Art in Community among the Poor

The Role of the Artist:
Physical Play/Contemplation, Theological Insight, and Integration

The roles of the artist must deal with attentive observation. Apprehension of reality through time and work on physical objects in the physical world. It’s modes range from play and quiet contemplation. Play, the joyful discovery and interaction with the wonders of a miraculous creation, is one end of the same attentive observation, and quiet contemplation is the other. In its quiet contemplative mode it shares at its core, a joyful pilgrimage in the vast wonders of the physical universe. Joy is inherent as one is surprised by the beauty in every corner of the physical universe, one must only look long enough. This is true even in the most God forsaken places on earth. Without play and contemplation and art is always shallow, cliché, or an ugly slave and object of some totalitarian alien domain.

The next role is to be a participant in a similar playful and joyful journey into the universe through living theology, the present experience of the church as it is rooted in the historical and living Church. Written theology often opens doors to more fully experiencing God in the church, but theology in this sense is at its core a continuous journey, which is always renouncing false images of God and of the universe, grasping for the true God who reveals himself, but is always bigger than our comprehension.

The third role of the artist is the integration of the first two ever deepening discoveries (joyful explorations of material world through the senses and the joyful exploration of God through intuition and experience of living theology of the church. As these parts remain separate then the artist has contributed little to his communities, local and world. His power, responsibility to himself, to God, and to the world is to offer a synthesized, integrated image of the universe which seamlessly and organically (experiences the whole) ‘images’ a universe without separations, spiritual and physical, body and soul, idea and concrete reality, word and flesh. In the end the artist has done us a service when he has offered back to us the vision of the new heaven and earth where there is no division, separation, or warring parts. All is unified in the apocalyptic Christ Triumphant.

Without playful discovery of the material world the artists’ universe remains disconnected parts offering little hope of their ultimate reconciliation.

Without joyful pilgrimage into living theology, prayer and experience of God in the church, ones art remains abstract and offers little hope that it can ever touch the physical degradation of the world, the poor, or the earth.

Without integration, our play and contemplation remain undeveloped seedlings unable to provide shade or greater nourishment for the world. Though all artistic play, contemplation, and theological study have worth in itself it is their integration that needs to be developed if our work is to outlive us.