Personal Musings of Priestly Goth

It's odd feeling when all around you are so certain they know the truth and what is going on and all those claims of certainty fall flat to ones ears -all of them, and all these certainties contradict each other.

The political theater taking place in the House of Representatives right now, with Democrats playing the part of noble activist and the Republicans playing the part of the status quo and establishment, .  It's a good show.  And of course this theatrical show down is over a piece of legislation no one really wants, that even if passed would be largely symbolic.  That symbolic act wouldn't be without significance or meaning. Artifice and theater have meaning and significance. I'm an artist and a rhetorician (I paint and preach), I believe firmly in the meaning of the artificial.  But I do wonder at the weight and attention we are giving this show down between Democrats and Republicans in the house. I believe it deserves less cheering and more reflection.

But that isn't what I wish to focus on.  In reflecting on this I see that what we think about the actions of the two ruling parties in this piece of political theatrics is already predetermined by what we presuppose is the best course of action, and the degree to which we are solidly Democrat or Republican.  So, citizens who are partisans of the Democratic party are predisposed to approve of the Democratic theatrics and predisposed to view negatively the Republican theatrics.  And the same goes for partisans of the Republican party.  We know the good guys and the bad guys in this melodrama it's just that the audience can't agree on which is which.

So we have our certainties, our bedrock beliefs, and we aren't convincing each other to change or compromise on those.  As someone who isn't convinced by either side of the political solutions offered to the tragedies of mass shootings and gun violence in our society, I'd rather we stop for a moment and question our certainties about the meaning of gun violence and our genuinely held beliefs about what we should do and what would keep us safe.  Maybe question even the dominant narratives about safety itself.

And we perhaps shouldn't stop there.  It is clear we are in a moment of deep crisis.  One understanding of crisis is that it is a moment of  possibility: A moment calling us to pause, to turn aside, to questioning and to rethink what we've believed to be true.  Rather, than a moment for retreating into certainties or of overt and brash action.  Of course any questioning presupposes a place from which to question.  A moment of crisis is perhaps also a moment to be honest with ourselves and each other about the indefensible presuppositions, prejudices and convictions that we won't and can't question while questioning other things.

Posts that follow this will probably be in this line of examination. Not an offering of solutions, but questioning in the hopes of creating an opening, in myself and other, a clearing for alternatives to what we in our certainties believe to be reality.  A clearing in which we can be silent in order to  listening to voices yet unheard and not anticipated.

I have an album up of the Gallery B1 E turned into a chapel for a Dia de Los Muertos exhibit.  It will run for the next few weeks, gallery is open in the evenings.  I lead Vespers services in the gallery on the Feast of All Saints and the Feast of All Souls (day of the dead).  The work is by various artists though the shrines are mostly  Andy De La Rosa's(the owner of the Gallery). The mural behind the Altar is an icon I wrote a year and a half ago, and some of my icons are in the show.
Praying the psalms among artists and those variously involved with Occupy Chicago has a sightly different tenor and was quite raw.  I may do one or two more services there during the run.  At least that was the original plan when Andy De La Rosa  had thought up this exhibition.  But that original plan had an opening before Nov 1 which did not happen.  So we'll see.  Also, I might be at the gallery in the evenings in the next two weeks writing icons in the gallery while the gallery is open.

I'm showing my work again at the Milwaukee Avenue Arts Fest. This year I will have an icon mural and three of four wayside shrines around the sculpture Garden, entitled this year Sea of Sculptures
You can see my progress over at priestly goth. Images of the wayside shrines in progress can be found here

As noted here and tweeted last night, Kate and I were at the Robin Guthrie/Brendan Perry concert last night at the Metro, with Scary Lady Sarah DJing.

We arrived right at 8 pm and Guthrie was just beginning his set.  As we entered.  We found our friends, as Guthrie stood a  corner of the stage (as promised) and video projected on a screen behind a drum set.  After the first song the drummer and bassist came on stage.  If you aren't familiar with Guthrie's solo work it is all instrumental haunting guitar paining an aural landscape of sound.  Guthrie's performance is an immersion experience.  Without the attending movie I am not sure I could have sat through the whole set.  Yet, it seems to me that the visual projection is in a sense the words to his songs.

