Kari Segal-Allgire painted this a few years ago. It is a huge painting which sets the tone in the dining room at our community center for children at risk in Romania. She had some of the kids model and the buildings in the background refer to very typical communist style housing still dominating the city scape. Kari and I exhibited paintings together in some local galleries and at that time she was using drawings of kids and interpreting them with intuitively derived radiant colors. She has more recent work up at her site, K. Segal's Blog. Her present work, while it has developed still carries the weight of the poverty she struggled with among the poor in her time in Romania.

these photos are from a show in Lexington, Kentucky at the 'Firebird Gallery' downtown and the other in Galati, Romania at 'Nicolae Mantu Gallery', the local gallery of the Romanian National Ascociation of Plastic Artists.

The bulk of my work for the last two years, Sarcina Series Paintings is showing now at Georgetown College, Georgetown KY from July 6 - September 14 . Then they go to Asbury College from September 18th -October 8th, in Wilmore KY.

I think these paintings capture a lot of my wrestling with art and faith among hte poor in the last few years. At the Sarcina Series Paintings blog you can find a decription of the process.

"Armenian cemetery Chapel"

The Armenian chapel stands near the back of the main cemetery in our city. The majority of people here are Romanian Orthodox, so the Catholics and Armenian were given space in the back.

I try to get away to a quiet place with my watercolors set, some pens and pencils and a chunks of time. I usually start with finding a quiet place to sit. Then by journaling and drawing, soak up what the moment has to offer, not controlling the outcome, but rather trying to surrender to the experience of the present moment. It is something like getting down the obvious details of the experience, and gradually over the course of an hour of journaling and drawing themes begin to emerge, a deeper perception of the beauty is present, which I had not perceived before sitting down. Subtleties become conscious, and I am wooed and sometimes overcome by the experience. The above watercolors is a record of one of those experiences. I wrote in my journal and then some on the actual painting some lines which seemed key to the experience. Below are the rest of my working exegesis of the moment I noted in my journal.

Aesthetic experience is said to boil down to concentrated attention and a submission/ non control of the experience. This method especially using lots of blind contour drawing, is a door into aesthetic experience, because its nature is attentive looking and submission to the experience, rather than being heavy on controlling the outcome.

"wood doors, tin plated
bullet nails trailing up
and down the arch
cross tipped steel hinges
embrace massive wood
and rock them open and closed

a tiny piece of metal rod
holds the door open
cemented in windows
overgrown weeds clothe
its cracking structure
red brick still holding
up the chapel without
the dignity of the mortar coat
rounded arched doors
and painted arch coves
go up to the rocked off
steeple, a leaning vented
rusted tin top hat

in the back of the catholic
cemetery she waits in silence
listens to the letter sculptor
hammer out new names
sons and grandsons clearing the weeds
and trash from the graves
swooshing around her gray
shell with armfulls of branches

she is opened probably
by vandals or homeless
or dogs or just the wind
for the lost storm

there must have been
yellow and blue, orange
stained glass illuminating
the floor for last
goodbyes, funeral speeches
and 'Lord have mercy
on our soul's

she has stood probably
over a century saluting
the sun every morning
inviting rays through
her eastern window
above the open door"

“…for the needy shall not always be forgotten, nor the hopes of the poor be in vain” Psalm 9






A bolivian man waits on the busy street for something. He appears in the Moon Flute Video. This shot was taken in El Alto from the Word Made Flesh drop in center for women who prostitute in the fall of 2005.

Chapel Carpet Project

Scraps have been collected from some of the other Word Made Flesh fields, of old clothing from staff and the poor among whom we work. As we weave this rug in the chapel we are praying for mercy on the worlds poor. When we are done it will lie in the center of the chapel as a reminder of the centrality of Christ, and the poor who He weaves into His life in the center with Him. The many colored strips of fabric are all held together by a single un-cut string.

sketch of a woman begging

(often those begging hold an icon of the Theotokos or Christ)

The other night I took Simeon to meet some of the guys in the street. As we got off the Tram across from Mc Donalds I noticed a guy without legs on the ground behind his wheel chair counting his income for the day, and a couple guys around him helping out. He seemed a little agitated when I heard him say, "am fost sârman dejeaba astazi", which means something like, "I was a poor begger all for nothing today". God have mercy on us.

