Light Lenten Reflections

Week 3

God-Art

I was born into an artsy family. My maternal grandfather was a skilled cabinetmaker, crafting beautiful objects from wood. My mother briefly attended art school in Greenwich Village when it was a cool, hip thing to do, could draw and paint, and spent her retirement years doing calligraphy and watercolor painting. It's no surprise, then, that I should find myself drawn to artistic pursuits from an early age, drawing and painting as a child, spending some of my adult years with fabric and yarn and thread, later taking college art classes, honing my drawing and design skills. The more I learned about art, participated in the creating of art, the more I grew to appreciate other artists. I love going to art museums of any kind, always finding something to marvel at whether it be Winslow Homer's The Herring Net at the Art Institute of Chicago, the exquisite glass collection at the Toledo Museum of Art, or the quirky but amazingly intricate thread portrait of Darth Vader in the Star Wars exhibit at the Racine Art Museum.

Though I appreciate so much of the art I see in museums, the art that stops me dead in my tracks every time is the amazing display of creativity I see in the natural world around me. The Artist at work there is the ultimate mixed media artist, using materials few others have dared to try. This Creator-driven school of art I've chosen to call God-Art. And though I have been surrounded by it my entire life, the awareness of it struck me in my early adulthood as I was walking through the gorge of Watkins Glen State Park in upstate New York. The trail meanders through a series of nineteen waterfalls along a two mile stretch of a shale-limestone-sandstone gorge shaped by a creek flowing through it. The layers of stone are skillfully sculptured in a multi-leveled gracefully twisting pattern. Were someone to hang a gallery placard in the gorge, it would read something like this:

God (Eternal)

Untitled (From the beginning of time)

Time and water on shale, limestone and sandstone

On loan to mankind from the Artist

Time and water on stone...wow...but the God-Art didn't stop there. There was some contemporary performance art going on simultaneously with the eons-old time-stone-water thing. Moving water, forming multiple waterfalls throughout the gorge, throwing out clouds of mist and spray, being caught by the sun in places, projecting clouds of rainbows in the moist air. Amazing...

Since that first God-Art realization, I've been on the lookout for more of this Guy's work. And it's everywhere:

• In a perfect snowy morning; the artistic medium – a just right temperature to make the titanium white snow wet enough to cling to every branch and twig for miles around, no wind, just enough light sun to make it all glisten.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
•  In a sunrise or a sunset; the artistic medium – sun, the right amount and texture of clouds, the earth's rotation, an occasional body of water to reflect the riotous performance piece going on in the sky.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• In a partially iced pond, after a thaw, during a rainstorm; the artistic medium – water sitting on ice, the wind driving the rain into swirling patterns of light and dark on the shallow waters above the ice, constantly moving, constantly changing speed and texture.
  
  
  
  

• In fish (Of course, fish!), a spawning bluegill, a pumpkinseed sunfish; the artistic medium – life and breath and scale and water and iridescent colors, perfectly applied.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

• In the small things, the structure and smell of a flower, the veins of a leaf, the fragrance of an herb, the texture and glint of a stone; the artistic medium – an endless array of materials and time, too many to name.

And the list could go on and on. Yep, this Artist is everywhere...

Something to Ponder:

Do you still see the God-Art around you? Or has something – distraction, busyness, familiarity - made you go blind to it? Make a point of noting some God-Art this week. Be mindful of the Artist.

Something to Pray:

Grab a Bible or go to BibleGateway.com. Read Psalm 104, a thanksgiving prayer for God's creative variety. Think about your favorite God-Art pieces and spend some time giving thanks to the Artist á la Psalm 104.

Sculpting every move you compose a symphony
You plead to everyone, "see the art in me"

                                    - See the Art in Me, Dan Haseltine, Jars of Clay