Digital Calligraphy

Oh, what you can do digitally with one little painted A.

Shaking Sticks at Creating Hate

I began this journal over a year ago with a conversation about the hostility artists sometimes face.  Through the months I have punctuated this journal with comments about the assault of beauty, aversion to sensuality and trivialization of sacred art.  I have never figured it out, and I probably never will, why creativity might inspire hate, but recently I found a clue, if not the reason.  

Lately I have revisited the writings of Erich Fromm.  I am particularly interested in Fromm's five human needs, creativity being one of them.  In studying this closer I was struck by a description of Fromm's perspective on the need to create given by Dr. C. George Boeree:

"Fromm believes that we all desire to overcome, to transcend, another fact of our being:  Our sense of being passive creatures.  We want to be creators.  There are many ways to be creative: We give birth, we plant seeds, we make pots, we paint pictures, we write books, we love each other.  Creativity is, in fact, an expression of love.

Unfortunately, some don't find an avenue for creativity.  Frustrated, they attempt to transcend their passivity by becoming destroyers instead.  Destroying puts me "above" the things -- or people -- I destroy.  It makes me feel powerful.  We can hate as well as love.  But in the end, it fails to bring us that sense of transcendence we need."

Psychology and philosophy are best read through sceptical eyes since there are more theories about Truth than one can shake a stick at.  With that said, Fromm's theory rings true.   

Advertising Faux Pas

Does anyone agree with me that Charmin went too far when it used The Alleluia Chorus from Handel's Messiah for a toilet paper commercial?

Yes, music that made a king stand is used for two bears to skip along with toilet paper.  I am permanently cured of buying Charmin.

What in God's name do the people in Charmin's ad department do during Advent and Easter to fail to recognize the profoundly sacred nature of this music?  As we say Down South - were they raised in a barn?   

Captured From The Clutter

I designed this card years ago for a person who restored old pens.  In cleaning out recently I found it. 

Cool thing to do, huh, pen repair?  Yes, it was. 

If I were designing this card today I would make some major changes.  But it is what it is, was what it was. 

Paris in Atlanta

I found the most enchanting antique shop in Atlanta, Paris on the Ponce.  The shop owner was kind enough to let me take photos - somewhere around 156 - and this is one of my favorites.  This redhead sat beneath the art deco mirror I bought, and she did a good job marketing the objets d'art.  I could conjure up images of how bohemian I would surely look sitting in my artsy old home beneath the mirror, even without the mask and red hair. 

This antique shop was the type I have longed always to find; it was a place of ideas, dreams and wildly sexy images, dim red lights, cut glass and glitter.   It even had a mock cabaret cafe, Le Moulin Rouge, complete with tables and chairs, balcony seating, bar and stage.  I was transported to the time and place where I surely lived in a former life, Paris sometime between 1880 and 1920, immersed in that period's seductive, hazy, daring je m'en fous style. 

Do You Remember?

Reflections

I found this outstanding art deco mirror in Atlanta this weekend.  Expect more photos of this piece.  I am trying to decide where it will be placed in my house.  Right now I am leaning toward the dining room so it will reflect the garden through the dining room window.   Lovely, huh? 

Honoring Turquoise

Anyone who knows me knows that turquoise is my favorite color and that I particularly like turquoise with red or lime green.  I buy things I don't need because they are turquoise.  Much of my clothing is turquoise; I use a turquoise and garnet colored rosary; I collect turquoise rings; my furnishings are touched here and there - but much more so than the average - with turquoise (and lots of red); I often wear a rubber turquoise band inscribed with "Dominus illuminatio mea"; right now I am wearing an antique bangle made of turquoise and pearls; I save robin egg shells when I find them to marvel at the color; I work turquoise into my art when I can; and, most significantly, my iPod Nano is sort of turquoise. 

I have wondered why turquoise does so much for me.  Could it be my native American Indian gene (paternal great-grandmother) that draws me to the color?  It might be my love of water because I believe white sanded beaches with turquoise water surpass in beauty anything else nature has to offer.  Perhaps my love of turquoise began as a child upon learning that it was my birthstone (December), and later living in Miami, where turquoise is boldly flaunted from clothing to art deco buildings, only intensified this pre-existing obsession.  It could be it is just a cool and extravagant color, or the appeal as simple as vanity because turquoise looks especially good on brunettes.  When I was younger I went through a spell of painting all of my furniture Robin Egg Blue, a time still referenced in my family as Jan's Robin Egg Blue Period.  Whatever the case, turquoise delights me like no other color, energizing and soothing me at the same time, an exotic and tropical color that looks like a mixture of the sky and green earth.         

So you can imagine how thrilled I was to find a website devoted to the color, Everything Turquoise.   I look forward to exploring the site and discovering more turquoise things I do not need but want.  But most of all, I am glad to know that there are others in this world with so much passion for a color - especially turquoise - that they would create a web site devoted to it.  Somehow that makes me feel less eccentric. 

Trust

George MacDonald said that to be trusted is a greater compliment than to be loved.  

While this is a lovely sentiment - and quite true - compliments do not feed your soul or keep you warm on a cold night.  

Hallelujah for Sacred Sensuality

My church is a small one, a tiny stone church nestled in azaleas, hollies and dogwoods in the Southern landscape.  Inside we do all the things Episcopalians do, but we do it in what is considered "high church" style, sometimes referred to as "anglo-catholic".  That means that we attend to many precise liturgical details - like dressing up for company and observing well worn traditions infused with meaning that deepens for the observance with each passing year.  It is the equivalent of using our fine china for guests, lighting a yule fire at Christmas and hanging flags and lanterns in the garden for the 4th of July.  Do not misunderstand.  We are not putting on the dog or being superstitious; we are sacramental...very sensually sacramental.

A sacramental faith is one that observes worship in a particular form and with particular objects, or matter.  Form and matter.   We cross, bow when the processional cross passes, kneel, reverence the altar, use bees wax candles, incense, sanctus bells and so on.  We use our bodies and words to demonstrate deep spiritual truths (form), and we lovingly infuse our worship with objects of beauty to delight the senses (matter).  In the words of Richard Hooker, a sacrament is "an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace."   Ah, can it be said any sweeter for those who have ears to hear?  I think not.

To this day there is resistence to sacramental worship.  I am not sure that I will ever understand why thoughts are superior to actions, why casual is superior to ritual, why beauty and ancient actions inspire fear.  Is it the fear of the sensual?  Has so much of Christianity bought into the idea of the spiritual good and physical bad?  You should see a funeral at my church.  We are in the Baptist Bible belt.  Baptists come to our church and reject the Eucharist!!!  Reject the body and blood of Christ because of how it is packaged.  They often reject the Prayer Book, reject the kneeler and ultimately reject the Eucharist.  I have purely felt the resistance and antagonism. 

But I do not care.  I propose that we heartily celebrate sensual pleasures. 

God made us with eyes, ears, noses, skin and taste buds.  This is how we were so wonderfully made, and I am weary of apologizing for being human with a heart that swells by visions of light streaming through windows and delights in the musical sighing of the reed.  Hallelujah for our senses; hallelujah for sensual pleasures; may we savor existence and celebrate sensuality no where more than in our worship, remembering that Christ made a bridge between the human and the divine where we may freely pass back and forth.  That should happen during worship, and it does happen in my tiny stone church nestled in azaleas, hollies and dogwoods in the Southern landscape where the veil is thinnest during the Eucharist and the bridge beckons saints on either side to meet in the middle.