May 2009 archives

Artist tend to get solipsistic if not connected to thinkers or education. They need a context for their creative processes. Cistern gazing (getting lost in one's own process) or over insularity are central shadows in most arts communites I've lived in. This is why i think historically, artists have hung out with thinkers. The two are meant to occupy the same cafe.

The teacher and the role of priest or prophet go together. In Jesus you see both aspects. Clear thinking is essential for artists to be near, so that they do not turn their process in on themselves or towards some form of hedonism. Celebrity is not a high enough goal. Artists want to express something meaningful--even the zeitgeist of their time.
Having worked with the arts for many years, i see several reasons for a need for clear exchange between arts and education. One is that educational institutions tend to have resources to held nurture and birth creative projects. Another is that education needs the life and innovation artist bring. There is also a spiritual dimension which artist should carry which is desperately lacking at most educational settings.

I am terribly un-promotional. And a terrible 'networker' to boot. When it comes to publishing, something I love, the actual "publishing to an audience" part somehow eludes me. I like to write it, print it, or put it on the web but "publishing" implies that one is actually announcing and disseminating, telling others, cultivating an audience. As a writer, I've always found myself both in awe of and terrified of an audience. When I had a regular weekly newspaper column, sometimes with my picture included, people would recognize me, and I would sometimes cross the street to avoid them. It's such a horrible instinct!

All of this to say, over five years ago I wrote a book. It is called A Little Book on Poverty and Glory. I spent a few months writing it, cultivating it, then I spent nearly a year laying it out and designing it. I commissioned an artist friend of mine, Linnea Spransy, to illustrate the cover. And paid a good penny to have a talented designer at Jolly Design in Austin to put it all together. And then I worked with both an independent letterpress in Chicago and an independent hand-sewing bookbinder in Madison, Wisconsin to bring it all together.

The result is a wonderful book, hand touched from start to finish. The cover won a national design award from AIGA, and is now included in the permanent collection of their design archives in the Denver Art Museum and in the Rare Books collection in Butler Library at Columbia University. How's that for an unannounced book! And this hand-touched quality reflects the message, which is at its core about something quite mystical but missing from so much Christian spirituality: desire.

Because I put so much into the book, I was tempted to hide it for a long time. And I apologize for that. So here it is, an announcement, better late than never. I have about 125 copies left of first edition books. They are numbered and signed and for sale at Bread and Tongue Press. If you can't wait to buy one, you can do so right here:

Bread and Tongue Press was a small press I decided to start with a vision of producing handmade quality books and zines. There are future projects coming. In the meantime, I am working on a new book. It is bigger in scope than "Poverty" but I've recently discovered that I have actually been writing this book all along. My computer is stuffed with essays that have never been published anywhere but are tied together by a strong thematic string. Hopefully this book will not take so long to reach readers. Sometimes artists like me need a push, need an engine--an agent, a manager, a publisher--who stands outside of them and says "lets take this to people now and stop fiddling with it."

I am thankful for friends like Andrew Jones who just do it and don't think twice. He wrote a kind blog about my book. I guess I'd say it's my only promotional blurb!!

The arts need the church. The church needs the arts. Neither needs religion, but the true living Body of Christ, which contextualizes creativity within the nature of Reality itself. The art world and the church are meant to dwell in the spiritual Kingdom of God--their true context! They are also both to be part of a full expression of who God is.

The creative aspect--whether individually or collectively--represents an aspect of God Himself, and a vital, life giving aspect. You can trace the divorce between this aspect of God and the other aspects by looking at church history. It is not just that the church stopped trusting the arts or even supporting artists after the reformation; it was something more subtle, and far more threatening for both artists and the church. It would be analogous to the Levites, in Jewish history, leaving all the other tribes once having crossed the Jordan in the opening scenes of the book of Joshua.