drawing from the Athens Archeological Museum 2001

The Eucharist and the Dying Poor

"...“Thinking” about union with God, or about bread and wine is never enough, we must “eat” (see John 6:33). In the context of the liturgy this means Eucharist, and in the “liturgy after the liturgy” it means transfiguring everything we touch, to comprehend in faith, to love our neighbor as the priest handles the Eucharistic gifts. Then we have spirit and life, then the kingdom has come.
Eucharist is the experience of transfigured matter, the Body of Christ and the word of Christ. Though the Eucharist is never watered down or generalized it is the seed of the transfigured creation, of Life which is wholly spiritualized while never losing its weight. The bodies of the poor must be seen through Eucharist. The Eucharist restores our vision. This gift is the restoration, the access into the sacred river which flows just below the surface of all matter and pools in the wounds of the dying poor. Eucharist restores our sight and lets us and breathe the air of the New Creation.
“For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed, he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him.” (John 6:55-56)

From an article published in In Communion Journal, the full text can be read at, Eucharist and the Dying Poor full article

Violin

In the fall of 2000 I was with some friends in Iasi, a university town in northern Romania, the historic ‘Rome’ of the Romanian Orthodox church. As we wondered around the city the first evening we noticed some old theater buildings in the center of the city. As we got closer, the huge cracks in the structure looked worse, broken windows, and little life except a sun worn sign. To our delight there was to be a concert that evening. We wandered back to the building later that evening to find doors open and a ticket lady through the tiny little metal hinged window she gave tickets through.

Sitting in the balcony we had a nice angle on the concert given by the Romanian orchestra along with a guest director, cellist, and violinist from Japan. Since I listen better with a pencil, I did some sketches through the evening. This particular sketch was during the violin solo of the Paganini piece.

Some six years later through a strange twist of circumstances I have started to play violin; mainly my wife and I decided to see if we could teach our son Suzuki violin, which required a parent to be learning. Starting into the second Suzuki book, at thirty one, I am now somewhere at the level of the average three or four year old Suzuki student. My thought as I got serious about starting violin was, ‘I want my kids to experience something beautiful’.

The head of a sunflower is coming down from the top. Monica's garden has two sunflowers from the seeds which she hung last year to attract birds. I have been working on this six foot high shape for a few weeks till I can get more linnen and gysso to work on. I have been doing blind contours in in the garden onto the board, coming back in with oils and then working back into it with more blind contours over the l paint.

The Role of an Artist in Community among the Poor

Will beauty save the world? This question percolates from the turmoil of Fyodor Dosoevsky’s novels (Richard Pevear, Introduction to The Idiot). But how could beauty and salvation be related in the least? Beauty tends to be a concept left to personal taste, not often a subject discussed in a theological context. But for Dostoevsky, salvation is incomprehensible without beauty. Dostoevsky seemed to understand salvation as beauty, or beauty as the manifestation of redemption.

A fifteen-year study on creativity by the University of Chicago showed that creativity is the bringing together of opposites into a meaningful whole (William Dyrness, Image Journal, Fall 1996). Beauty, in a similar vein, can be understood simply as diversity in unity. The fruit of true creativity is beauty. In monumental works of art, major themes are reconciled – love and hate, death and life, dark and light, hope and despair, black and white, or rich and poor – creating a moving beauty. This is applicable to every form of art, from painting to sculpture to performance art, Picasso’s Guernica, Melville’s Moby Dick or Michelangelo’s Pieta. In each case, the artist transformed disconnected parts into a meaningful whole, using colors, lines, spaces, times, cultures, politics or common human psychological experiences. The outcome is a deep beauty, which transcends both era and culture, ringing true to the person experiencing the work today.

Saint Paul says that Christ has “committed to us the word of reconciliation” (I Cor. 5:19). The final reconciliation of all things under, in and through Christ can now be seen as the highest form of beauty. All of creation is generated from the beauty of the Holy Trinity, the diversity of three persons in perfect unity. And all of creation is fulfilled in becoming a participating image of the unity of the Father, Son and Spirit (William Dyrness, The Earth is God’s). The history of salvation seen in this light begins and ends in beauty. Beauty is the manifestation of the image of the Trinity in the world. Beauty is reconciliation made material, and therefore beauty is also a vision of the final redemption of the world.

