piano

London Chicago

Jami, at Trafalger Square. Raining in London - who'd of thought. She's beautiful.

From our trip to Chicago last Fall, a Braque (I think): you'd think that I could distinguish a Braque from a Picasso, but I can't always. Something about Braque's composition is formal and stiff -whereas Picasso's compositions move and have more a lower key of color. Braque's more likely to use black to outline forms. So it seems to me. So Braque.

The Most Beautiful Smile

In early January Jami and I patrolled London looking for the best cozy spots to eat and drink. Here she is smiling with shear delight in a pub, probably in Hampstead.

Meditation on Cape Anne

I had a show recently: 17 paintings and 40 drawings water colors, and this is one of the water colors that sold. I only sold three pieces. This is one of them. Sure, I'll miss it. But it feels good that something sold. I was hoping for better success, but the process of building the business end of art is incremental.

Christa Gestalt, Jami and Grace, Sign of the times, Whitney

Another provocative painting taken under non-optimal circumstances. Yes that is my foot.
Here's Jami with Grace - the apple of her Aunt's eye.
This is a sign we saw in Nashville. Jami and Jennifer, her sister, thought it an audacious pun.
This is Whitney playing guitar in the back section of the bookstore. By the window is my cousin, Cheryl, and in the upper left corner is the lower right corner of a large painting of mine.

I've got to get a photographer

Atlanta Traffic

Atlanta traffic is much like the sea. The sea, though, constantly flows. The sea provides a sense of calm, a sense of wonder - there are many songs extolling the power and grandeur of the sea. We never say that about the traffic. Traffic though has a grandeur. Especially when some of Philip Glass's music is in the background: serialism has the effect of enhancing the sense of flow and the speed, where everything is changing but remaining the same.

Three Graces

This image of the three graces was a gift to one of my groom's men. I can't remember who got this. Still the three graces provide a strong mythological image: femininity, mystery, beauty, and transcendence.

Annunciation Macabre

I imagined a darker, more brooding Gabriel, bringing his message of orgasmic theophany, to Mary, a young jewish girl. That's her looking in the mirror. Mirrors provide a speculative function. The photo is a bad photo with lots of background junk - we laugh at this kind of presentation in galleries and art schools, but I've got my MFA, so there.

Louise, the Hoskins place, Jami

Piranessi and modern times

A washed out shot of a New Mexico painting

This photo was taken by a photographer for the AJC using a very expensive camera, and it doesn't show the richness of the color or texture of the paint I'd gotten here. Photography of artwork is a tricky thing, and I'm not anal about it myself, except when faced with the limitations of what is possible. A painting is superior to a photograph exactly for those elements of surface manipulation and image integration that a photo, when done by a professional art photographer, provides a metaphor for what is seen. A photo of a painting is a double metaphor, the painting being the first metaphor.
Now I know that I said "superiority of painting to photography" and that's bound to cause a stir, but photos have their own surface manipulations and image integrations: perhaps I should have said that the vocabulary of painting doesn't translate well into the vocabulary of photography and vice versa. That is: it's asking a lot of a photograph to reproduce a painting.
Well that was unnecessarily complicated.
What I painted here was a spot near the middle of nowhere. Those from New Mexico know just where this is: near nowhere, insight of the mountains, covered with scrub, the road indistinguishable from the surrounding dust and rock. Overhead is a cloud that appears to be raining, but the rain is evaporating high in the air. Or else there is a cloud 100s of times bigger than the mountains it looms behind. At your feet there is a bit of bone, and in the blue shadows of the thistle a small creature rustles away, out of sight.
A map says that there is a watercourse around here, but you don't see one: but not being one to argue, you call it a draw.

Here are our wedding pictures

http://www.wscottchester.com/darkroom/proof/?client/fredandjami

2 honeymoon photos, one blurry, one focused

Dad, me and Jami at my M.Div. graduation, May 2007

This is one of the best days of my life. I'd won the preaching award - and burst into tears, and here were my dad and Jami, who is now my wife. Later we celebrated with oysters and beer. A raw bar had just opened in Oakhurst and we were just beginning to enjoy it.

More fun with John the Baptist and Salome

JB "When Salome's dance caused me to lose my head, things seemed bleak."
Sal " I was young and I didn't always anticipate my actions' effects."
JB "But thanks to support from our families and community, we've been able to move beyond our initial difficulties.--We're expecting our first child in November."

