Art Openings in West Michigan May28th and May 29th

I stumbled on a couple of regional competitions so I went ahead and entered some pieces recently. I was Juried into both shows, and you can see works any time this summer. First was the Muskegan Art Museum West Mi show. My piece “Impacted Male” is now there along with a lot of great work. The folks in Muskegan have a great “salon” that is an open event to the public on Thursdays each month. This corresponded with the drop off date for show entries , so I went. What a great party, and lots of work of all sorts to look at. My hat is off to this organization they really do a great job in the visual arts.
The festival group in Grand Rapids does a competition at the old museum that the GRAM moved out of, as well as a tent full of booths. I did a booth last year to raise awareness in the region. This year four of my works will be shown in the Museum show. The “Impacted Female” model and “Harbinger” are life sized studies from my “Major Impact” installation. A new piece, which I’m personally pleased with, “Portrait of Sarah”: is in as well. This is a super casting in polymer modified cement that has very nice color, all in the cement and not on it. The 4th piece is the Road Rocket bronze casting. It is nice to have the local representation At this writing I have almost all my pieces on display in 5 shows in 4 cities in 3 states. Just a little hectic! But the big news is the ArtPrize competition in Grand Rapids. More about this whopping opportunity next time.
For all the news check my web site SculpyureByTj.com
Thanks
Tj<

Installing Public Art

The art of installing art in public is a challenge. There are all the potential dangers of abuse, vandalism, injury and of course accompanying law suits. I was recently invited to show works in the City of Troy Ohio. Some truly unabashed American doers in that town with a down to earth, get it done attitude. My trip to Troy, Ohio to put three pieces on their streets was refreshing. I left in the we hours of Saturday morning and arrived before ten. T-The city crew and I labored to mount my works on big concrete blocks and slabs that they had prepared. Then we transported these to the city square where other works were waiting for an evening reception. The Mayor spoke, and recognition was paid and a good time was had by all. But then came the surprise activity that I was amazed at.
Their plan was to distribute the 30 pieces around town on Saturday Night so they would all be ready for viewing Sunday morning for the church goers. The town has a round about at the center with a fountain and lots of traffic going through the intersection. The crew started at dark picking up each sculpture with a HiLow and cruising through the Saturday night traffic to the installation locations! A great big Bug bouncing down the road with headlights flashing all around is a thing to behold! And riding a HiLow to do this is even better!

The guys did a great job and by morning all the works were out there, with the stanchion chains, in front of many businesses.
Hats off to the City of Troy- an Supporters of sculpture and get it done people!

Anger & Embarrassment Tempered with Self Pity

When we screw up:
These three, they slowly float by each other circumspect and leering. Just as our minds migrate from one of these to another in our states of distress.  They come with us often. We bring them separately and we bring them all together when we have done badly.  They can be intertwined because they are the most common of our interactions with others and with our spirit.  They can crowd out real communication.

“Don’t Let the sun set on your anger” - Not easy.
  
“There‘s no condemnation in Christ Jesus” -But we are still embarrassed for our gaffs. 

 “Oh woe is me, I’m such a….. (fill in the blank)” 

Now we introspect hoping God will notice, but then what?  Self pity is, at least, not focused on others but it is still in the way of a communication with God.

         What’s in Your Worship?

Persistence of Memmory

We are the sum total of our memories, so we seem to think. What has happened to us is what our consciousness is built around. But when we come to the task of spiritual interaction there is an eternal soul that is barely scratched by the time we have spent here in this life. Our creation by a perfect Creator to interact with Him in an absolutely unique way is usually not what comes to mind when we think of our past.

Some of us bear the tremendous scars of abuse, rejection, ridicule. Some have had incredible love, and fantastic wealth of friendship, happiness or an endeavor, and lost it. Some times we dwell on the most minuscule happening at some tender age imagining every other person on the planet sees this incident written all over us.

We dwell on these things. The stuff from our past comes floating in to our consciousness like little familiar ghosts at all manner of odd times. Whether good or bad it can consume an inordinate amount of time. Some dwell exclusively here and descend into self medication for relief.

