Imago Day

January 2, 2009

A New Year

Silk painting Installation at HAUMC

The riot gear makes people forget they're human too

God Among Us: Icons of an Incarnational God (the installation is up!)

protection for the non-violent march?

Gallery Show at UTS

This boat was detained by coast guard just for the sign

Wounds of Hate (from the gallery show)

Dancers at the Poor Peoples March

part b of Wounds of Indifference (from gallery show)

Hello! It’s been awhile!

Okay, one of my top New Year’s Resolutions is to recommit to my intended practice of (almost) daily journaling on this blog – about my creative process and the things that inspire my creative process.

I know, self-indulgent and somewhat meaningless, right? I mean what does anyone else care about my creative process?! However, over and over again, in my personal struggle to become more mindful, more compassionate, and more life-giving in my artwork and life I keep coming back to the importance of the process rather than the finished product – the means rather than the end – and the importance of being aware of what is happening in that process. This process, this time of creating is where I most grow into and discover myself, my connection to other, to nature, and that mysterious presence that I identify as God.

Some days for me, the just being aware is the biggest challenge. Somedays the biggest challenge is being compassionate once I do become aware. Most recently, the biggest challenge for me is once I have become aware, once I have compassion, is how to not feel helpless with no ability to be “life-giving”. For me life-giving means participating in creating a better community, a better world; and creating a better world begins with “the least of these” people and ideals. Certainly, as an artist, as one who explores ideas of beauty and culture, there is something uplifting there. However, I believe art is something more than just something pretty to look at – more than just art for art’s sake – more than the anthropological imprint of cultures old and new. I think art is for the sake of all who experience it, and can be life-giving. If your vocation is that of a doctor and you want to create a better community perhaps you join doctors w/out borders or work in a community clinic for low income families, if your vocation is that of a teacher and you want to create a better community, perhaps you work in an inner city school, if one is an attorney perhaps you do pro-bono work for the underprivileged. But, how do I affect change as an artist? This is a question every artist asks and searches for the right answer to fit them. For the next year especially I will be exploring this question in a focused way, as well as a few other questions: What does activism/protest mean today (cause it’s different than it was in the 60′s folks!)? Can art truly be a work of activism? Is a negative means to a positive end ever justified in activism? How can my work be a continual process of life-giving activism? How can I make my activism work a work of beauty?

The pictures above represent work I completed over this last year, especially this last 6 mos. Also above, are a few of the hundreds of pictures we took from the RNC in August, which was a complex, scary, and exhilarating time in my own backyard (Matt and I live downtown near the convention site). During that time I saw many activists and a lot of civil disobedience. Some of it was inspiring and life-giving – some of it was not. During that time our streets were filled with police in riot gear (who were on both sides of the political divide). Some of them were patient and interacted with protesters in a life-giving way, some of them did not. During that time our city looked like a demilitarized zone and pepper spray and tear gas hung heavy in the air and we had to close our windows, although there was very little coverage of any of this on national TV outlets. And I wondered, how can protest against war and poverty and fundamentalism become – again and as never before – so meaningful to onlookers, such an act of beauty, so life-giving – that the cause cannot be denied? That the media cannot NOT cover it? That even if someone wants to look away and deny those principles, they can’t, rather they become drawn into the process and move also toward a just peace?

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October 23, 2008

Soul-tired

Advent / Womb water - painting

21 feet long

The first spirit head is finished!

detail

last one, promise! This shows the neck musculature.

Today, my soul is tired.

My body is tired too. For the last week or so I have engaged in strange body postures for hours on end to create this painting (above you will see pics of the first one which is now completed – only 6 more to go – whoo-hoo!). In addition to painting, stretching the silk (as I did today in preparation for the next painting) is taxing on the body- at least for pieces this large – and as I am working on a deadline I am holding stress is my neck, hands, hips, back, and so on. So yes, my body is tired. Boo hoo, I know.

But this is not why my soul is tired, in fact, this work is engaging and refreshing to my soul – even if, I must admit, I explode with an occasional outburst of obscenities after accidentally knocking over a cup of paint or pinching my finger in the handle of the staple gun! These works become me in the creating of them, full of paradoxes, of the moments of grace and connection to God as well as the moments of obscene words, frustration and broken connection.