Annunciation

If only I had a better reproduction of this painting. I painted it back in 1999. It now resides in Birmingham, AL. Gabriel comes down in a flame of fire. Mary, well imagine: a young girl receives an angelic visitation and becomes pregnant. There's more going on here than meets the eye: it begs to be portrayed in a sensual, fantastic way.

Apollo and Daphne

Eight years ago I painted this. Mythology gets me going - the whole gods and mortals doing incredible things, turning into trees, etc. is captivating. And here Apollo almost grasps Daphne only to be thwarted by Zeus who turns her into a tree as an answer to her prayer: "Zeus save me."
In my version Daphne turns into a field of kudzu - that's a southern twist. The woman I sold this to didn't know anything about the myth. She bought this painting because it went well with her sofa. She claimed to have lived in Pensacola, FL but when I mentioned kudzu to her, she looked at me and said, "I've never seen anything like that. I don't know what you're talking about."

Today's Water Color and Drawing

I have got to get some better reproductions. The bottom pen and ink drawing is a Salome and John the Baptist. Not that this is what actually happened: for me, Sal and JB exist in a realm of symbols; their lives continue, intertwined by history and myth. She, the dancer and lover, and he, the prophet and authority figure. But see, he looses his head. JB exists as a bifurcated person: his head and body are disconnected, and can only reconnect in the presence of the dancing girl. Or alternately: the dancing girl needs the head of the prophet to authenticate her own existence. Or this is an embematic story of the delphic oracle: Salome, a dionysian ecstatic conjures prophecy as a cutting off of human function.
The water color on top is about the church being released from its bureaucratic functionaries.

Felix Culpa

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------I painted this last fall. Now it is hanging in a show I'm having in Decatur. My wife, when she first saw this immediately took this from the studiio and put it in the house. I like it for its interracial Adam and Eve, the exoticism of the coral snake Satan, and the feel of a Rousseau painting.

An Amusing summer interlude

Some months ago, when Columbia Pres next door had a yard sale, I bought a set of seats. This was no ordinary set of seats: this set was arranged together like theater seats. They were three simple seats grouped together. The frame was iron and the seats were wood veneer. Attached to the back was a hymnal holder and a holder for tiny communion cups. I could not believe my good fortune at coming across such a thing. It was a prize and evocative of an era when churches experimented with practical alternatives to pews. I figured that this alternative was about 1935 - 1940. Immediately seeing the possibilities of such a seating arrangement, Geza, who was with me, helped me move it back to my dorm. We set it out in the hall, across from a blank spot on the opposite wall. Geza and I sat there and toasted our good fortune to be in such a place and be sitting in such seats. He later told me that as he sat there he had a revelation: he saw how it was possible for free men and women, under the eye of God, to sit on folding theater seats, made of wooden laminate, and dream visions and see thoughts of visions, and visions unthought of, and dreams unthinkable. For that moment we were the most fortunate of men. Geza and I weren't the only people to sit in these chairs. Others told me of their experiences. Some spoke of recovery, others mentioned a feeling of peace. It was a pacific set of ecclesial theater seats, iron framed and wood laminated. It welcomed all. Late at night I would hear couples speaking in low murmurs; old friends would come during the day and reminisce. Often, when I was coming back to my room, I would espy evidence of solitary contemplation: a prayer written on a small paper scrap and inserted in the iron-work, a tear-stained handkercheif left on an armrest. Some might say I was mad, and I can be easily faulted for leaving these seats out in the hall. Like the Moor, I loved not too wisely but too well, and out of a tender heart I left them there. Their vulnerability pinching my heart with a sweetness transcendental and immanent - and now I am bereft of them. Mistaken for derelict and cleaned out with the other hallway detritus, they were removed to the dumpster's vicinity, and from thence further removed by annonymous hands into obscurity. This removal occured while I sat in a theater, in stadium-style seating,watching a space opera. How much I feel my infidelity, as if I had traded the form fitting wood laminate for the cold companionship of a cup holder and the mesmerizing thump of dolby stereo. How now I ache for the simple welcoming appearance of this set of seats in my silent hall? What dark force now grips myheart? A force of memory at once bitter and at once sweet. Sweeterbit? I asked, "Oh ecclesial theater seats, can it be that you are lost to me forever?" The night drew me out and I searched. The thickets of the brambles among the trees scratched and tore at my skin. I stumbled along stream banks and thrashed my way through kudzu. At last I came to my senses in an open field under the stars. I looked up at Orion and the Plieades. I navigated the zodiacal signs and my own ignorance rebuffed me. What is left for me now but to continue on, to live with my loss, and to let this minor grief merge with all the sad grieving that runs through the great world like a river with uncountable tributaries.

