October 14, 2021

Way-Makers are always survived by unfinished work. This is why heroes are always conquered by a monster. Why authors have posthumously published work. Why artists have models and half-sculpted forms in their empty workshops. If they were not in the middle of creating that change, of forging that way, when death came upon them, they would have ceased to be a way-maker long before their heart ceased to beat. These things do not exist because they are failures, but because they are successes. Beowulf’s death is not a defeat, but a victory!

May 8, 2021

Walking with Jesus. Where is Jesus walking with you in your life right now? How are you finding him in your creativity? Creativity is, at its root, an ability to look beyond the formats we have put in place for how this world ought to function. Creativity is opening ourselves the muse - to the spirit – and for Catholics, that Spirit is Holy. That Spirit is Love that pours outward from the Father and the Son. We find our center, our ability to walk the creative way, there in the divine light of the Holy Spirit. Is he walking with you today? Are you letting him infuse the creativity that you are seeking to accomplish in your projects, your work, and your downtime? Are you letting him open your eyes to a world larger and Holier than your own? Come Holy Spirit!

February 15, 2021

What is Art?

Etienne Gilson once said that ‘Art is Making.’

A character, Eliot Spencer, from the TV Show “Leverage” says this, ‘It’s not just food. Alright, some people could look at it and see just food, but not me. I see art. When I’m in the kitchen I’m creating something out of nothing, you know what I mean, and sometimes I crush it, sometimes its crap, but either way, it makes me feel something.... This is my art.... It’s like letting a stranger in your head, just for a second, and you allow them to feel what you’re feeling.”

Craft

In both these contexts, Eliot and Etienne are speaking of creating as a ‘craft.’ I have no desire to minimize the importance of craft - it is a beautiful and necessary practice. But the question arises whether there is a distinction between ‘craft’ and ‘art’, in a real and tangible sense.

We can craft many things: couches, food, clothing, etc - which are both practical and beautiful. And then we have art which is not practical: paintings, novels, film, theatre, etc. And these things are sometimes beautiful, sometimes terrifying, and yet, can all be called art.

vs. Art

What distinguishes art from craft, other than the fact that it is impractical, and how can we clarify that distinction?

This is the question that arose in a conversation I was having lately with one of our patrons. We both attended the same small Liberal Arts college, and read The Art of the Beautiful, by Etienne Gilson, and as an artist herself, she said his definition of art never truly satisfied her.

The deeper we delved into the topic, the more we realized that art is what ‘cannot be fully captured in any other way; it is indefinable; beyond what we can capture.”

Let me explain.

The Meaning of Life

Catholicism inevitably entered into our conversation at this point, and for good reason. As Catholics, we are fortunate that we can sometimes take short cuts in these types of conversations.

Instead of trying to work our way solely from the bottom of the argument: art, to the top of it: the reason for art, we can sometimes jump to the reason and work our way back, encountering the fullness of the question somewhere in the middle.

Because we know that the ultimate aim of anything on earth is a deeper union with God. That’s the easy answer, the cheating answer, in a sense, to anything we ask. So sometimes, if we get stuck, we can jump there and ask, “How does art pursue and bring us deeper into God?”

As creators, we were then able to apply our own experience to this question. When creating art, we are trying to meet ourselves and God within the work. Art combines the human experience with the Great Mysteries.

By Great Mysteries, I mean questions such as:

• How can God allow Suffering?

• Who is God?

• What is the Incarnation, and why was it necessary?

• Why did God create me?

These are questions to which we can apply Catechism answers, but unless we know our infinite God in His totality, then we can never fully understand them.

Not only does art ask these questions, it seeks to answer them. On some fundamental level, since we are created in God’s image, we can answer them, and often the answer is not something we can put into words or a direct image translation. The artist is hinting at a reality she herself does not understand.

But the artist feels that reality, and seeks to encounter it through the greatest act of a human being: creating. The act of creating is part of this question and answer process, just as much as the final artistic work.

And after the work is created, we can, as Eliot said, let ‘a stranger in your head, just for a second, and you allow them to feel what you’re feeling’. And this feeling, for an artist of impractical artwork, is awe, confusion, joy, passion, and succor.