As I settled in and let my self take in the performance taking seriously Guthrie's own cue about his live performances, I found the music and video coming together to elicit emotions and thoughts in myself.  Thoughts and emotions would be called up and then taking the cue from music and video, move on.  It was all very meditative, even at moments transcendent.  Guthrie finished his set with a smile and gestures acknowledging us the audience and left the stage.  The set and Guthrie's presence elicited the experience of being invited into his musical living room and to just settle down, or wander about, come in and out.  We didn't need to give him our entire attention through out, yet we were invited to settle in and listen.  But if we took the full invitation then we were transfixed.  I can understand some critics of Robin Guthrie who say he is in a sort of musical rut, I could sense that if there wasn't the video projection I'd have gotten tired of the haunting guitar after a few songs, but I have a suspicion we are both supposed to see and hear, Guthrie's music.

Brendan Perry was a parallel but radically different experience.  Perry is very present on stage, and he had a full band two keyboards, drums, bass and he on guitar.   Perry was giving us a Rock show, and we were to pay attention, and he and the band were riveting and powerful.  He began his set with Dream Letter, (I am not sure though he played it early in the set.), and the first song of the encore set was Severance.  I heard in this a certain acknowledgement of the significance and transitory short lived nature of the concert.   So bounded we were to enter in and be spell bound by our gracious host.   The show and Perry's music weave together longing, sorrow, grief, loss and scraps of joy into a great ecstasy.  This is what has made and makes Perry in my eyes someone I point to when I wish to describe what is goth and why I find the aesthetic appealing and something with which I wish to identify.

Guthrie and Perry together created a meditative exuberant evening that lead me to contemplate the joy in a life that has happiness, and sorrow, struggle and ease.  It was an exquisite evening, one I think I will long remember.

Last night Kate and I went to see Porchlight Theater's production of The King and I. Kate assisted Bill Morey in the costume design for the show. At some point while growing up I saw the movie with Yul Brynner and Deborah Kerr, probably on TV when I was fairly young. Young enough that I wasn't aware or thinking about gender, or the history of Western colonialism, and Globalization of culture. What follows is more a reflection on those theme's in the King and I, than on Porchlight's production, though it was an enjoyable and beautiful production that gave me room to ponder the way in which the King and I deconstructs itself and leaves one wondering about what exactly it is that we know or don't know, or simply act as though we know. Though, nor remembering much of the movie and not knowing the original this deconstruction may be due to Porchlight's own decisions in the production

It is from the start a fairly complex tale. The King of Siam, brings an English woman teacher and governess to teach his children for the purpose of bringing his kingdom in line with a changing world dominated the the British Empire and European colonization, and intertwined in this are two love stories. The first between Anna and King Mungcut (bound to fail as he has many wives, and thus more sublimated), and the second the love affair between the new concubine recently given to the king as a gift from vassal king and an agent of that vassal. And of course there is the play within a play as the concubine puts on a theatrical adaptation of Uncle Tom's Cabin, used as a cultural bridge to critique the practice of concubinage.

The conflict in part revolves around these love stories and the clashing cultural expectations concerning gender and love, and the person of a king. But there is in the background the conflict between British and Western colonial and Imperial ambitions, and King Mungcut wishing to navigate independently this changing world dominated by a new(to him and his small nation) Western Imperial power.   Britain seeing Siam as inferior is contemplating colonization, the king obviously wishes to remain an independent power in the region, and thus is seeking away to keep Britain at bay.