My Award Winning Sermon

Acts 26:1-24 NRS Acts 26:1 Agrippa said to Paul, "You have permission to speak for yourself." Then Paul stretched out his hand and began to defend himself: 2 "I consider myself fortunate that it is before you, King Agrippa, I am to make my defense today against all the accusations of the Jews, 3 because you are especially familiar with all the customs and controversies of the Jews; therefore I beg of you to listen to me patiently. 4 "All the Jews know my way of life from my youth, a life spent from the beginning among my own people and in Jerusalem. 5 They have known for a long time, if they are willing to testify, that I have belonged to the strictest sect of our religion and lived as a Pharisee. 6 And now I stand here on trial on account of my hope in the promise made by God to our ancestors, 7 a promise that our twelve tribes hope to attain, as they earnestly worship day and night. It is for this hope, your Excellency, that I am accused by Jews! 8 Why is it thought incredible by any of you that God raises the dead? 9 "Indeed, I myself was convinced that I ought to do many things against the name of Jesus of Nazareth. 10 And that is what I did in Jerusalem; with authority received from the chief priests, I not only locked up many of the saints in prison, but I also cast my vote against them when they were being condemned to death. 11 By punishing them often in all the synagogues I tried to force them to blaspheme; and since I was so furiously enraged at them, I pursued them even to foreign cities. 12 "With this in mind, I was traveling to Damascus with the authority and commission of the chief priests, 13 when at midday along the road, your Excellency, I saw a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, shining around me and my companions. 14 When we had all fallen to the ground, I heard a voice saying to me in the Hebrew language, 'Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It hurts you to kick against the goads.' 15 I asked, 'Who are you, Lord?' The Lord answered, 'I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. 16 But get up and stand on your feet; for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you to serve and testify to the things in which you have seen me and to those in which I will appear to you. 17 I will rescue you from your people and from the Gentiles-- to whom I am sending you 18 to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.' 19 "After that, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision, 20 but declared first to those in Damascus, then in Jerusalem and throughout the countryside of Judea, and also to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God and do deeds consistent with repentance. 21 For this reason the Jews seized me in the temple and tried to kill me. 22 To this day I have had help from God, and so I stand here, testifying to both small and great, saying nothing but what the prophets and Moses said would take place: 23 that the Messiah must suffer, and that, by being the first to rise from the dead, he would proclaim light both to our people and to the Gentiles." 24 While he was making this defense, Festus exclaimed, "You are out of your mind, Paul! Too much learning is driving you insane!"

