and if i knew the answers, i would tell you now

Chris Fennell recently came to Messiah College to install a sculpture outside Boyer Hall. Known for his wooden waves, doorways, and of course his bicycle cyclone, Chris Fennell created this on the terrace outside Howe Atrium.

I love this sculpture. When Chris spoke to our senior art seminar class, he mentioned that it was inspired by looking at a pine cone. Now, it is not a new idea to take something small which gives you awe and make it large in order to share that awe with someone else. But to also make it a doorway? That, to me, is intellectually stimulating and emotionally satisfying. Chris calls this particular sculpture “Tree Passage.” In walking through it and looking upward at the pattern of wood and sky, I fell in love with the idea of awe as a passageway.

Even more than that, because it is poised on the top of a slope, leading between the natural world (the tree-covered slope leading down to Climenhaga) and the educational world (Boyer), I fell in love with the idea of awe as a passageway from the concrete and natural into the intellectual and back again. I can really only speak for myslf as an artist, but I know that my visual vocabulary is natural, and it is in an effort to more skillfully understand and articulate this natural, concrete visual vocabulary that I move into the academic/intellectual realm. And it is what I learn in the intellectual realm that sends me back into the natural world to see things again, see them new, and re-articulate, to actually make new objects couched in the concrete but enriched by the intellectual.

So now, in my head, I am seeing awe as a balancing point between the academic and the concrete, the thinking and the making. And I am seeing this balancing point as a doorway, in fact, this sculpture of Chis Fennell’s.

I feel in need of a balancing point between the intellectual and the making of things. Some portion of me, let’s call it the maker part of my personality, rejects attempts to label or pick apart a piece of work to understand why it is an emotional trigger for a viewer or reader. It especially rejects attempts to contextualize a work in terms of the creator’s personal lives or historical/social context. It wants simply to let the piece be what it is, enjoyed or not by viewers, on a level separate from explication or readings-into. Yet another part of me delights in explicating texts (whether visual or verbal) and understanding on every possible level its meanings, social context, and world-view leanings.

I am very postmodern, and perhaps this leads to my confusion. My response to “Tree Passage” could be nothing like what Chris Fennell intended, but I would still believe my interpretation is merited according to the observable formal content of the work. But as I am writing this, I am also telling myself that it is unfair and inadequate (maybe even silly?) to intellectualize such a beautiful object.

But maybe awe is, after all, a passageway or balancing point between these two impulses (the impulse to make and the impulse to intellectualize). Plain and simply put, if an intellectual understanding of the work heightens the awe with which we approach the work or the world post-viewing of the work, then it is worthwhile. And if it does not, then intellectualism is inadequate and should be abandoned in this case. Traditional wisdom, at least what I have encountered in art history classes, is that if a work cannot be aided by intellectual discussion, it is the work which is lacking. I utterly reject that. A piece can be beautiful and strong and amazing and simply too internal for us to intellectualize, but that does not lessen its worth as visual art, at least not in my mind. In my mind, it is the application of the intellectual which is often at fault.

Maybe this is a conclusion someone else reached a lot time ago. But I am just getting around to it. But I guess since I am just now being a senior in college, I have an excuse for only starting to formulate some of these thinkings now. = )

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eleven more days of freedom

I cannot wait for my roommates to arrive. I moved into my on-campus apartment last Friday. . . and while I love having space which is solely mine, on some level I feel a little lost without roommates. My roommates next year, Katie and Elena, were in Italy last spring with me (that’s us on a field trip in that picture! It’s Katie’s photo, and from left to right it’s me, Katie, and Elena). They’re stimulating, challenging people, with whom I just have a whole lot of fun. Artistically, I value their judgments highly (I took wood-block printing and stone-carving with both of them in Italy) and conversationally, I value their wit. With them, any remotely interesting topic results in debate and hilarity. (The weekend trip to Sardinia pictured below definitely resulted in hilarity!)