The audience is then given conflicting desires: rooting for the King to "modernize" or Westernize his Kingdom and thus remain independent, but also rooting for Anna's seeking to impose her moral and ethical system, specifically in terms of the story line the Western view of romance and gender relations, monogamy, etc., etc., etc. thus colonizing Siam culturally, if not politically. This creates a double bind in the story, as we both wish for the king to hold our western views of romance, love, gender(though still assuming static reality of the male and female but as somewhat equals, or at least women are more equal in Anna's conception than in the Kings conception), while rooting for the King to protect himself and his kingdom from the encroachment of British Imperialism (and thus our western colonizing), by aping and appealing to Western colonial and imperial values. These values includes an abhorrence of Slavery, though a recent value, and of a certain value of marriage and romance as an equally freely chosen estate to be entered into equally by both parties. This western value is cast as a universal value through the love affair of the concubine and her lover. The play leaves these conflicting desires unresolved: Kingdom of Siam for now remains free of British colonization, but at the same time has been westernized, as the king's son at his death bed instructs his subjects to show respect for the king in terms of western gendered practice abandoning the tradition that had been in place up to that time. Neither romance's work out, the cultural divide and the political and cultural realities are too strong, but we are too judge this failure, and we hope for change, and that Siam will look more like England and the West in the end, (like us).

Anna I think can stand in for well meaning American and European activist at work in other countries and cultures, as progressives desire to spread what we consider humanizing values. The  King and I raises, the  question: can one reform other cultures and societies without universalizing certain cultural relative values. Anna's values of gender equality of Romance, are forerunners of current radical conceptions of gender equality and even the questioning of male and female as categories themselves.  If we allow it the King and I can lead us even to question our current sense of the universal idea of democracy and freedom.  Is our sense of democracy and  freedom actually universal or aren't' they actually Western ideas we have universalized and some in other cultures are willing to convert to them?.How do we know the line between "opening up" cultures to "universal" ideas and tendencies, and subtle almost imperceptible colonization via an imperialism of value that assumes an underlying or overlay of human longing?  In the  King and I what is assumed as universal is heterosexual romantic love that assumes a parity between static genders. We who don't share this value are caught in an interesting double bind as we can recognize the cultural relativity of that value and at the same time since we share its value of romantic love we also see it as a universal value that the King of Siam should accept.

Along this analysis and my experience of this production of the King and I, the number where the son of the King and the son of Anna ask the question of how they know or how adults know they know what they know is the fulcrum of the musical. We the audience and Western progressives are, perhaps. in the end  in this unresolved position and state of unknowing acting as if we know.  Whose values are universally moral and applicable to all? Whose conception of gender and romance and marriage is univerraly moral and applicable to all. How do we know are understanding of human rights is universally true, can we even know that?  The King and I does not resolve these questions but  gives an answers by reaffirming our Western colonial values over those whom we colonized. It seems to me that even among the various activists I know this remains to be true; we say our values are correct, and we do not question what we think we know, and we see our ideas of gender politics and romance as normative and expressing a truly universal longing that can be found across the globe where ever we may go. But can we actually know that or are we simply comforted in this assumption, and smug in our ability to condmen those who are backwards and regresive both in our own cutlure and society and those in any culture or society?  In fact any form of activism requires this sort of certainty concerning universal morality and justice.  But do we, or even can we, know we aren't imposing a relative and culturally specific value and view of the world?

Overall the festival and the Big Sculpture Garden went over well. We at the sculpture garden had a rough beginning as we all were a little behind and were still attempting to finish things Friday evening when the storm rolled through. The last bit of paint I applied to the large icon hadn't dried by the time the rain came, which meant that the very last parts I painted washed partially away in the rain. The large icon then had a weathered look to it. It meant that I was up in the morning installing the rest of the installation (see bellow), and that other artists were also finishing up their pieces on Saturday. By Saturday night the garden had completed feel to it, with a couple of artist working on their pieces as "live art." "Live art" i.e. artists working on a work of art as people visited the gallery spaces, was something that was happening all over the festival, though in the sculpture garden while Andy had assumed some of the artists would be working on their art during the festival, it had not been planned who would do so. John Bambino who neighbored my piece actually finished his painting as the festival was winding up on Sunday.

My installation was well received. I talked with many people about it, and I heard back from one of the organizers of the south end of the festival that many people were talking about the installation. We had a good crowd at times, though most people walked through and did not stay and listen to the bands and acts who were performing, so that bit of the garden may have felt less than successful for the bands and organizers of the performance part. The space was great when all the pieces were in place and the feel of it all especially on Sunday was inviting and interesting space.