Much learning has driven you mad. All the little letters have accumulated in your head until your brain is clogged and now you’re disoriented. I know that I’m a little shaken myself. I don’t think I can stand right now. I haven’t even started drinking but I could use one now. You know a little lubrication of the gyroscope and I’ll be right as rain. But you Paul, seriously, the mid-day sun has effected you. I know a cool place you could go. We could all go there now and get a fine porter or ale. I’ll buy. They know me at this place and know that I’m good for it. It’d be a fine respite from our troubles and now I’m thinking you’re the most troubled of us all. I didn’t know. But come and we’ll talk in a more convivial circumstance and get you back out on the street in no time. This is what I do. I do this for people. That’s how you get to be procurator. Not by knowing too much and – really – not by doing too much. Yet here I am and there you are. Chained and knowing too much. All the words and all the letters zooming in at once.
And what do I wish to say, “that little learning has kept me sane?” Well if you must know, I don’t do more than I need. I read and know what I need to know. Although in truth, it’s not that I don’t know nothing. I did pass the procurator’s exam: laugh at the right times and voice assent without hesitation. I have been educated. I know some passage is from Livy and another from Horace. I know my Aneid too.
Where was I? Yes, Much learning has driven you mad. The letters and words approaching an interchange in your head are jammed together and unable to exit. Like some great circular highway, filled with vehicles, there is no stopping off place. That is, I’ve not followed you. You’ve left me dizzy with your talk of messiahs and resurrections. It’s not incredible that God should raise the dead, to me, but that God should care. Why should I care that God should care? Should it matter to me that the world was created good and that the creator still creates goodness – though frankly what I see is pretty crappy It doesn’t take much learning to see that we’re living in a desert and that enough people here are more concerned about killing those they disagree with than improving the living conditions of a desert. I know for instance that a cool place to talk and have a drink would help us all here.
Did you say that we must turn from darkness to light? From the power of Satan to the power of God? That we should have faith in this dead man, Jesus? See this is where I fall off. I can’t see how faith in this man, (Jesus?) will make a difference for me. But I can see that it’s put you in chains. That’s how I know that you’re mad. It’s the desert and this word heavy culture, all these people with their books and history, fighting to do what? To continue living on a rock in the desert by a still stream. No one here is disobedient to a heavenly vision – would that they were.
Much learning is driving mad. Madly driving you and all these people. And what can I say, that if you try to keep the learning down, you might do something more practical than having heavenly visions. I have no doubt that heavenly visions are occurring right now and that if I knew too much I might feel compelled to obey one. But let me tell you that ignorance, when properly applied, is a good and powerful thing. A bush is still burning in the desert but I don’t want to know it. Let me stupidly gaze at this bright light and then continue on my journeyings.
What I want to say is that much learning is getting you killed. Doesn’t that drive you mad? Heavenly visions; history; salvation: Wouldn’t it be nice to build a home, tend a garden, father a family? You don’t have to know much to be like the rest of us. Disobey the heavenly vision a bit. It gets easier each day – I imagine. Soon you’ll be walking down the street having conversations about the weather and wishing people a nice day. You won’t be here, chained, mad.
Great, learning is driving you mad and me a little tipsy. Did you see the apple orchards on the hillside north of here? They’re blooming and full. Is there nothing more beautiful than hills covered in olive groves? I turn a corner and see the chalky white blocks of houses and villages, sheep herded along the road, and I think: What’s to know? We’re in a quiet corner of the empire, far enough away that government doesn’t bother us, but not so far away that we’re not protected. Imagine there’s no Satan and no God. A little ignorance and we’re cozy. Snug.
Ignorance, quiet, pacific, assuring, holds me safe. I see no vision. I work for no historical outcome. I neither obey nor disobey and the faith I have is in my position and that in a few minutes I’ll have a drink and you can walk out with me and Agrippa here and we’ll be right as rain, unchained. We can know what we know, but why more. And we’ll not talk of dead men walking among us or of Satan and God possessing us and we’ll just worship the night and day that surround us. See no madness, no troubling of the waters.
Paul, why are you mad for this Jesus? Haven’t you learned from your experience and what I’ve told you that things could be better for you? You won’t see Caesar and you won’t lose your head. You’ll see the sunrise and the nightfall. You’ll see the olives grow, pressed and flowing, bread dipped and eaten in the shade.
Let’s say I heard you. I’d be mad for sure. Would I suddenly feed the hungry and help the poor? The empire wouldn’t tolerate a population of well-fed poor people. We have to keep our insurrectionists few and ill fed, not add to their numbers. When the hope of a people is no hope, peace reigns. This is the peace we enjoy: We eat and enjoy our selves without being bothered or fearing for our lives. So you see: The very hope of people without food or clothing, who sleep in fear of the rain and the open road, is to not have hope. Would this dead man, Jesus, save me when they rose up in arms demanding a place to live and sleep safely, when suddenly well-fed and clothed they began demanding rights?
I’m sorry I can’t hear you. I’m mad for safety. I see you’ll go on and I’ll stay here. Your great learning drives you madly. You won’t take a break from Jesus. You’ll obey a bright light and voice that met you in the desert. This dead man’s way will be your death. And his life? If I could have faith in such a life. But then I wouldn’t be a procurator. I wouldn’t be sitting with kings and having some lamb and greens afterwards. The dates here are marvelous.You won’t find them where you’re going.

More is coming

More is coming. I know that it's been several months, but I've been busy. Well, I've not really cared enough, and I find this whole blog process daunting. I lost my password and recovering it today took some time. But more is coming. I may post some of my writing, some sermons, some vignettes, anecdotes, adumbrations of stories, narratives, speculations, conspiratorial rants, plottings, schemings.

Let's see if I can add an image:

I can, and it's an image of my wife, Jami. We married this last December 30th. I love her.