Art in Community among the Poor

Beauty and Worship: Art for Community, part 5

When art is based in Community, the artist vocalizes the community experience. The artist is able to give expression to more than just her own personal experience.

Thomas Hart Benton went from the Paris art scene, the cutting edge at the time, and from there developed a desire to connect and articulate common themes coming from common people in the southern United States.

As Thomas Hart Benton and others such as Harlan Hubbard described by Wendel Berry did, artists in local rooted communities have the opportunity of articulating directly our common themes, vision, identity, and experience. The gift they offer back to their communities is a sense of vision and purpose, a sense of their place in history and the importance of the ordinary loving work taking place in the community.

Collaboration

The Give and take, the dance of the Holy Trinity is our model and mandate to be collaborating partners in any work we do. We are made to work together. By making art together we make visible our common work together that is orchestrated by the Holy Spirit.

By doing collaborative work we are able to do a series of reflections, learn to give and take, and learn to risk. For people who have been trained in individualistic, competitive culture where each person must prove he is better that all the rest, this kind of collaboration can be healing. For children at risk who feel powerless and voiceless this kind of dignifying collaboration can be revitalizing and hope giving.

Kids animation Project

This project involved most of the kids at the center for at risk youth, The Valley Center. In it their own voices and personalities are heard, their mark is made. The process in itself of photographing, coloring, and drawing, and all the way until we watched the final product together was fun and life giving.

Flower garden Painting

For this collaboration I gave the kids squares with blind contours drawn on them and they were able to paint them how they wished. The funnest moment was seeing their faces light up when they saw the final collection of all the squares. They ran around finding the other staff telling them that they had made this piece together.

In the chapel carpet we have another example of collaboration. The other Word Made Flesh communities sent us articles of used clothing which intersected with their communities and we cut them into strips and have woven them into a rug to be used in the center of the chapel. We have used the process as a way to pray for the other fields, and now after a couple years of weaving in prayers, the rug is almost finished, and will be a reminder of the other communities present with us in our times of prayer.

Wendell Berry’s Short stories are a great example of using writing to find voice for the community experience. They are simple beautiful and dignifying to the loving, patient work of good people. More of this kind of reflective fiction could be cultivated among us. There are many amazing characters who we we meet on a daily basis whose lives deserve to be described and celebrated in reflective writing. Some of our stories which appear in prayer letters are great starts to reflective contemplative writing which gives voice to our common experience as communities.

This is a piece of hand made paper which came together during a talk I gave called "Finding Joy in the Midst of Suffering" to the Beggars Society in Omaha. Again, the beauty of the piece is in the diversity of contributions, prayers, and the lives and suffering represented by each of the people who placed their crosses into the wet paper pulp.

In 'Art for Community' we find our voice, the community participates in collaborative projects which articulate common vision and purpose. We collaborate in a material way, making visible signs of our collaborative and redemptive work among the poor. When we work together, in mutual submission and love we become living icons of the Holy Trinity.

Find more examples of 'Art for Community'