Here are some photos of my piece and the Garden most I think taken on Sunday.

This has been and continues to be a wild week. And it got even more exciting as I finished the large Icon just as the storm was upon us. though due to the rain I still have not put up the full installation. Which is a little disappointing I at this point want to be done. Also, I am not completely satisfied with the large icon, though this is largely because this is the first architectural sized work I have ever done, and painting on canvas in the wind is just plain difficult, and it was windy most of this week when I was out painting. But it is good.

Here are a few images of some of the progress on my icons and iconostasis and at the site this week.



Blurry but I kind of like the photo.

A few Days ago, blank canvases on site
The Big iron rebar sculpture by Andy Delarosa, Other artist began hanging stuff on it, stained glass ceramic etc. Thunderstorm kind of put a damper on working on putting up stuff, as you probably can imagine. Iron spires and lightning.

Just about to begin painting, see jar of paint on the ladder.


From across the parking lot that is the site of the Big Sculpture Garden.

The Milwaukee Avenue Arts Festival is 4 days away (well 4 1/2 as the festival begins at 4 pm Friday). I am somehow not freaked out about that this morning. I have a great deal to do still on my installation art piece not the least of which is to write the largest Icon I have written on site. I think, I hope the mural space has been constructed will find that out in a little bit. Writing the two icons last week went well and Kate says it went fast, it did not feel fast but I will need to probably work both quickly and long to finish the mural.

Given the time this takes and all I have wondered about whether I should have taken this on. Are there other things I should have been focusing on, or doing. There certainly are other things. I missed the Ekklesia Project Gathering, which I and one or two people from Reconciler were thinking of attending this year. I always think of going, and never have. I don't go to conferences generally. About every other year I attend North Park's Symposium on the Theological Interpretation of Scripture and once made it to *CINO's Practicing Resurrection (the first one actually). I am actually a little puzzled and overwhelmed by the number of conferences there are in the various circles I am in. I don't know how people make it to conferences nor why it is such a priority. This isn't a criticism, though somewhere there may be a critique of conference mentality. Of course if I were in the Academy I would be attending the conference(s) of my respective discipline. AAR and SBL for Religious Studies and Biblical and Theological studies, yet as a Religious Studies major and the seminary student never attended.

What I do instead is something like the Milwaukee Avenue Arts Festival, or try my hand and making a movie one summer (as Kate and I did the summer of 2005, and having spent the previous year writing the thing with some friends). I am prior of an intentional Christian community and pastor a small church, maintain some semblance of relationship with pastors in the Edgewater neighborhood, and currently trying to establish a relationship with service providers for the mentally ill and homeless. In all of this the place of art in faith and my life as a pastor and prior, the role of the local church coming along side service providers etc. is enough to keep me occupied and with enough to theologically cogitate and mediate on without going to a conference to hear about other peoples thoughts on other possibly related subjects and experiences. Don't get me wrong a very large part of me wants to do just that. I want to engage others talk about what is going on hear what others, and yet I just can't be bothered, it all seems like so much noise and distraction.

A friend of mine pointed out when I expressed some of this that conferences are the way a privileged affluent culture communicated with itself. Conferences are ways we communicate and network, we let each other know what is going on. It has it pluses and its downsides. This lead me to think more seriously about a thought that came into my head as the Ekklesia Gathering was going on and that same friend was tweeting the conference and I was wishing just a little that I was there: I am a hermit, a new hermit perhaps (something along the new monasticism). I say this partially tongue in cheek, but there is something here. This thought was elicited by reading on the blog Mystagogy that a certain hermit on some Island in the Mediteranian one the Greek Isles I think, is spending his time restoring a building (that either was a monastery or the hermit is restoring for the purpose of it becoming a monastery), the hermit works on the building and apparently also hangs with the local villagers, who love the hermit. Something about this seemed analogous to my experience as the Priestly Goth, who is pastor and prior, does crazy things like agrees to be part of the Big Sculpture Garden at the Milwaukee Avenue arts fest and wanders about Chicago. I am building something, preparing a space for others. Often it feels like that, others who are yet to realize they need or want the space perhaps. The difference though is actually some are already there, and then there are the villagers, the fellow goths and artists who I run off and do things with from time to time. I need to focus on these local tasks, this singular and lonely tasks, like being in the Milwaukee Avenue Arts Festival. Reconciler isn't there, I alone. I have invited members to connect with this but this is a solitary task, I don't understand it entirely, not sure what or why, except that when I was asked, there was no question that I was supposed to do this.

