Artistic Responses to Habakkuk 1: 1-4 and 2: 1-4

It's been an interesting week, a mix of writing for seminary projects and noodling on a more creative project for this assignment for Thursday's Creative Process, Spiritual Practice class:  "You are to create an original visual art piece for next class inspired by the following scripture, Habakkuk 1: 1-4 and 2: 1-4. Create a visual art piece using whatever materials you like."  That assignment was always bubbling in my brain, and yesterday, we all brought our creations in for evaluation.

I started by reading the passage.  I interpreted the first chunk as a speaker complaining to God about how society has fallen apart and the second passage as God saying to be patient while God takes care of things.  I thought about what I might collect, while collecting leaves and looking around my apartment.  I thought about collecting newspapers, but quickly decided that would be too complicated, in part, but also, I made an artistic choice that I didn't want to be too didactic.

I decided that I'd use an oatmeal container as the structure for the base, and that I'd use the piece of canvas to disguise it.  I had a vision of a rubber band attaching the canvas and holding spools of thread.  I had in mind that I would sew cloth to the canvas, but in the end, I took an approach that was born out of both laziness and artistic vision:  I would use safety pins. 

I thought of the inside of the oatmeal container as the first chunk of Habakkuk and the outside as God's response.  I thought about adding more items (like newspaper headlines) to represent the decay of society, but in the end, I thought that it would be better to let viewers make their own associations.  I originally had more pine needles attached to branches and more red leaves visible, but decided not to rearrange when I got to class.

Instead of critiquing each other's talent, we did what our teacher calls a "liberatory critique."  

We went through 3 statements one at a time:

I see . . .

I feel . . .

I think . . .

I found it revelatory, both to participate and to hear what people said about my work.  

When I viewed the work of others, answering the questions (we took 3-8 minutes with each question) helped me to see deeply.  Hearing others respond helped me see things I might not have seen otherwise.

  

The questions built on each other to help us think about the meaning of the work and the way the work tried to respond to the text without being ugly about the skill of the artist.

When I first arrived, I felt bad about my piece, that it looked like the work of a first grader compared to my peers.  I've hung out with artists, and a traditional critique might have eviscerated me.  

But this process allowed my peers to consider what I might be doing.  They commented on the fact that the work looked impermanent, but that the impermanence might be intentional, that it looked hastily put together, but in fact, there was a method.  My peers got the interpretation exactly right, which made me happy:  the draping and colors of the cloth that suggested elements of the earth, as did the canvas underneath and the many colors of threads at the top.  They noted that leaves and the acorn tops did suggest that new creation/life/growth was possible out of the decay of existence--hurrah.  If I was creating it again, I'd add some needles to those spools.