No More 'Christian Artists' in Charlottesville
Three artists groups blur the sacred-secular divide in central Virginia.
11.17.11
New City Arts uses an ambassadorial model that would fight what [director Maureen Lovett] calls "fragmentation," or rifts in the community. The fight against fragmentation takes conversation, which New City Arts facilitates. (In addition to regular conversation events, Lovett is collaborating with the Piedmont Council for the Arts on a pastor forum for the spring.) But improving the conversation between different far-flung regions of the community takes actual resources.
One is shelter. So like The Garage [an arts space in downtown Charlottesville], the New City Arts Initiative runs a gallery out of the WVTF and Radio IQ studios on Water Street. Also like The Garage, that gallery space has served as a springboard for emerging local and regional artists, often in collaboration, to showcase art. And in its bright office on the top floor of the Haven, New City Arts earlier this year installed a resident artist, Patrick Costello.
Though Costello was raised Catholic, he is not what you think of as a Christian artist. He doesn't regularly go to church or identify as an active Christian. But Lovett says the thematic content of his art broadly-it explores the life cycle, and where people and nature intersect-echoes Christian values. "Patrick may not identify himself as a Christian," says Lovett. "But he identifies with a lot of our values, like generosity and Shalom, a word used in the International Arts Movement to refer to a quest for wholeness."
"Patrick's work in particular tries to work through the elements of the everyday, and how it relates to the broader cosmos. The church talks about that all the time," says Lovett.
As a rector who also studied poetry at UVA, [rector Paul Walker] understands art as more than just an evangelical tool: "Art is, theologically speaking, like the grace of God - it's without contingency or qualification. So we don't do exhibits or support the arts as a means to an end, so-called Christian art that would be used for evangelism or even something like beautification."
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Comments
E Harris
Suffice to say, I am christian. And I consider myself an artist, because I do artwork. Does that make me a "christian artist?" I have always had a passion for both word and art. And since I also have a passion for GOD... a lot of my artwork articulates the sentiments from my own heart and intuition. Sometimes, people have misunderstood that. As soon as they may see an obvious pointer toward J-E-S-U-S they recoil. I didn't used to understand this. To me, Jesus was beautiful. But to them... they recoil because they don't see the beauty (despite the beauty and non-confrontational nature of the piece itself). This baffles me. Just keep showing beauty AND Jesus (in many little ways) until the light breaks through and dawns on them. In some of my more religious pieces, I've painted pictures of baptisms (full-immersion). It's beautiful to me, and the emotion and play of color and light is beautiful. The same thing can be done in a more confrontational manner: such as "graffiti-style" words, or depictions of spiritual warfare... But for the most part, beauty is found in the simple and sublime. I don't think we need to deliberately tone down our "Christian-ness"... we just need to get more real with it and less threatened by what is considered to be "outside" the present boundaries. The Spirit of the Lord will direct us into knowing what is acceptable to Him and what is a little too-far!
E Harris
Jesus: "If I be lifted up, I will draw all men to me." Jesus is lord of ALL. So if you have worship in your heart, and you seek to walk a pure life - then pure worship will be expressed in many ways. God is as beautiful (in essence and person) as his creation describes him to be. So... lets get beautiful and intuitive with our artwork. Beauty testifies to God's handiwork in creation. I think a lot of christian artwork was carrying the party-line early on, because it needed to be that way at first. In order to find our identity as Christian artists, we needed to have the basics down FIRST. And the basics are a pure heart toward God, and simple worship and thanksgiving. Expressing God's beauty for the sake of articulating some truth as it relates to Him... should always be the primary concern. Holiness to the Lord! A joyfully holy life, is a happy life - and people cannot help but be attracted to it's light. We can build upon our roots, and the christian pioneers who went before us. We can take what they had, and press further into the Kingdom of God and the beauty of Biblical truth.
debdessaso
Ditto, k tra! For too long, Christians have tried to perform a self-imposed, high-wire act between so-called "sacred" and "secular" art, instead of seeing that everything they did was to be done solely for the glory of God. This is especially true with music. Whenever I would read about those who believed that Christians should sing only "Christian" music, I would ask myself: do they also believe that a Christian who is also a seamstress sew only choir gowns? Or the Christian who is also an architect build only church buildings? God knew what He was doing when He didn't have the biblical writers include sheet music! Instead, He gave us His Holy Spirit--the Divine Muse and Ultimate Worship Leader who leads us to dedicate all of our works to the Triune God!
k tra
Here it is. This is not new at all. Of course RZIM addressed this quite a number of times in the past few years. My take on things as an artist myself as well as a "consumer" of various forms of expression...is as follows: Philippians 4:8. Brothers whatever is noble,right,lovely, admirable- if anything is excellent or praisworthy-think on these things. Remember if you are a follower, the Holy Spirit lives in you, what you are taking into your eyes,ears and body all effect your soul, is what you see or hear or do, something that you would be proud to carry naked in judgment in front of Jesus and say LOOK LORD AT WHAT I HAVE FOR YOU?
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