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!

Robert Cousins, Executive Editor of The Dartmouth Apologia, has just released a review of VAF’s film on Romanian sculptor, Liviu Mocan, in their latest issue. He writes:

The film alternates segments of voiceover—mostly by Mocan—and interviews with family members, scholars and other citizens who have been affected by his art. It opens with a brief sequence in which Mocan introduces himself and his philosophy toward art and Christianity. “I am a sculpture,” he says, and as the ensuing twenty-six minutes emphasize over and over again, he is a man who considers his life, his faith and his art inextricably linked.

Hundreds of people have seen this film and we have received many positive comments and praise. Film makers, visual artist, poets and several other artist have found strong identification with this film. Click here if you would like to read the full review in the latest Dartmouth Apologia.

In the past week a number of people have called to order copies for friends at Christmas. We all know that finding just the right gift is not easy. So here is a great opportunity to find just the right gift and to also help us in the distribution of our message–calling out a generation of “artists who are excellent at their craft, have the respect of their peers, and are an example of redemptive living in the creative professions.”

If you would like a copy (or more) simply send a check made payable to Via Affirmativa for $16.95 to:

Trish Schneider
3210 36th Ave S
Minneapolis MN 55406

(we offer a 10% discount for orders of five or more copies)

We would like to invite you to the Healing Through the Arts 2007 “Thriving and Surviving”.

The show opened last week with a reception on Oct. 20th, 2007 from 5:00-7:00pm at the Lawrence Art Center. Both Darin and Shannon White have art work being shown related to events surrounding their son Caden’s bout with neuroblastoma cancer.

Please let others know about the show if you think they would be interested. Also coming up in November at the Art Affair Gallery in Baldwin Kansas, there will be a show for BALM the art group they are involved in showing “Destination Postcards“.

These days, everything is for sale. Everyone from marketing executives to fundamentalists has appropriated this Greek triumvirate of goodness, truth and beauty, in an attempt to sell a time-share, or lipstick, or God. In the beginning of the creation narrative, God is first seen as the Creator. When he names the crown of his creation, and declares that we bear his image, he is defining us as being creative at the very core of our humanity. Are we created for more than just sales? How do beauty, truth and goodness inform the way we engage with our world?

When language becomes brittle, when tradition becomes rote, when imagination shrinks, when our ability to laugh atrophies, when the wonder at the strangeness of life—and things like lizards—begins to evaporate, we become foolish. We allow our creativity to be twisted by fear. We lose our courage to play and discover ourselves as participants in a larger story. G.K. Chesterton says that we have grown old; Jesus calls toward the fear-filled masses to have faith like a child. How else without maintaining faculties limbered by this faith can we remember how to create? To worship? To live? To love?

It is in these questions that Via Affirmativa was born. It began as four friends wrestling with the narrow definition of beauty and art found in much of Protestant Christianity. In the spring of 2005 the group expanded to twelve men and women who gathered for three days to dive further into these questions, and to move into what it meant to be a catalyst for cultural change. Why was sub-cultural art so often driven by a didactic message, rather than a response to the mystery the three transcendentals provokes, and the pain of living life outside the garden? Why was artistic excellence being trumped by didacticism? What sort of encouragement needed to be offered in order for artists, writers and thinkers to find freedom to pursue excellence, bringing their questions into the larger contexts of culture and art?

Every culture is defined by how they have engaged with questions surrounding the nature of goodness, beauty and truth. They enter into a global conversation that through history has been shaped by how artists of all types envisioned and re-visioned their worlds. The role of art and the artist is to reflect this world with passionate honesty, to see what truly is, and to imagine what might be. We do not live as those who have no hope; neither do we pretend that hope is easily obtained. The message that began with Jesus is that redemption is possible—indeed, that it is near.

The name, Via Affirmativa, means the way of affirmation. We seek to affirm artists and all who we encounter to live with redemptive creativity. This is an inherently lonely journey, one for which community is indispensable. We need each other to be reminded of the sacramental nature of all of life; there is no dividing line between what is “sacred” and what is “secular.” As we journey into chaos and noise that fills this world, we believe that we are called to see penetratingly both what is and what is possible, and speak artistically into the yet-uncreated world that might be.