But back to my first thought – soul-tired. My soul is tired because I feel that even though so many people are working to overcome bigotry and hatred in the world – to bring God’s beloved community to earth – some days it seems we will never get over that hill. Don’t get me wrong, I have hope, I have hope, and of late so many good hearts and busy hands and feet have inspired me. It’s just some days I feel like Sisyphus pushing my boulder of hope & reconciliation uphill day after day, week after week, seeing it almost cross over the threshold, just to see it roll back down to where I first started struggling with gravity in the first place. I know I am not alone. Oh, but how long? How long? Is that how God feels? Trying and trying to work through us, lead us to reconciliation and love, and justice – and what do we do? Usually someone ends up disposing of the messenger. Why is it that any time someone stands up to proclaim hope and change and reconciliation, there’s someone standing around to threaten, bully, lie, and kill? Someone always ready to say “It can’t be done!” “War/bigotry/racism/cruelty is woven into human nature.” “Don’t moralize to me and say we should change – you’re just as bad as me!” We are so cynical about those who try to change the world for the better, in fact we expect and accept that someone or group will counteract the very people who try to extend the human imagination to see a better day. It’s the norm – but that doesn’t make it the ideal or even what the norm should be – so why don’t we demand more?

I apologize, I am in a weird place tonight but I must say it:

I am tired of cynics and pessimists – and I have something to say to you. If you are cynical and pessimistic - than get going and try to change what it is you’re cynical/pessimistic about but don’t tell me, nothing can change.

I am tired of negativists, nay-sayers and fear-mongers. I will not listen to you anymore. I reject your world-view. EVERYTHING good is possible and is truly the root of human nature – creation is good.

I am tired of bigoted ignorance and the claim that those who cling to their bigotry and fear are pro-American, pro-religion, pro-Jesus. I have something to say to you too – I understand your fear, but it is misplaced and I will not join you in being afraid, and I encourage you to reach out to what you are afraid of with compassion. You might be surprised.

I am tired of mavericks who are not mavericks, of feminists who are not feminists and of Christians who are not following the way of Christ. I admit it, I am a lousy Christian, I know this, and it is precisely why I don’t want to shut ANYONE out.

I am tired of the demonization of things people don’t understand and of the demonization of the left by the right and the right by the left. I am tired from the struggle to not fall into this trap – because that is what it is – a trap.

I am soul-tired, tired because so much music gets drowned out by noise. But I hope, I hope – there is power in the hoping -

and I hope you hope too.

Shalom,

A.M. Hunter

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October 8, 2008

Nuts and bolts

: 28

: Wounds and Witness

This evening after my Older Testament class I started to put together a frame for a series of silk paintings I will be doing for HAUMC – which will also be the main art project I will be working on and posting in relation to over the next few months. I don’t know, perhaps it was all of the talking of women’s disadvantaged & complex social locations in the ancestral narratives of Sarah/Abraham/Hagar; but I wanted to come home and build something, by myself, out of wood and nails and nuts and bolts and little metal L shaped things that help fasten the wood pieces together. Perhaps it was just because all the supplies finally arrived and I’m itching to get started. Perhaps it was just to feel like I had made progress on this huge project.

In any case, after laying out the pieces of this seven foot frame which I will be rigging to 9 foot and 5 foot frames – this is quite a contraption I am building in our cozy loft! – I realized I had forgotten I used some of the pieces-parts (the L shaped things, nuts and bolts, etc.) in another project and would have to go to the hardware store tomorrow to get more if I wanted to put this thing together and have it stay together.

Ugh, the frustration of delaying the start of a project another day. The frustration of forgetting those nuts and bolts! I am always forgetting the nuts and bolts of a project, a task, a difficult relationship or … my spiritual practice. Those little nuts and bolts – that are so tiny, the smallest part of the project – and yet hold everything together. When I get busy and am away from these things for awhile (like that frame) I forget and have to recall the sticking points, the way things fit together, the facets that need extra support. This is true of relationship too. Lately, I have reencountered some relationships that I have been away from for awhile. Here there are lots of sticking points, water-logged edges that don’t connect to each other the way I wish they would. These places aren’t smooth or easy, and I wasn’t prepared for them. Why, you might ask? And here we come to the nuts and bolts of my spiritual practice, always a tough thing for me to observe in busy times when I need it most. I am not talking about my artwork which is a big part of that practice, that has been prolific, rather it is the things that hold me up in order to create art that i am forgetting – those things that give me a balance. Prayer, meditation, exercise, listening to music and dancing, cooking, journaling, resting, loving and building love. Hmmm, tomorrow I must go shopping for the nuts and bolts!

