We love it here.

From Jeff Pamer’s WE WILL BE OK

The other day when Kenz and I were registering for wedding gifts, the things I wanted to register for the most were mostly floor displays at the various stores. Upon asking “How do I scan your floor displays with my Scanner of Ultimate Power?”, I got some looks that said You probably shouldn’t be here.

Most of those looks came from Kenz.

Submitted to JPG Magazine’s Beloved theme.

Houston, TX

A few weeks ago I was at Mars Hill Graduate School’s prospective student weekend, where people from around the country who are interested in the school came to Seattle to learn more about the programs and life in the city. About 20 or 30 current students also attend to lead discussion groups and take the visitors out to dinner. The conversations are always filled with new energy and fantastic questions about the school, psychology and theology, and what it’s like to be a student at MHGS.

I never went to a prospective student weekend when I was applying, but I remember being in their shoes. I remember the anticipation of change, of sitting in classes at a graduate level, of living in the Pacific Northwest, and so much more. I was antsy to move out here and begin. I thought I had an idea of what I was getting myself into, but there really wasn’t anything that could prepare me fully. Maybe more therapy, but probably not. The one thing that most current students say to prospective students that ask how they can prepare is Bring yourself, your story, where you’ve been and where you are. Be honest, be open and be ready for that which you can’t be ready for.

Oh the proverbial paradox.

Two visitors (and I wish I could remember their names) came over to me and asked, after we introduced ourselves, As an MDiv student, how do you integrate theology and art?

It’s a great question and it’s one of the main reasons I came to MHGS.

My answer, or the words I offered, were something like this:

I think the better question, or more so the question I would rather try to answer, is how do you separate theology and art?

To help explain this, examples work better for me than words.

I hung 12 photographs similar to this one at MHGS in the student gallery a few weeks ago. One of my professors asked me what I titled the project, and I said Fall. She said Really? That’s interesting. I see more of an ascension, and uplifting rather than a falling.

This took us to a discussion of how we see things. Generally, at least in this stage in my life, I see things in terms of emptiness, loneliness, abandonment. In this year I’ve spent a lot of energy and time around how the death of my mother when I was 12 has shaped me. I can tie so many things back to that year and those weeks of my life.

My professor saw it differently. She brings her story into the photograph and sees different themes. This led to an interesting conversation about her ideas of ascension and the movements in her life toward God. Neither interpretation is wrong. I don’t think the categories of right and wrong exist in art. But it was interesting to me how one image could conjure so many different emotions and ideas.

My art pours out of me from my studies in theology and spirituality, and my theologies and spirituality pour out from my art. I don’t think I can separate them, nor do I wish to do so.

Hasselblad 500C/M
120 Portra
Prague, Czech Republic

Had a few light leaks on this roll, but I still love how this one turned out.

When I begin the process of creating, be it a written story, a photograph, or any other realm I put my hand at, one of my first thoughts will inevitably be How will this be perceived? And immediately after that I’ll think How will I be perceived?

When I create with these things in mind, what I am attempting to do is the work of the reader before the reader has a chance to view the piece. Essentially, I want to control what the viewer sees and thinks. I want to manipulate how she reads the art. And to be honest, it’s not as much about the art as it is about me. I want to make sure that I am seen how I want to be seen.

Even now as I write, I am warring with thoughts of how you will read this and how you will read who I am. This has been a humbling idea and painful to wrestle with. I sit here staring at this screen, watching the cursor blink, waiting for words to be formed around these ideas, and the hardest thing for me to do is to actually get out of the way and write. I think that it is both possible & impossible for the artist to get out of the way. The artist can’t remove himself from the art, but the artist must remove himself from the art. The moment that all of this becomes so cloudy and convoluted that you can’t work, the thing you must do is simply sit down and do the work. Get it out. Put it down in a notebook or on a canvas or on emulsion paper.

The task of the artist is to create because she must create.

The artist must look into his soul, see what is there, and attempt to form it in something physical. The world needs the artist to show up, to be present. The world needs people to interpret and recreate truths, however they are seen by the individual. When art is created with the reader in mind and not the artist’s own soul in mind, the art is contrived and the reader has been coerced.

I can’t let my own story, how I am seen, get in the way of the story I am attempting to portray in the art. Again, I can’t remove myself, but I must.

•••••••••••••••••••••••••

In the last year and a half I have sat down countless times to write down my thoughts in this space, but the cycle has persisted: stare at a blank screen, wrestle with thoughts, write a few paragraphs, save as draft, delete draft the next day.

I’ve been censoring so much that nothing has come out in the form of words. Even my speech patterns have changed. I pause longer, stew over the words I want to convey, and 15 seconds later come back with a response to a fairly simple question.

Kenz: Hey boy, what do you want to make for dinner?

Me: (In my head: If I say x then she’ll think this, and if I say y then she’ll go that direction.) Chipotle.

I think my task as an artist, as a human, is to trust. My task is to put confidence in myself and in you, that we will hold each other well. I want to create and need to create because I was made to create. Anne Lamott says to write because you have to write. Because you have no choice. Rlike says to go inside yourself and to explore the depths whence your life wells forth; at its source you will find the answer to the question whether you must create.

So here I go. I’m going to click on Publish and then it will be yours to read and interpret, to do with as you wish. Here is where I let go and where you take hold.

Hasselblad 500C/M
120 Portra
Somewhere between Dallas & Amarillo, TX

Hasselblad 500C/M
120 Portra
Budapest, Hungary