The Monastery Art Department

In many ways a university art department is like a monastery; students are exposed to a great many theories of why art exists and why humans seem to need it.  Simultaneously the students are taught skills to make art and given time and space to develop those skills.  Devotion, rote repetition to mastery and zeal for their trade are foundational for the student and are relied upon by the professor as the fuel that propels the student forward.  Because the vocation of artist is solely dependent upon the will of the student, not the marketplace, the community is the workforce and creating the paycheck.  All these are necessary for the student to be able to survive to professional trade as a proclaimer of the gospel of art.  If all of this is built upon the foundation of the call of Christ on the student’s life, the whole process takes on sacredness much like the monastic life—which to me is a life worthy of consideration. 

A Hole For A Stake

I dug a single hole yesterday, been on my heart of months.  It will be the front right corner of my new studio at Fair Haven.  It was a sacred act, one of the most sacred I have ever made.  I had put it off for years trying to decide if an ancient man can fill a studio.  Not fill it with stuff but fill it with himself, is there enough of me left to make that leap of faith possible?  What’s left of me is maimed, paralyzed, numb, stiff and broken and art takes hard grizzled stuff, fought for stuff, deep stuff.  But I have come to acknowledge that the artist in me is better than the me that houses him and so I dug the hole.  A single hole upon which I am sure, bent and gnarled, I can yet be.

Building a studio is not like building a shed.  It is more akin to driving a stake into the central matter of the universe.  It declares you are here for the expressed intention of making sense of it all, for adding to the universal explanation, for guiding humans forward and upward.  Making art is not for the skillful but for the burdened.  Skill is reserved for the proud; burden is the mantle of pious humility.  Try as we may, I see no avenue by which art can be separated from God, the One True God nor artist from the all-out pursuit of Him.     

  

You Can Understand A Lot From A Good Bird

There is a certain stillness and quietness required for understanding.  One of the greatest losses of contemporary life is understanding because we have lost the places that are perpetually still and quiet.  The early bird gets a lot but one of the most important things, it is still and quiet when he gets up.  We should join him. 

i Need A Bigger I

One of the greatest difficulties in making large-scale public sculpture is the enormity of each of the parts.  The stone is replaced with the boulder, the sculpture stand replaced with the earth and the hammer and chisel replaced with the crane and bulldozer.  But the real problem is that with the enormity of the parts comes the same size sculptor.   

Benson Sculpture latest project
The Seven Pillars

 

Eden's Red

Once again I find myself sitting in front of a roaring fire praying that the cosmic mix of oxygen, hydrogen, gas, carbon, a flake of red iron and a soup of dirt will emerge into the glaze reds of the first blood flowing in Eden’s Tenders.  The ancient Chinese named it Ox-blood Red but redemption has moved my date back a few thousand years.  Whatever the case, the fact remains, in the truest sense, I find myself sitting with God this morning.  

Trial Trail

There are long dry spells, hikes along dusty trails, rocky and technical, where all you can do is watch the path for fear of tumbling, unable to take in the encouraging views of the wilderness that first called you.  The point is to stay the course, keep to the trail, endure the difficulty, and don’t turn back.   The goal doesn’t change because the trail has.  You must change, enthusiasm must be replaced with determination, desire must change to resolve, stroller to climber, hiking to mountaineering.  Bath your soul, heart, and mind in the pain that pummels your body knowing full well you will emerge cleansed standing on the summit.