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October 6, 2008

World view

God Up Above, Hide all this hatred till you fill us up with Love - Dave Matthews Band lyric

My greatest desire currently is to grow deeper into the heart of empathy and compassion. To do this I have had to dissect my world-view, the frames with which I think and view the world and other human beings. I have had to become more aware of my sticking points, my own capacity for bigotry against those who think differently than me. To do this I have to be really honest with myself about those I have hurt, and I have to honestly forgive those who have hurt me. I have to seek reconciliation on both fronts. I think I am getting better … but jeez is this a long process! My sticking point it seems are those who I perceive as not being empathetic to other beings such as the poor, the suffering, the disenfranchised, the fragile eco-systems of the earth – the list could go on for quite a while. And yet to have a truly compassionate heart I must find ways of having compassion for these less than empathetic folks too, without letting go of the search for justice. I believe justice is not just for me, not just for you, but for everyone – and by justice I don’t mean punitive justice, but reconciling justice – the kind that makes each being into the fulness of who they or it can be. Many have said we are all interconnected and until all are fully the beings they are meant to be I cannot be who I am meant to be, you cannot be who you are meant to be. I believe this to be true.

Silence

Modern Icon

I was reading in the library today- silence – or about as close as I ever get to it. Only ambient sounds, the air conditioner switching on, a fly buzzing in and out of the shafts of sunlight at the window. An elevator ding from downstairs. Incessant motion in my head – the words on the page talking persistantly. Far more silent was the scene outside the window of people moving about, trees swaying in the breeze, cars driving by – none of which I could hear, blocked by the glass and the lawn. Perhaps that scene was one concept of “visual” silence, but is it really silence, if you can imagine the sounds, even when you can’t hear them? Where is there silence in my artwork or is it always shouting?

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September 14, 2008

Wonder

Madonna and Child

Matt and I just spent an evening at some friends’ house watching a football game. It was a good time away and well needed break from paper-writing and exegete -ing. One of the couples there had a ten month old baby girl. She was very cute, crawling and exploring everywhere, every normal thing she encountered was new and exciting. Ah, to have just a small percentage of this wonder in the face of even extraordinary things, let alone the normal trappings of someone’s home! It’s become a cliché, right? The wonder of children. And yet, maybe it shouldn’t be, maybe it’s a good reminder. Oh well – back to exegete-ing! Cheers!

Hunting for Balance; Finding Grace

Breath, Voice, Fire - A sketch for an aspect of a large installation I am working on for a commission

As usual the distracting issue in my creative practice this week has been finding balance. Balance between my personal life, graduate work, and artwork. Balance between “eating all the things on my plate” and still enjoying the meal. Balance in enjoying the moment and not worrying about the future. That’s a big one for me. It is in many ways a struggle with my own expectations and fear of failure or not measuring up to those expectations. The amazing thing is that as I struggle to balance all of these spheres of my life, I find nothing but affirmation and encouragment from other individuals. They expect me to do only that which I am called to do, that which will fill me up, that which I am passionate about – and I have been given numerous resources to help me along this journey in many of these individuals. Everywhere I look there is someone offering me the space, the grace, to live fully into who I am – a glimmer of who I am meant to be. And yet grace is so hard to accept – why? Is it because some part of me might one day like to proclaim “I did this all on my own – I am beholden to no one”? Is it because some people have offered me a false grace in the past – a grace that was really not free – that I had to pay back later? As a human being - a creature defined by the reality of simply existing, simply being, here’s how I’d like to be:

I want to find fullness in the daily work I do.
I want to find joy in every task, and approach every task with patience and good will.
I want to be in tune to how each part of my life influences every other part and cannot be separated out from my witness or my story.
I want to be more excited than afraid of new challenges.
I want to dole out love along the journey, even and maybe especially, when it’s difficult.
I want to be free from worry about the future because I am absorbed in the beauty of the present.
I want to accept grace with both arms and my whole heart, and really trust it is real.

And there are other things, but this list is long enough for now.

These things are also what I wish for others in my life. To my husband-my partner-my lover, to my family, my friends, the stranger on the street; to the person who has no one to extend them the hand and heart of grace. This is my prayer today, oh, father-mother-God, enfold us all in your grace, this is my prayer to you!

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