Wow what a weekend in NYC,

Via Affirmativa held its first art slam in NYC this past weekend and it was a superb time. Friday evening we hosted a gathering of around 35 fellow art makers in a gallery in “The Village” on Bleeker Street.

The evening included three short films made by recent and current students from the Tisch School of Arts. Then we had several singer songwriters perform new pieces of work. I shared a few thoughts on excellence in the arts. The evening concluded with a fabulous 45 minute jazz session with Victor Lin on Piano and Tyler Schwartz on the Alto Sax. They brought the house down.

Saturday morning we reconvened and watched the Liviu Mocan Film followed by a conversation on excellence. Then we heard from Allen Wolf who is currently in LA. Allen has just finished his first feature length film called “In My Sleep” (check it out here). It was exciting to hear his passion and pursuit of excellence. After Allen we listened to Corey Mills from Minneapolis as he shared about the journey of forming a dance and theater company (check out Spark Theater). Then Lauren Fanklin shared about her experience as a Cellist in Russia for the past year lastly, Elizabeth Webb shared about her journey in NYC from acting to Film making.

The morning was a stimulating time as we explored the meaning of becoming Kingdom of God oriented art makers. Saturday afternoon we divided up into small groups and worked on our art. Jonathan Cowan and I spent the afternoon in Washington Park drawing and talking and painting (and unfortunately listening to a very bad harmonica musician singing over and over “come on baby rock my boat.” By the end I was hoping his boat would sink or at least take on water).

Saturday night we had a BBQ feast at the home of Judith Ferrenbach in Brooklyn. On Sunday morning a few of us met for breakfast and we saw that as group there was a sense of ownership in the movement and so the idea of Via Affirmativa is moving ahead and I’m sure in the next few months the dialogue will continue. Michael Wisniewski has developed an intriguing concept for a VAF film on excellence. Stay tuned.

Gary Bradley for the NYC gang

So…what is on the post-gathering radar for Via Affirmativa? A team of people will soon be assessing the assessments from the gathering in order to begin planning for similar events in the future. Also, Art Slams are being orchestrated across the country (please see our VAF Art Slam page for more information). If you are planning one for this summer then we would like to know about it.

As per this website: we are looking to put up pictures, audio clips, and notes from the recent gathering. Those will be coming soon under the VAF Gatherings link.

We are calling all writers to help us create some diversity here by contributing your own thoughts in the form of blog posts. So, instead of reading this dribble, we can read something daring and dribble-less written by one of you. It can be insightful, observational, theological, artsy, technical, etc—but it must be fresh. If you think you might have the knack for a blog article every now and then let us know.

We are also calling all…other creative types to contribute as well. We can post your videos, photos, designs, and other artistic representations. Contact me (see above) if you haven’t already and we will work together to make your contribution bloggy.

Hopefully, we can create a sort of diverse gallery that will prompt ruminations, be like a sharp pin aimed at our nice, safe thought bubbles, or…be like that iron that sharpens iron. If (for some reason) blogging is not your thing, then feel free to start your own forum conversation here, but regardless of where the conversations take place, we hope to use this website to continue to learn from one another.

Here are a few questions Gary (VAF director) has on his mind (while chillin’ with the grandkids at the lake). Feel free to give your three cents.

How can we help those who are interested in hosting an art slam?

What will make our web site valuable enough that it will be part of forming connections for a movement?

Where should we host next years gathering?

Should we instead have three or four smaller regional gatherings (ie. Colorado, Minneapolis, Baltimore…maybe Seattle)?

How do we build in a conversation of calling out and equipping ‘kingdom-class’ artists? (This is opposed to ‘world-class’—or the motivation of ‘art for art’s sake’—see this post for more thoughts or see Gary’s audio clip once we post it for further clarification of these terms.)

We have written many things over the past month for those of you who are attending next week’s VAF gathering in Minneapolis. But what about those who cannot come? Well, this post is for you.

After each day of the gathering next week we will try to post a summary of the day’s events here (along with some pictures). So next Thursday, Friday and Saturday night you can check in to see what you are missing. Eventually, we will try to include some audio as well.

But for now, you can plan on a late night glass of wine, your slippers, and a good read. We will do our best to keep you in the know.