Writers Doing Visual Art

At this year's Stations of the Cross event, each station will feature a piece of art created by one of the members of the NW Church Arts Ministry. Last night I got started on mine. By trade, I am a writer, actor, director, and sometime preacher. Color is not my strong point, and I don't have much knowledge of adhesives, paints, and other visual mediums of visual art. But there I was, working on my first piece, the theme of which is Pilate judging Jesus. Whether anyone will get what I'm up to or not, who knows? But it made me reflect how quickly I shift into a "symbolific mode" when I am creating visually. Immediately I begin thinking in abstract symbols, drawing connections that would not be apparent to a casual observer, especially of the left-brain variety. I'm not sure what it means, but I can't tell if I'm just being obtuse, or if I'm being overly literal (truth is a puzzle), or what. I think what it means is that I'm not much of a visual artist. And why I should I be? It's a skill and a craft, and while creativity will get you a ways down the road, the art itself is--as it should be--hard.

duh...

Ballard Art Walk

On Saturday March 8th, several of the NW Arts folks made a trip to the Ballard Art Walk. We started at Building C where we spent about 1.5 hours touring the various studios there. There are some amazing artists working over there. A walk along those paint encrusted floors never fails to light an artistic fire in my deepest soul and it was great to see everyone enjoying themselves so much.
Building C provided enough artistic stimulation for the evening because by the time we got over to the main part of the art walk everyone seemed ready for coffee and decompression. We spent a short time chatting and then headed our separate ways.
I hope we can do this again soon. Seattle has so many amazing artistic opportunities I don't think we'll ever run out of things to do.