The book of Revelation says, “And they shall bring the glory and honor of the nations into [the Holy City]” (21:26). Here is an image of all of creation being gathered together and offered to Christ at the end of the age. Creation begins in the beauty of the Godhead and finds its final form in becoming a participating image in that same beauty, when all things are reconciled in Christ. At the end of the age, the diversity of nations, peoples and tongues are unified in adoration at the feet of Christ. The beauty of the communion of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is expanded out into the ends of creation and to the end of time. Coming from a utilitarian, what-works-is-best culture, beauty is often our last consideration. In our society, things are considered “good” if they get the job done, if they are efficient, and if they save us time and energy. However, if we consider beauty as the end, then we are challenged to re-think any strategy that does not reconcile scattered people and scattered parts of creation. If it is not done beautifully, little has been accomplished toward the reconciliation of all things in Christ, or the expansion of the beauty of God out into all creation.

For anyone of us interested in glorifying or revealing the Triune God in our actions, beauty must be our means. Our methods must necessarily participate in the end, reflect the end and announce its coming. In Van Gogh’s famous painting, Starry Night, a turbulent sky swarms around the stars and trees. The night air breathes a certain anxiety and force, yet there is an inner resolve to the overall painting. Yellows and blues form harsh contrasts but still leave the composition beautifully harmonized. In drinking deeply of Van Gogh’s turbulent sky, one experiences a peace, a reconciliation of blue and yellow, anxiety and peace, darkness and luminosity. Starry Night is beautifully made and so provides us with a taste of the beauty of the Triune God.

Our community often celebrates birthdays together with a meal, a speech and a symbolic gift. As we come together around the table, one can name the diversity – rich, poor, dark-skinned and pale, a myriad of histories and interests, artists, engineers, street kids, teachers, some with big ideals and some with just enough faith to smile. The celebration meal mysteriously tunes the diversity into a beautiful chord. In these moments, ends and means converge. Just as Van Gogh wrestled to tame his colors into a meaningful beautiful whole, so the Holy Spirit works among us to still our fears, sins and egos, to symphonize us in Him a rugged-yet-beautiful body. If our means are beautiful, the world is offered a little wedding cake before the wedding, and the bride’s entry music begins to be heard from the altar.

Beauty is, then, not only the end, but also the means. The Enlightenment has taught us to break everything down into parts that we can manipulate and control. Science measures, weighs, compiles data and sifts out all the parts of the world, which helps the human race become more and more powerful and productive. Science gives us bombs, but also a cure for polio. As Huston Smith explains in Beyond the Post Modern Mind, the scientific method is like a fishing net designed to catch fish with great efficiency, yet always remaining powerless to tell us anything about the ocean. To have beauty as our means is to go upstream from enlightenment thought and the religion made out of science, both of which are so dominant in western culture. A methodology of beauty implies that by intuitive imagination, we learn to see the underlying themes – the whole beneath the parts. The ocean is observed and considered, not forgotten in the rote exercise of counting the fish it gives. Being attentive to the working of the Spirit behind the scenes, we see not only the data about the human body, but we see the image of God imprinted on the soul of humankind. We trade our lust for power and control for a desire for life – the life of the Trinity, which models for us diversity of persons in mutual submission to one another. This mutual submission is seen in God as The Father giving His Son for the life of the world, the Son redeeming humanity for love of the Father, and the Spirit pouring Himself out into the world, gathering all things to the feet of the Son. Seeking power and control rather than giving, reconciling and pouring out one’s self for love of the other will only serve to disjoint and fragment humanity, creating chaos and disunity. The end never justifies the means because only beautiful means bear the seeds of a beautiful end. Mutual submission of persons, on the other hand, is itself an image of archetypal beauty – diversity in unity. If we choose beauty as a means of working in the world, our actions become brushstrokes of this mutually submissive self-giving love.

Art, by its very nature, is about developing the intuitive imagination, where one learns to see beneath the surface of diversity and chaos to the order and unity below. By faith, we know the Spirit of Christ is moving within creation to bring unity under submission to Christ in all of the scattered parts of creation. An artist in community among the poor, then, is one who encourages and stimulates this kind of intuitive vision. The artist inspires others to see Christ, the image of God, under our own skin. The artist teaches us by the beauty of his or her work to mutually submit to one another, to be gathered in unity; rich, poor, black, white, gypsy, woman, man, young, old, until we are raised up together, “to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph. 4:13). An artist among the poor must learn to bring into unified works of art the suffering and desolation found among the poor with hope for an ultimate healing of humanity by the death of Christ. The artist, by accomplishing this in a work of art, teaches us all to do this integrating work within ourselves and in our cities.