So maybe I am a very odd hermit, a hermit in a city who is also prior and pastor. but there is something solitary about this, something that I also invite others into, something I am called to build for others. But saying that seems a little nuts, but are hermits ever sane? I don't know.

as part of my installation I am creating a sort of iconostasis, or just the most basic kind for the two icons I have been writing. Bellow are the frames, on site or before I will finish them. There are also images of the icons in the frames. The icons are getting close to done but still have a ways to go.

Saw Fuerza Bruta: Look Up last night. It is an amazing and incredible show. The audience and performers are all on the stage. In many ways it much more like a really good and incredible night at a dance club than my sense of theater. It was odd to be lead up to the stage and see the Auditorium theater empty, and for a moment to look out from the stage up into the seats of the theater. The Auditorium theater was not built for this sort of thing. If you were to design something for this type of theater I guess you'd design some combination of a warehouse club space and the stage of a theater.

The show opens with light and wind coming from either side of the stage alternately and then appears a man walking on a conveyor belt set on a raised piece of staging. A series of events unrelated but related in a dream like sort of way transpire as the man runs and walks, gets shot, passes through crowds, sits at a restaurant, sleeps, carries his own bed. The rest of the show had women on harness walking and somersaulting on a shiny curtains, and a point where the actors interacted with the audience hitting some people over the head with "boards" of Styrofoam and confetti, that lead into a dance party overseen by a DJ in powdered wig and military coat whose appearance conjured up images of George Washington. So a George Washington DJ. The Show concluded with four women cavorting in a shallow pool of water made of some form of clear plastic suspended overhead. We watched them from below.

The show meandered through dream scape, interactive happening, dance party and circus spectacle. Nothing that I saw I had seen done before, and the special effects the technical aspects, the endurance and performance were all flawless and amazing. All seemed oriented toward evoking emotion and having an immersion experience without referent. On the other hand I also felt that it was simply an extension not so much of a performance art piece or Theater, but of the night club. Over all take way the technical aspects of the special effects and the overall experience emotively was that of a very good and special night at a Goth club. But then in this I am looking for more than the creators intend as the playbill essentially discourages looking for a meaning, though it also seeks to interpret itself as simple reality.

As amazing as the show was I am in the end disappointed. Disappointed not in what it was which was amazing but in that it failed to be the more it could have been. The style of theater lends itself to comparison with the Blue Man Group, which I think is a fair comparison in term of genre, if one can apply a genre to either performance theater group. When I saw the Blue Man Group I left the theater seeing the world differently, the buildings and streets I had walked just 2 hours before were the same but i saw them differently. I saw Kate differently, and I looked at my life and seminary differently(I was at North Park Theological Seminary at the time). With Fuerza Bruta I was to experience my self in relation to what was going on. There was nothing outside, nothing other than a sequences of experiences in imitation of a dream (which don't get me wrong is pretty cool in and of itself, but that is all it is) that means nothing and thus changes nothing and asks me only to see the world and myself as I have always seen the world and myself. Or worse it asks me to escape myself and the world and how i see the world for the moment we were enclosed on the stage.

Fuerza Bruta is meaningless. It showed us bodies without meaning, a desert of life in stark beauty, momentary emotions and fleeting experiences. It was decadence devoid of any and all transcendence and it was an amazing experience. I am no different for the experience and it is fading rapidly in my memory as this day has passed. It is an empty experience a desert of artifice. And despite the insistence of the playbill that there can be reality with out referent and interpretation, it was not real, but an exercise in futility, a dream without symbol. That might be the very point, a celebration of the decay of symbol and meaning as what is "real". Such a view of the world and art and theater is for me in the end then without life.