If we come to worship we come to an eternal being, with the power to recreate us in less of an instant than it took Him to consider our original creation. One who has an infinite number of patterns available for our make-over. One who resides in the midst of only purity. If we come to Him at all, bearing scars from our past, he is pleased. If we come and ask for release from these impediments to comprehending the eternal destiny which we can enter into, He hears.

But we look to the past. If we bend backwards looking behind, from an upside down perspective, out of balance, we eventually fall over. We are simply not designed to be in that position.

God can release us from any level of past and allow us to look forward with increasing hope and expectation… if we ask. When these memories slip in to our worship we need to bring them to Him who has reconciled all of it, and count it our strength to have been tested.

What is in Your Worship?

essays and sculpture By Tj Aitken - SculptureByTj.com

Analytic Camouflage

How bright we can be.

Yes in our modern society we have come to understand psychology, to grasp the lessons of history and weigh current events against the past plodding of our forefathers. And our physical science –mercy, we have mastery of so much biology that we can do a heart transplant, and calculate the requirements to send a man to the moon and bring him back again. Yes the modern man is so much more sophisticated than before. We no longer merely cultivate gardens, we have landscape architects for beauty and our mass production agriculture has GPS controlled nutrient application and yield calculation. We can gather knowledge at the touch of a button on the web. And we can find out the wind speed of an approaching storm.

All this capability can make us so full of ourselves. We can come to the master of all that we are learning about and try our mind functions on Him. We can assess the odds of an event taking place and try to figure out where the resources most likely can or will come from. We can apply all we know to the point of missing all that He is. Our capacity to think is the same as those who came before us, but the subjects for us to apply them to are many more, and better organized. What does this do to our relationship to Him? Depends on what you do. You can analyze the position of God for eternity and never discover a thing that was not known by Adam. He experienced Him before the nasty little introduction of our very self-awareness that makes us think we can be like God. All the assessment in the world is merely another form of fig leaf. In the cool of the morning when we go to walk with Him and try to converse with Him we better leave it all behind. Lest He call out: “(your name) Where are you?”

What’s in your Worship?

Thanks,

Tj

See the rest of the series at SculptureByTj.com

Dual Mindedness

One side pokes out at the space with high contrast but has no mouth. The other side is caged in, mouth open but no depth of statement can happen with that mouth. We swivel on our axis and can easily turn from one side to the other.

When we come seeking God, He may speak to us, but our double nature holds us from accepting His word. What is our true response to His prompting? We often are in denial that we even have a problem with what God is trying to tell us. We avoid His truths if they don’t fit our past experience, or if they seem too simple or hurtful. We want it our way, but we hope it’s His way, and faced with the difference we can’t decide, so we vacillate.

How often we just slowly wander away from Him in a moment of his speaking. We may not even realize that we are in denial of His position. Our double mindedness prevents us from going deeper, and we stay at our current level or slide backwards, .......... to reticent to accept his communication.

What’s in Your Worship?

See the rest of the series at SculptureByTj.com

Big Monkey

What do you call an 800 pound gorilla? …. Sir.

That is the old joke. We all carry a certain number of monkeys. They are things that must get done. Some larger than others. Just respect for them, and their magnitude, does not deal with them. Business management texts tell us to beware what monkeys we actually accept on our shoulders and which ones we hand off to others. They seem imperative to success and drive us, consuming our mind. They are dangerous, putting careers and objectives in peril if not satisfied. Watching a big one we note a quick twitch of that head and a focused grunt in our direction bodes a possible lashing out of those powerful limbs.
What if this sucker jumped on me?!

We know the scene of an ape’s tirade, so violent and noisy. So how do you carry your personal monkeys? Is there a particularly big one at the moment? Like all the rest of the creatures in this world these things are predictable and can be subjugated by the man or woman who grasps the difference between them and us. All these were made to populate the world that you and I inhabit. But we were created to cultivate this place. We were first given the task of naming these beasts, then tending them. When we come to our maker we bring with us our tendency to be concerned for our various tasks, but they should not rule us. They should not drive the spiritual relationship. Each of these will pass, along with our concern for them, even the 800 pounders. And yet our time with God will remain.

Do not let the primates of your life run you, or you risk skipping the real power for their tending.

What’s in your Worship?