The Via Affirmativa Summer 2008 Gathering is over … but is the excellence? Not hardly.
This year’s 110 guests, from Italy, Japan, the Netherlands and the U.S. filled the Colorado air with their music, art, drama, poetry and relationships, during our annual gathering held in the Springs. 

Featured guest presenter Makoto Fujimura shared with the community that
“We experience (re)generative creativity by serving people …
unless we create we don’t realize what we’re missing …”
What powerful words to this generation of emerging art makers! 

During the four day event, we saw these themes appear, which reveal to us the movement of the invisible in our midst:
1)      We celebrate goodness, truth and beauty
2)      We deepen our calling, at the intersection of faith and art.
3)      We integrate our lives, in community, in the context of the movement.
4)      We affirm the expression of the creative gifts through the making of art.

Another “Wow” moment from Mako came when he said “We artists can bring mercy and beauty to break into everyone’s every day life – it is an authority given to us and what we create matters and will last.”

The implicit parallel we draw from this is that we have gifts for a specific purpose, perhaps several purposes, but we are not the sole end of those purposes. When we employ our gifts, with excellence, while serving others and being open to relationships, the reality of generative creativity is realized, we are energized, and our purpose is fulfilled. Then those around us (and our audience) experience beauty & grace through our creativity.

Jim Petersen captured the attention of the gathering by sharing that
“We artists can be kind of like miniature versions of that burning bush that Moses saw and moved closer to. Once he saw that the bush was not being consumed by the fire he said, ‘I must go see this strange sight.’”

What a challenging adventure it will be to implement and apply all these great thoughts to our lives! One can not even imagine what impact they will have on our art -
May the Excellence Still Flow!

COMING SOON:

The lyrics to Sunita’s song “Ambition.”

A “Meditation on Excellence” written by Christy Tennant of the Int’l Arts Movement!

Did Mako actually talk about excellence? What does “the medium is the message” mean?
See how this year’s messages coalesced or talk about it! Explore ‘the End Beyond’ our time together - these and other attractions are, again, COMING SOON!

“Art encompasses the satisfaction of words well used.

Poetry and rhetoric and just plain stories are definitely part of our artistic heritage.

Most of life cannot be reduced to watertight propositions or exhaustively described.

Our finitude guarantees error, whether or not we realize our mistakes.

But from Homer onwards, words carry and describe our deep engagement with reality and our deep longing to transcend our daily contexts.”

Writers?  You may start your typewriters/laptops and create some art!

Thanks Donald

Live Music and Original art in NYC by Via Affirnativa.

Friday night, May 2nd, Via affirmativa and the All Things Project will open a month long art show in the All Things Gallery in NYC in the Village.

Go to www.gonetocarolina.org to see the details.

Each friday night friends of Via Affirmativa will be giving a live music performance. This Friday’s attraction, Singer- Song Writer Sunita Puleo performs.

During the month you will be able to see original work of Tim Postel, Dan Nelson, Eric McRay, and our own Gary Bradley. If you are in NYC try not to miss this event.

The Via Affirmativa Gathering 2008 just may be thee art event of the summer! Click the names to discover more!
 
Makoto Fujimura, the internationally celebrated artist and Presidentially appointed Counsel Member for the National Endowment for the Arts, will be with us all day Saturday, as we explore this year’s Summer Gathering Theme: The Redemptive power of Excellence.

VAF also welcomes Jamie Davis, the beloved Jazz musician, for a special performance! We are also pleased to have several well-known international artists from Europe and Asia who will join us as we reflect upon the Beauty and Power that eminate from excellent art!

Register quickly and let us worry about the details!

A few rooms are still available but please reserve your spot by April 14th!  Registration after that will continue but you will be responsible for your stay in Colorado Springs!

by Gary Bradley and Donald McGilchrist
 
Long before men could articulate their ideas in written form they captured the divine experience, the mysterious, with art. Cave paintings, rituals, voice sounds, instrumental sounds and gestures were among the many attempts to convey the
abstract.
 
In “Art: A New History,” Paul Johnson writes, “The first point to grasp is the immense fecundity of humans producing objects of art.” It’s arguable that art predated not only writing but that it was closely associated with the ordering instinct which makes society possible, and therefore, that it has always been essential to human happiness.
“The artist was the first professional,” says Mr. Johnson.
 
It’s fascinating how God could have so trusted the spirit and ordering instinct of man to engage in His truth and convey the spirit of it to his neighbor. One wonders, “Why didn’t God invent structured writing ‘in the beginning’ so there would never be error about those mysterious eternal essences?” Somewhere in the human spirit there emerges a longing to express the divine artistically. Perhaps error was not God’s big concern with man.
 
What role did Christendom play in celebrating and/or crushing the iconographic urge?
For, to represent God in form through the arts seems to be inevitable, irresistible.
 
As I reflected upon the verses below, it thrilled me to see that God has entrusted the revelation of His being, though the ages, to the hands and hearts of those who longed to see Him.
 
“God, after He spoke long ago…in many ways…in these last days has spoken to us in His Son…through whom also He made the world…And [the Son] is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power …” Hebrews 1:1-3
 
Apaugasma (a- pow’-gas-mah); Greek word that expresses the visual radiance from a source; or effulgence: brilliant light radiating from something.
 
This has helped me to see that through both the written word and art, and many other ways, the radiance of the Divine shines forth and is seen.
 
What has been the history of the church in lifting up the works of the artist to express  such radiance? But more importantly: What will our role be in this endeavor? Have we paid so dear a price in our pursuit of error free living that we have placed the artist at the rear of the room of truth?

from Gary Bradley

A few days ago, I was reading in the holy book about the redemptive power of excellence. I observed that the word ‘excellence’ occurs five times in the New Testament and that each time the idea is connected to “Character” or “Virtue.”

I find this important because I see that art makers are at their best when character, competence, and a Kingdom vision are connected. Perhaps the restorative power of excellence is tied up in our character, what do you think?

A friend of mine, Keith Meyer, responded to this question with this statement:
“Eastern Orthodox Icon Writers…must have accomplished apprenticeship both in the writing of Icons and in the spirituality that the Icon represents…in other words…their works of excellence must have involved character to write (…they considered the bible to be just another form of art, or an icon, in words and letters).

This summer we will have a good time exploring this idea along with the delight of entering into the art of our friends.

We hope you can join us!
Gary Bradley

 
it’s like
cloth that covers
my eyes
and stills my hands
my heart is beating
but no one sees
You stand before me
I see