Friday, September 10, 2010

Life and Art

Slowly we are getting this figured out.  It's not easy.  Sometimes it seems like its extra hard on purpose.  Yeah, its life.   Jason's in school and we are finding out we aren't the type of parents we thought we would be.  Yes, children are harder than they appear.  It seems like a lot of the moms I have been talking to lately have been telling how they had wanted more children; but with each child they do have that number becomes smaller. :)  How did my parents do it?  Our house seems to be in a constant state of disarray.  I'm talking a mess.  I know a lot of people say their house is a mess, but ours really is.  Josh has a job, thank the Lord, but you never know what is going to happen.  I am looking for jobs and somehow they are really hard to find.  I know the economy isn't the greatest still, but I have never had a problem getting a job before.  Oh well, right?  Mia is awesome.  Somehow she just gets to tag along to where ever I am going and the girl is back in a "no brushing hair" stage.  I hate that, because her hair gets snarly fairly easy, especially after a long day.  Really the only comfort is that God has a plan.  Somehow that thought gives hope.  I think its a weird phenomenon.  How easy would it be to not trust God and not have that comfort and hope that even though life isn't what you expected you know that someone bigger and stronger than you has a plan for you that is better than what you could come up with yourself.  Frankly, its amazing.  Why believe something like that?  For me personally, the thought of having nothing else to look forward to, or feeling the empty purposelessness of the mundane that we go through everyday is just that empty, purposeless, and mundane; well its not worth it NOT to believe.  Does that make sense?  On the other hand I love God, I love life, I love feeling like what I am doing is making a difference and that its not unnoticed.  If nothing else, what do you have to lose?
Anyway....that was a round about way of getting to art.  Because for me art has to have a purpose.  Solomon, the wisest man in the world, called everything meaningless.  I have created art that was meaningless, I have seen art that I asked myself, "Why?".  Since I still can't share pictures I thought I would share this paragraph I wrote a little while ago about what art means.  So here goes.....


I was thinking about what it means to be creative and about how artists just come up with things out of no where.   But sometimes for me just creating something for no reason doesn’t work.  That led me to think about certain artists work and the definition of art and how art is and can be used.  When reading about Norman Rockwell the book I was reading commented how Rockwell was not considered a “true” artist because of the clarity of the message he was communicating.  The idea that true art is ambiguous is a bunch of silliness.  Art is a form of communication, why would you not communicate a clear message that your audience can understand?  Picasso (for one he is a pervert) and I have not read enough about him to understand his thought process yet but seriously what was he communicating with his art?  This also makes me think of the story of the Emperor’s new clothes.  The bandits capitalized on the fear of being perceived as inferior and stupid.  Art and art critics at their worst look down on people who don’t understand about art but if it is a means of communication what are these revered artists saying with their work.


As my friend Joni Turner would say, "Take what you want and throw the rest away."  :)