Last week I began work on the two smaller Icons for my installation art piece for the Big Sculpture Garden at the Milwaukee Avenue Arts Fest in Logan Square.

It turns out I am part of a group of artists that will be creating the Sculpture Garden for the Milwaukee Avenue Arts Festival. There is a fundraiser for the festival this coming Monday, June 21. You can find all the information here

If you are in Chicago and are free on Monday evening I encourage you to attend it looks like it should be a fun time. Also, suggested donations are on a sliding scale from $10-$100.

Artropolis was this past weekend, and a friend of ours got us complimentary tickets. So, Kate and I arranged our Saturday Schedules and headed down to the Merchandise Mart for a couple of hours.

We only had time and energy to wander around the Next Exhibition of Emerging Art. A great deal of what was there was of passing interest, which might be expected. a good bit of what we saw in various ways had a whimsical feel or playing with expectation of the viewer based on a shared understanding of art history. Also, there was the stuff that was based in the perfection or use of a particular technique, that while I find interesting always leaves me disappointed because technique itself rarely says anything.

There was one Chicago based artist who used a great deal of color and a complex technique of painting that included layers of resin and paint. the milling about of people and that this was a trade show after all, kept me from quite being able to enter into his work. I think I would have liked to spend time simply standing and sitting in front of his paintings, to be able to encounter the painting in a museum setting. His work was fairly dominated by his technique but his work was also saying something, and it was really beautiful.

There were also several artists who either are Japanese and Chinese or Japanese American and Chinese American who had some striking and beautiful work that worked in what I could recognize as traditional styles, not simply references but also had them in conversation with other traditions, techniques and styles.

Here is the completed icon of St. Nicholas at last. It was completed by the feast day, Dec. 6th, and it was used in Reconciler's worship that day.

So, I had intended to post the pictures of the last stages and the finished icon, but then got busy and then was sick on and off again for about two and a half weeks, and then I was preparing for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

So bellow are two pictures from the final stages of writing the icon. I have not taken any pictures of the finished icon, but I did finish it in time for St. Nicholas day and it was in Reconciler's worship service on December 6th. I also preached on St Nicholas for that service.

further highlights and details.

Almost finished here, a few more details, especially on the Gospel book, and have yet to write the inscription.

I will post a picture of the finished Icon in the next day or so.

Also, I realized I never published the third part on my exploration of history, and the self. I was also about to post that third and final installment but wasn't satisfied with what I had and then I got sick and haven't looked at it again. I will have to look at it again and let you know if there will be a third part posted or if what I have posted will be all for now on that subject.

I have been reading Lathrop's The Pastor: A Spirituality. It has got me in quite a reflective mood, I may post on The Pastor before I get around to posting the third installment of History and the self.

Here I have almost completed the first layer of highlights in the icon. The next step is to paint a simple coat of medium (in this case egg yoke). It binds the first to layers together and creates an invisible layer of paint that creates some depth and luminosity.
This is what the painting looked like last night:

On Sunday Kate and I went with the friend with whom we are staying to The Brewery an artist colony downtown LA in what I guess at some point was an old brewery but which looks like its most recent iteration was a manufacturing complex. In Fact according the information part of the complex was an old brewery, and part was also part of an Edison plant, and it seems other things as well. Apparently, in some capacity artist have been living and working in the old Brewery since the early 80's. However, it does look still very industrial, and the portion of the colony that we had time and energy to look at (there are over 300 artist loft/studios according to the web site.) looks like old machine shops. The Brewery has an "open house" twice a year, in the fall and the spring.

What we saw was of mixed quality and interest. Though the spaces were often quite invigorating and there was a quasi rustic feel, and many of the artists had fixed up their lofts and studio space in very beautiful and inspiring ways. Kate was very energized by the experience, and I wasn't sure what to make of it all. The first space we visited was an artist who has post-apocalyptic Steampunk themed work and his studio and loft space was Steampunk craziness. Quite cool, but his work didn't seem to mean much, each piece was an experience, and there were techniques he had invented and perfected. Technically it was all very well executed beyond the experience of the space and his pieces I didn't see much more meaning beyond .

