wall. The drunken king, now alarmed, had to bring in a forgotten Hebrew prophet to decode the warning. The decoder, Daniel, spoke boldly, clearly and then was draped with a purple robe (he did not want). The frightened monarch, focus of the warning, within hours lost his kingdom and his life. Daniel’s proclamation remains, echoing through the histories of nations. “God has numbered your kingdom and put an end to it. You have been weighed on the scales and found deficient. Your kingdom has been given over.”

 

The only handwriting that can cut through chaos comes from the words of God.

 


Embossing with gold leaf, permission granted by the artist

When God’s words are highlighted, there is still opportunity to attend to them before the demise.

We have a good friend we’ve known for years. Late in his thoughtful life now, he is sensing there is handwriting on our public wall. This man has gone back to the words of God, and become an Orthodox Jew. We dialogue all the time, for we have much that matters in common. Recently I sent him this image, which in its simplicity pictorializes the difference between the words given to Moses at Sinai, and the last word given by Jesus, the Jew. One can’t fully understand the first writing without the decoding grace of the second. This collograph, replete with Hebrew markings, was crafted by another thoughtful wayfarer: Sandra Bowden. The work is titled “Law and Grace.” And as with the frightened king, there is opportunity now. We stand between the giving of the words, and their conclusion. Fear is in the air. Fear, even desperate fear is the soil in which the seeds of wisdom can take root. Grace is the produce, hard-won. Grace speaks out from that very same source.

 

 

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whirlwind apprehension

This is an older image, but a concept I’ve been revisiting in my head: the coming of whirlwind.

I made this monotype (ink on paper) in 2005 and titled it “Not in the Whirlwind”.

‘Sowing to the wind, reaping in return a whirlwind’ is an ancient idea and one that I’m sensing now is immediately pertinent to our current moment nationally and even globally. Hosea, a prophet to Israel in the 8th century BC, coined this visual alarm. In his writing, he spoke a mixture of severe warnings mixed with surprising hope. His listeners barely could grasp the import, and so his life became a visual aid at several points. Still, he feared their deafness to his words, saying, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.” He labored to inform them. The small book we have from his pen is 14 chapters long. In the 8th chapter, he announces the coming despair, saying, “they sow the wind, and they reap the whirlwind.” He could see it in their future. His words are not angry or manipulative finger pointing but rather a lamenting plea. For what it cost Hosea to log that lament, I wonder if anyone heard? History indicates “no”, at least for the nation as a whole.

When Elijah, another even earlier prophet, retreated exhausted and discouraged, he needed God’s intervention. His story gives examples of how God moved in Elijah’s life to sustain him and then to speak to him. God was not in the whirlwind, (where I got my title for the above image). Then God was not in the earthquake, nor in the fire. But God spoke as Elijah sought Him in the coming of a gentle blowing after these events. Thus exhibited the character of God’s voice: a gentle blowing. But Elijah had to listen for it—past the din of the alarms that preceded God’s words. This is the purpose of prophecy: not to frighten but to alert any one, even just one who will listen. Prophetic words are wake-up calls.

But then as now, they are easily dismissed. When the whirlwind comes the quiet voice will be much harder heard.

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darkness is a sign

Signs in daily life are indicators. I see a red stop sign; I stop within a few feet. Signs give warning as to what’s ahead, and signs give one time to think and still to choose which way to respond. There’s a little bit of time between seeing the sign and getting my foot soundly on the brake. I am glad for that. So are my riders.

Darkness is a sign; a shaded marker that is showing up everywhere now. Look around, listen, watch. I am just articulating what you already know (maybe don’t want to know, but sense just the same). Darkness is a departure from light. It surrounds, entraps and leaves one cold. You don’t want to be there. There is nothing calming in a place of unarticulated blackness.

Artists work in the arena of making some kind of signs, knowingly or not, coherent or otherwise. All artists are doing representation of some sort, making indicators of something else. For example, even in the arranging of darks and lights, an artist seeks to use these elements toward highlighting some aim. We even talk about “value structure” though we might otherwise insist there is not such a thing as real value indicated at all by our arrangements. Still, handling lights and darks well are basic coins of the realm in visual work. All light in the composition and we are overwhelmed and cannot see. All darkness and there simply is nothing to see. This is basic, and objectively understood.

Handling light and darks well in life is another matter all together. I have worked with both. I am also a current events watcher, a Bible reader, and a concerned friend. I’m noting that dark signs are stacking up faster than I have ever seen in my 4 plus decades of following the words of the prophets. There is some heaviness in all this observing, there is also some significant hope. Think about this (recorded by the first prophet Moses): the Creator came first in the Genesis account. He was primal. He was deliberative. He spoke and then light came into a place that was full of darkness. That place is further described in Genesis, 1st chapter, verse 2, as being a deep and formless void. The light entering there was a jail break, a remake. The light came into the darkness and then started staging a re-creation. And that was just in the beginning.

But there’s a problem, revealed in the story of the rest of the book. There is an imitator of light who lies, and we are all vulnerable to him. He was named by Jesus as “the father of lies”, “the serpent of old”. He entrapped the whole human race early, not long after that re-make. He masquerades as light (or as any number of fascinating imitations). He can only imitate; he cannot Create but he is crafty. Even the most earnest seekers of good get sidetracked by his clever luring. He is luring you if you are unawares. His intentions are the opposite of the Creator’s; the imitator’s intentions are not good. Like the pilgrim in Bunyan’s tale, we are too easily blinded by this one who lies.

“This life’s dim windows of the soul
Distorts the heavens from pole to pole
And leads you to believe a lie
When you see with, not through, the eye.”

And here’s a watchword: it doesn’t have to end this way. Inserted here is a video that might help you see more of the grand story. If God is the originator of the story, then there is a story, and it has a valuable end. (If He is not, then ultimately there is no story.)

poem above by William Blake, 1757-1827
image “Ancient Gates/Satan’s Throne”, monotype by Mary Nees

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