Here is one of our artists at work at our day center. A friend from the US was showing some of the boys on the streets his San Damiano cross tatoo on his leg and the boys asked if this guy had done it.

Here is a self portrait done within a year of moving to Romania to work with Word Made Flesh. Many of the Apartment buildings are still on a common heating system which may get turned off before the cold weather is over.

This is when I began to work on reconciling an appreciation for fine art, faith in Christ, the need to do justice, and to not be a lone ranger.

I had no studio at the time and so I would go to the market with a sketchbook.

watermelon

2002

This is an oil painting done on a canvas shirt. One morning I showed up at our community drop in center and their was a ball point pen drawing on the table on a big piece of paper. I was awestruck and started copying the drawing in my sketchbook and asked who had done it. I found out it was done the day before by a god friend of ours who lives on the streets. This part of the drawing was his 'house' complete with a pot with salomi and bread stuck in it. He had written in Romania, 'door' by the door and 'house' up by the shelves on the wall. Later that year I had a show of my oil paintings and a series of his drawings.


Here is the image from my sketch book. his design elements found in al the would be oopen spaces appeared in my paintings after this point.

These are clips from a video animation project done in January 2006 with marginalized children at our day center in Romania. You hear their voices, see their eyes and ears and noses, but never see a whole face. My hope was that you would have an experience of their personality and character in a small way. The dancer in the video is one of the kids dancing, photographed with continuous shooting, turned into outlines, and then colored in by the kids. Another segment consists of drawings the kids did, starting with eyes and nostrils on a page. They completed the drawings as you see in the video... http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2772529845494804139

"The Dive"

oil on canvas

This painting was done in the Word Made Flesh community and hags at the drop in center in one of the class rooms for children in the afterschool programs. This painting was done after a series of large portraits were drawn persons in of the community.

preliminary sketch for "The Dive"

I have found that most people are honored when asked to model for a painting. There is a basic respect and dignity offered in spending the time to draw someones portrait. It says, 'you are important, you exist, you are worth attention'. The process in making art in community among the poor is redemptive in itself.

This article has been published in Incommunion journal (Orthodox Peace Fellowship journal) and The Cry magazine (Word Made Flesh's advocacy magazine). Rouault and especially Wiliam Dyrness' biography Rouault:A Vision of Suffering and Salvation have been influential in my thinking about art and its necessary connection to suffering for authenticity.

Hope-giving Images

Last summer I arranged to see one of George Rouault’s ‘Head of Christ’ paintings at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Being one of my greatest heroes, I hoped to see this painting only to find it was in storage. I constructed a great sob story and went up to the reception desk of the museum, ‘I live in Romania and only visit north east Ohio once a year and come especially to see Rouault’s work, and he is the biggest reason that I myself am an artist’. She looked at me as if she understood I must be a potential future Picasso and couldn’t imagine stunting my artistic growth. We arranged a time in a couple days when they would pull the three by four foot luminous ‘Head of Christ’ and then see the Rouault prints they could find stored in the print archives.

I became aware of Rouault’s work through a book called George Rouault, A Vision of Suffering and Salvation. As a theologian, the book was a real life study for William Dyrness on a Christian approach to art. As the title alludes, his basic thesis is that the Christian artist is one who brings together the suffering of the world with a vision of its redemption.

My jaw dropped when the entire Miserere et Guerre series done by Rouault was brought out for me to see a couple days later...see the rest of the text along with the Rouault painting at... http://incommunion.org/articles/previous-issues/issue-37/rouault%e2%80%99s-hope-giving-images

Beggars Society Cross

collaborative community piece

baggers society at Word Made Flesh in Omaha

may 2006

This cross was made one evening with a group meeting to talk about faith, social justice, and our responses. The little crosses were made on scraps of paper brought by the participants and came to represent areas of poverty we were commited to confront, rather than just fix, ignore, or forget. Audio from the evening is at http://www.wordmadeflesh.com/learn/sermons/2006_05%20Beggars%20Society_JKlepac_Joy_in_Suffering.mp3