Art for art’s sake
It wasn’t first time I had viewed “Beauty of the Spirit,” the exhibition of paintings by artists and illustrator Kadir Nelson at the Center Art Gallery. I had gone to see the show soon after it opened. It was, however, the first time I had bought a book there and had it autographed by the illustrator, Kadir Nelson. And it was the first time I had seen the beautiful Dara Karadsheh, a kindergartner of my acquaintance, get her book autographed by Kadir Nelson. “Beauty of the Spirit,” composed of paintings from 5 of Nelson’s books, is a collaboration between the gallery and the Festival of Faith and Writing, where the Caldecott honor-winning artist was one of the featured speakers. It is a lovely show. I particularly liked tracing the figure of the little girl in the blue dress (from the book “Ellington Was Not a Street”) from painting to painting. The artist seemed a little tired, but still gracious, after all the autographing. Gallery guard Heather showed me the tally of visitors, which she was recording on a hand-held counter, was inching up toward 300. The gallery, tucked into the basement of Spoelhof Center, is one of the nicest places to be on the Calvin campus, whether it is showing art professor JoAnne Van Reuwyk’s fiber vessels or posters by Robert Rauschenberg or images of the Virgin Mary or alumni photographs or the multitudinous works, in many media, of Calvin art students. It’s also where the some of the best people regularly hang out. A lot of them were there, mixing with the new faces, lingering in conversations in corners and on benches . A really good night out of many good nights at the gallery.
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deliberation, care, artistry
The approach that Nigerian author and Jesuit priest Uwem Akpan takes to his short stories, of which I have read none, was revelatory. Susan Felch, a Calvin professor of English, told her own story about Akpan’s presence at the Festival of Faith and Writing: “About a year ago, I was thumbing through the New Yorker. I read the first paragraph, stopped thumbing and started reading. And after I finished the story, I sat in silence for a while and then rushed in to Shelly and said, “I have no idea who this person is, but we have to have him here.” (“Shelly” is Shelly LeMahieu Dunn, the festival director.)
Akpan makes very deliberate choices in his storytelling, which is somewhat surprising. My impression of fiction writing is that it is rightly grows from intuition rather than calculation. Akpan, however, makes very careful choices about his characters, his plots and his devices — such as deciding that the girl who witnesses his father murdering her mother with a machete can be no more than 10 years old. His reasons for these choices are very carefully considered, and this deliberation may slow his work by months or years. He gave this reasoning for his portrayal of the murderous father: “There is no story if the man always hated the woman and hated the children… .What would push him to the wall to make him do this?”
Akpan’s own motive seems to be that he cares so deeply. He wants to accurately represent his characters, while telling true stories life in Africa. Toward the end of his talk, he gave this reason for his intensive research: “I want to be sure I have not gone to another country and colonized the people.”
He talked about his experiences with street children in Kenya: “I realized that people were not seeing them anymore.” He talked about his approach to characterization: “My belief is that people are complex, to say the least.”
And when Professor Felch casked him why his work partook of none of his professed love of the biblical miraculous, he explained thus: “Christ came and suffered terribly and died. And it’s become very hard for people to accept this, that God would allow his Son to go through this… People suffer.” He also offered by way of elucidation Jesus’ saying to his would-be apostles, “‘Come and see.’ Once you have seen, if you can unsee–fine.
And as cognizant as he is of being a faithful witness to his readership, Akpan seems, above all to be holding his work up to the witness of heaven. At some point in his talk, I was struck by the thought that he went about his work as though he were celebrating a sacrament. Maybe for a Christian, that is the ultimate artistry.
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Tags: Festival of Faith and Writing, Shelly LeMahieu Dunn, Susan felch, Uwen Akpan
Nelson Makes His Paintings Sing
When creating a painting, the goal of artist Kadir Nelson is to make his paintings “sing.” Nelson relayed that thought to a large audience in attendance at his presentation at Calvin’s Festival of Faith and Writing Friday afternoon.
So how does Nelson make his paintings sing? The answer is simple: By going the extra mile with research and attention to detail.
In addition to his great love for art, Nelson also has a love for history. Those two loves are evident in latest book entitled: We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball.
Nelson was commissioned to put the book together while he was a college student. Now 32 years old, Nelson just completed the book and to wide acclaim. According to Nelson, the book was a journey of several years because of the exhaustive research he underwent to document detail after detail of the Negro League era. In an example of his research, Nelson picked up an old Negro League uniform and wore it himself while standing in different poses to get a feel for his subject.
That kind of research makes his paintings sing.
The cover of the book features a rendering of Negro League home run slugger Josh Gibson with his bulging left bicep staring out at the reader from underneath his wool Homestead Grays uniform.
When I first saw the painting, I thought Gibson was ready to step out of the page and shake my hand because it was so lifelike. I also started wondering how many home runs Gibson would have hit if he had been given an opportunity to play Major League baseball.
As a baseball fan, I’ve always wanted to go back in time and attend a baseball game at old Ebbets Field which the Brooklyn Dodgers called home. Included at the end of Nelson’s book is a painting of Jackie Robinson warming up in Ebbets Field in his first year as a Brooklyn Dodger. Robinson of course is the first African-American to have played Major League baseball. In gazing at the painting, I felt like I was back at Ebbets Field, standing in front of Jackie Robinson. The old stands, the old scoreboard, the old advertising on the outfield fence, it’s all there in sublime detail courtesy of Nelson.
In short, Nelson is a master in taking someone back in time with his work.
“I try to pay attention to every detail in my (historical) paintings,” said Nelson this afternoon. “It’s going that extra 10 percent that makes a painting. When I put together a painting, I want to go all the way to the vein of the goldmine.”
Indeed.
~posted by Jeff Febus
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Tags: Calvin College, Center Art Gallery, Kadir Nelson, Negro League Baseball
Book Rec’s from the Stars
At the “Literary Fiction: A Place for Faith?” panel this morning, the discussants offered these book recommendations:
Ingrid Hill: Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro; Saturday, Ian McEwan
Beena Kamlani: Wolf Totem, Jiang Rong
Jana Reiss: After This, Alice McDermott; The Ladies’ Auxillary, Tova Mirvis
Vinita Hampton Wright: A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini; Birds Without Wings, Louis de Bernières
I believe Lil Copan had asked the panelists to recommend recent literary fiction with religious and/or spiritual themes. In any case, I thought the list might be of interest to others!
~ Ashleigh Draft
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Painting vs. Line Art
One thing that I found interesting about the Graphalogia session with Kevin Huizenga and Jon Muth was how different their chosen media are. Many there may not have realized it because of the lack of images shown to the audience, but Kevin works in the style of more traditional cartoonists using line art while Jon’s artwork is mostly painted. And yet both work in similar ways, telling stories with their artwork.
When talking about how the modern day comic/graphic novel industry differs from the past one thing that they failed to mention is how accepting the current industry is to different media. In the past, painted art was primarily reserved for book covers while interior art was almost always done using line art (some better, some worse, of course). Now, it is not surprising to see an occasional story or even a whole series using painted artwork and sometimes, there are books that mix the two, often using the styles of art portray different scenes or moods. This is even true for long-running, mainstream comics that are far from Keven or Jon’s work. It’s another way the industry had diversified and, as I think Kevin was saying, is another way in which there may be a critical mass of work out there to sustain the comic industry and avoid another early-90s-like crash.
~ posted by Steve
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Tags: art, comic book, Graphalogia, graphic novel, Jon Muth, Kevin Huizenga
Thoughts on faith and writing 