Hey Nate,

Not exactly sure what this "wiki" thing is but thought I'd give it a try and this art collaboration thing seems to be just the thing. Let's see what this can do!

Here's something straight out of my journal. I think best when I'm writing so when trying to come up with the concept/mission statement/modus operandi for this art thing, I pull out the pen and go to work:

08/02/05
So what's this grop of artists to be?

The first thing that comes to mind is support - support of all kinds: moral, financial, spiritual.

But not just support - challenge also.

I don't know - it's easier for me to write about the things I don't want to see than it is to talk about what I do want to see. I don't want to create a social club or artists clique.

Unless...unless it's a kind of school or movement. I don't know much about artistic movements like the Dadaists or the Surrealists or the Bauhaus. I don't know how they organized or what the did when they met...if they met at all as a group.

In a way, this is the next stop after the Work In Progress art show. People got together and shared their work. And they got to meet one another. I'd like to think that the show opened up a creative space for Christian artists - a space where they felt free to explore and to take risks. I'd like to think that artists got to see that they were not alone - that there were like minds out there.

I'd like to think that we've created a little community of Christian artists and now it's time to turn this community outwards.

In the "real" world, communities often have a certain industry that sustains them. Maybe they farm. Maybe they manufacture steel. Maybe they create software. The point is, they make something and send it out into the world - usually to make some money so that the community can continue to exist.

In selling their wares, they serve the needs of other communities.

Is there a way to apply this model to this little artist community? Are there resources that we have that we can use to serve the larger community?

I think of the sermon this past Sunday (07/31/05) - about how Christians used their resources to bless other people, how they asked, in faith, for a way to bless the school where they met and how the need was larger than the ability and how God came through anyway.

Bit it's not about "look at what we can do," it's "look what God can do." It's modeling the grace - the undeserved grace - of God. It's kindness that leads to repentance and those acts of kindness are changing hearts.

What does art have to offer? It's a sad question because it shows how irrelevant art has become today. Today's art has nothing to offer.

Maybe art has lost its power because it has sold its soul to advertising (or had its soul stolen by advertising). There are pretty pictures in the store front windows with their perfection and their smiles and their attitude and their clothes. Beauty has been turned into nothing more than a product to be bought, sold, and put on sale. Beauty has become a whore, selling herself to all who walk by.

Is it too late for beauty? Can beauty be redeemed? Not for the sake of the sale but to return beauty to a world drowning in plastic and schmaltz.

If this group is to be about anything, it should be about bringing beauty back into a world that is saturated with it - drowning in it.

Beauty should point to God, not the cash register. Now how can we create this kind of beauty without resorting to cliche? How can we remake beauty in a way that is true and transcendent in a world that has seen it all?