What we saw was mostly similar to this, interesting techniques, and a certain beauty but largely meaningless beyond the techniques and the experience of the art. Saw a photographer that did some very interesting things with cityscapes and landscapes in black adn white and sepia tones. Also, an abstract painter that worked only in industrial enamels, that I find quite captivating and had the work I liked the best but again left me seeking meaning in the pieces, but only finding the experience of various types of spaces. But not mental spaces or places in the world but only the experience of this particular canvas as a space I could inhabit for a time. Interesting but quite meaningless.

The artist Miripolski has a loft there and Kate and he hit it off and traded some of her horns for a print of one of his works. he is working on a humongous stained glass piece for the L.A. Cultural center that is the artists representation of the History of LA, with some aspect of also projecting its future. Hi work is very vibrant and colorful, and I feel very much something that would emerge out of the culture of L.A.

Overall though I had the experience of Art as manufacturing in most of the spaces. Each loft studio felt a little like a space for the manufacture and production of art objects to be experienced and consumed. If I was to be confronted or challenged or brought beyond myself it was in quite singular experiences that meant nothing beyond a singular encounter. Very little of what I saw in my small sampling of artists their studio's and work left me with any meaning beyond those encounters. I think the space of former industrial complex and manufacturing for quite literal consumption (beer) had some effect both on my experience of the art but also the artists. I also wonder if this is where art is at the moment, to produce experiences and the meaning is in the experience and nothing more.

Yesterday my second day of vacation I went down to the MCA and saw the Olafur Eliasson exhibit Take Your Time. The works in the exhibit range from 1993 to the present. Eliasson describes his works as "devices for the experience of reality". Each work is emersive and experiential. Even his series of photographs of rivers, caves islands, etc. in taking up a wall are something I more experienced than observed. Some of it was subtle like the hall lit with only orange light, to stark, a black room lit only by a single light shining on mist of water near the back of the room. There was also the walls of moss or bricks of fired soil mounted on a wall. The moss was according to the exhibition brochure living and changing over the course of the exhibit, and you could certainly smell the moss, and one person while I was there had to leave the room immediately as his alergies almost immediately acted up.
Three works left a lasting impression on me, one a light shined upon a ring that turned hung in the middle of a room, you then saw both the shadow of the ring on the opposite wall of the light, but also a ring of light passed along the walls of the room. At some point of watching the ring, the shadow of the ring and the rings of light passing along the wall I had the sensation of having an insight. Eureaka! yet about nothing in particular. then there was the circle of light panels you entered into and the light cycled through the wavelengths of the light spectrum. As the light changed there was subtle changes in my mood. Well actually it felt more like the light was affecting me in ways that I could not articulate that I was shifting as the light changed through unnamed changes in myself. The third work was the black room with light and mist. I saw it immediately after being in the light ring and so at first I could not see at all as I entered the room and as you entered the room you could not initially see the light and mist. Once I entered and turned into the room and saw the light and mist, immediately I thought how beautiful. It was indeed quite beautiful. These three have stayed with me I think because they in differing ways isolated aspects of spiritual or religious experiences, whether of prayer or meditation, or worship. The play of light and darkness, and color often are components of worship and meditative spaces. Though rather than a full experience it was like aspects of these was isolated to be experienced on its own without association to anything but what was used in the work to produce the experience.

In some sense this seems to be what is going on in most of Eliasson's work, picking out a narrow range of experience of light, shape, color etc., and thus also isolating emotive or psychological states that may be induced or associated with the arrangements of the work. For something like the wall of moss for me it was more recall of being in forest and stepping upon moss. But other than that it was more a piece of novelty to find a wall of moss in a museum, other works hit me as mere novelty without much else to them. Overall thought it was fairly impacting exhibit that has stuck with me and has left me mulling over the various experiences of each work, for the past 24 hours or so.

I have completed 4 new icons: St Thekla, St. Emmelia and her daughter St Macrina and an icon of the Mother of God hodigetera ("who shows the way"0.
St Thekla:

St Emmelia:

St Macrina (with the miniature of St. Michael to give a sense of its size):

The Mother of God Hodigitiria (the one who shows the way):