And we’re all art majors, so we have plans afoot to decorate our apartment. Posters are key, as are photographs of Orvieto and our travels. And, since we are art majors, we decided to exploit the sketching process to decorate our apartment; we plan to hang huge sheets of paper on our walls and use them as giant sketchbooks. I’m jazzed. I think it will be heck of rocking.

Yes, we’re mildly art obsessed. Because at college, your major eats your soul (in the best way possible). I’ve never lived with art majors before, but I’m excited. I’m excited to live with people who really have an appreciation of what it takes to be an art major, the hours of work required, the all-nighters before projects are due, the delight in finally getting something you can be proud of. Also, I think it will be great to have other artists always around to bounce ideas off of – and not just artists, but artists for whom I have a solid respect.

In Italy, Elena and I ran together before class in the morning. I think I’m going to have to start running early in the mornings again, even before Elena moves in. My body has finally settled into a regular sleep pattern, one that wakes me up briefly at 6:30 a.m before I roll over and tell myself sternly not to wake up for another hour. In Orvieto, running provided me with a chance to see the landscape waking up – to soak in the new light pouring over the edge of the cliff and into the valley. If I could force myself to open my eyes as regularly here at Messiah, I think that I might find enough inspiration to carry me through my senior show.

Speaking of senior show? Yesterday I saw one of my favorite professors ever. His name is Daniel Finch, and talking to him is like drinking three cups of espresso. I’m lucky enough to be working with him for my advanced two-dimensional studies course next semester, and already he’s prompting me to consider senior show questions. What makes me make images rather than turning to any other form of self-expression? What do I lack that I try to supply through image-making?

I’ll admit, after talking to Daniel my stomach is doing nervous, excited flips. I’m a senior now, and I have to prove myself by making senior-level work! And there are so many fascinating, difficult, delving questions that I’ll spend the next year trying to answer. . . .

Countdown: 11 days to the start of classes

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i was standing on the surface of a perforated sphere when the water filled every hole

Well! Today was an adventure. The photo shoot for the President’s Report happened down in Climenhaga, in Miller Auditorium. I’ve never spent much time on stage down there, but today I did - documenting the documentation, mostly (Donovan Witmer did the photography, Christina Weber organized, and Dan Custer and I took video and photos of the whole photo shoot process). The cover design adopted, as its theme, a conglomeration of faculty, employees, and students ala Annie Leibovitz’s Vanity Fair covers (except without the Hollywood stars).

I learned a lot, hanging out in the wings and running a video camera (or trying to slyly take notes in my sketchbook. Pretty sure I fail at slyness, though). Most of it was just little stuff - the tone of talking to large groups of people that you’re photographing, how planned all that body language that seems so natural is, how much life does not slow down after college - not if you’re a person passionate about what they do. I learned how much equipment you need to get a simple-looking effect, and how much knowledge successful, grown-up people imbibe through years of work (and they just whip it out instantaneously!). Also, I learned that sometimes a photo shoot containing seven people involves just sheer blind luck to get the perfect photo.

What hit me in the face the hardest, though, during my day of aiding the photo shoot (basically as a gopher) is this: I am so little prepared to face the real world. I haven’t got hardly any skills. Like, wow. Also, I lack social grace, which seems to always come in handy.

On the other hand, I felt an immense vitality going into this shoot - so many people with so many ideas and so much experience. You know how some people seem flat and dull, like they just never pay attention? And other people are vibrant and full of vitality, eyes wide open all the time? I want to be one of those vibrant people who’s full of vitality, and I want to be out in the real world acquiring that vitality and vibrant experience.

Sure, I’m not ready to graduate in an actual skills acquired kind of way (I’m sure as heck not ready to face my senior show even!), but I’m ready to graduate in an I want to get out there and learn all this stuff and be kick-butt at what I do someday kind of way.

I guess I just need to be stubborn enough to keep working with what I like even when I feel totally inadequate. And. . . if there’s any character trait I do have in abundance. . . it’s sheer stubbornness.

The End.

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