Graphics and video for rezlife’s Grow Summer 2012. This is one of the first projects that I was actually able to work on post-transplant, so it was a little slow going, but I managed to get it pulled together.
This year rezlife student ministries will be doing all kinds of missions work- in the Kansas City area, Denver, Dallas, Chicago, Honduras and South Africa, so there is pretty much something for everyone, even Float Trips!
Enjoy. Continue reading →
This is another side project that I worked on over the summer and never got around to posting. The idea behind this was to show the brokenness of relationships that characterizes the human condition after the Fall.
I liked the idea of taking an image of a couple and splitting it in two, yet still keeping it close together as if they are trying to maintain some semblance of togetherness, even though the underlying brokenness is apparent. Continue reading →
I always find it amusing when I am sitting in a doctor’s office during the middle of the day how the only thing on the TV is a show involving some manner of litigation. I don’t know if Judge Judy is still doing her thing, but there always seems to be some ridiculous sort of court case being televised.
Lest one think this to be something novel to our society, we have nothing on the fifth-century Athenians.
Athenians loved to litigate and argue and dispute with each other. In many ways, it was a form of entertainment, for the juries were large. (between 201 and 501 jurors) The Athenian democracy assumed that you were going to participate, and any man could speak if he wanted.
In fact, if you were involved in the litigation somehow, whether of a civil or criminal manner, you were expected to speak on your own behalf. During this period the idea of a having lawyer with a formal understanding of legal procedures and precedents was unknown. As such, one’s rhetorical ability became a rather important aspect of winning the case. Continue reading →
Back in the summer of 2011 I started creating some freelance artwork for bulletin covers, postcards, etc. For whatever reason I never got around to actually posting them here, and was only recently reminded about doing so.
This particular installment is a concept I developed called Almost Alive. I had the idea of a branch that was broken and bleeding, but that had been band-aided back together as a sort of metaphor for brokenness and healing. Megan and I headed down to Heritage Park in Olathe, KS, and found a good spot to break some twigs. The food coloring got a little out of control, but it ended up working out in the end.
I can’t remember if I left the band-aid on the tree or not… Continue reading →
I wrote a guest article for CreationSwap entitled Toward the Beautiful on the metaphysical underpinnings of beauty and how that relates to the role of an artist in the work of creating art. Check it out here.
What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear the phrase The Dark Ages?
Hordes of barbarians descending from the mountainside, laying waste to an enlightened and ordered society, leaving only violence and lawlessness in their wake?
The utter disintegration of art, learning, science and culture for nearly 400 years?
Unrelenting war, pestilence, savagery, ignorance and barbarity?
The suppression of reason in favor of faith?
The “Dark Ages” (enough of the scare quotes…) are probably one of the most misunderstood periods of history, (an irony, of course, about an age supposedly characterized by ignorance) and often function as a sort of trump card to demonstrate the supposedly disastrous consequences of the age of faith over an age of reason. After all, who wants to be stuck in the Dark Ages?
But were the Dark Ages really all that dark? Edward Gibbon, who is best known for his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, describes what amounts to a veritable Paradisio in the late Roman Empire:
In the second century of the Christian era, the empire of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth, and the most civilized portion of mankind. The frontiers of that extensive monarchy were guarded by ancient renown and disciplined valour. The gentle, but powerful, influence of laws and manners had gradually cemented the union of the provinces. Their peaceful inhabitants enjoyed and abused the advantages of of wealth and luxury. The image of a free constitution was preserved with decent reverence. The Roman Senate appeared to possess the sovereign authority, and devolved on the emperors all the executive powers of government. During a happy period of more than four-score years, the public administration was conducted by the virtue and abilities of Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian and the two Antonines.1
Of course, such a rosy picture is hardly an accurate assessment of this period. Unfortunately, this is the sort of idea that is generally juxtaposed with the intervening period when the Roman Empire as it was (or at least as it was conceived to be- more on this later) would be no more. Europe would descend into a black hole of cultural, intellectual and civil disorder, only to scrape itself out 400 years later with the Carolingian Renaissance, the last gasp effort to bring the Roman ideal back to life.
Or perhaps the light never went out. Continue reading →
Oh, the pains to come awake;
to part from the fancies of dreams,
and the pleasures of rest;
only to climb out of evening’s darkness.
Oh, the burn of the sun and its rays,
Only first light, so dim compared to midday,
yet still too bright for tired eyes,
How I wish to stay and not look into the sky.
The wakers claim the day,
they speak of the purpose of their toil,
but I don’t want to trade all of my comfort,
only to suffer the joys of a waker’s light.
Don’t they know the satisfaction of a dream?
To control one’s destiny into folly or flight,
And escape with a wondrous thrill?
And to rest in the shadows of the night.
Even if I were to climb the slopes,
and agree to lay aside my rest,
Oh, the great pains I would endure;
The sacrifice I would have to make!
Yes, the light asks so very much,
to come and concede to the daybreak,
and give up all my fancies here,
and to come awake, Oh, and to come awake.
Alas – the sun – it is rising!
The brightness, it pierces me to the heart!
How quickly do my dreams break under the weight,
In a daylight so devoid of the shadows of night.
I catch my breath, as if to breathe for the very first time;
My eyes are alight with the colors of the dawn,
And oh, I come awake! Oh, to be awake!
And have not slept the day away.
——————————–
by Megan Watson
Every once in awhile one stumbles across a video that displays such a lack of critical thinking that it’s hardly worth even bothering to dignify it with a response. However, sometimes it is equally entertaining to engage in what might amount to a rather satisfying fisk of the aforementioned video, if not for the reader than at least for the fisker.
I ran across this video on another blog, and after about 30 seconds was ready to turn it off, but decided to suffer through the entire thing. It’s not that it isn’t well produced or that there aren’t some small kernels of truth buried in there. Rather, this video feeds upon creating absurd polarities that simply do not exist and dogmatically sets them against each other, leaving the viewer with little more than a choice between what amounts to two equally ridiculous and fuzzily sketched caricatures.
Basically, the movement is this: Identify a negative thing that can be linked to religion. Granted, ‘religion’ is never really defined as anything concrete or specific, but is left in some kind of nebulous state that serves as a catch-all for everything that is opposed to Jesus. The upshot, of course, is that anyone who identifies with religion (whatever it is actually supposed to be- an institution? rituals? something other than what the poet is?) is automatically polarized against Jesus. Be watching for this consistent tactic, which unfortunately doesn’t really give this video much meaningful content, as it pits some nebulous entity against Jesus, without really allowing for any robust engagement.
Let the fisking begin!
“What if I told you Jesus came to abolish religion?”
I seem to remember Jesus saying something about that in the Gospels. He said something like this:
Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. 1
The notion that one could be Jewish without being a part of Judaism was inconceivable in Jesus’ day. While there were certainly plenty of Jews who may not have practiced their religion, (to one degree or another, which is part and parcel of any religion) to bifurcate oneself from one’s religion in this way was simply not something that happened. This belies the video creator’s extreme individualism which was a foreign concept in Jesus’ day. But I digress. Continue reading →
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