Square Halos: The Imagination as a Truth-Bearing Faculty
I should be writing a midterm! Making sense of Square Halo Conference, angel-Greg, and contemporary art.
My roommate asked me what the big takeaway was from the weekend and I didn’t have a way to process or describe. There are no words — if anything, I said it was spending time with Ellie and Emily and Elisabeth. Kicking it in Lanc. It was meeting angel-Greg, or, as Ellie says, the very living representation of a fountain. Over breakfast we heard about Greg’s work in the Jersey shore, his hunt for a new wedding band when he lost his, his pointed encouragements to each of us in our creative work, and, to top it off, he said that the Elis/zabeth’s are material, pay attention! I’m convinced he was an angel and we’ll never see him again. (He also looked like a more youthful version of Clarence from It’s a Wonderful Life if that gives you a descriptor.) The highlight was that Ellie and I almost got stuck in a muddy field and had to drive through stranger’s backyards in some winter farmland fever dream to get back on the road. And, perhaps I’ll never forget how Elissa called me a “placemaker” when I pulled up a couch for her and Robbie to sit in. It’s a Christie Purifoy joke, but deep down, my heart was all yes, I love being a placemaker, I love moving couches. These were the moments.
As far as thoughts to mull over, here are the ones I’m swimming in.
the art we think is good
Elissa Weichbrodt is an art historian and a former professor of mine at Covenant. She gave a keynote lecture on why Christians need to engage in contemporary art. The case she argues is that as viewers we are actually makers. Our viewing is our making. We engage with the art and it Becomes, so, how are we viewing? There is no part of our engagement with the arts that is passive or separate from culture-making.
At every art and faith conference there is always someone who asks: “What about the bad art? Can we find a redeeming way to view to look at that? Where are the boundaries?”
When asked, Dr. Weichbrodt very graciously and patiently suggested that while there is a commitment to conscience and some forms of art are destructive, we need to challenge our assumptions that the “safe art” we think of, is not safe or good at all. The uncomfortable, problematic, stomach-churning art we don’t like could teach us something about who we are, our need for a savior, and what it means to love our neighbor. Rupture is invitation.
Since we are making by our viewing, we need to come up with a good art-diet. How are our appetites being formed by our art-diet? What needs to go into an art-diet?1
the imagination as a truth-bearing faculty
I was not entirely familiar with the work of Malcolm Guite before this conference. I had read several poems, heard him quoted endlessly as a square-halo saint, and I have one of his books on lament that I enjoy but his thesis on the imagination being a truth-bearing faculty was new, and helped me connect the dots. Particularly in expanding my view of the reaction I have to the natural world.
When you look out at on a vista, see mountains rise, observe the wings on a butterfly, curl up next to a kitten, watch the snow fall or see your one thousandth sunset, you could say — this is beautiful, praise God, glory-be. And I would contend that such a response is good and worthy. But what is actually happening in that moment of viewing?
Malcolm Guite would argue that the great I AM, who is creating that view in that very moment of time, who is as close to the creation of that moment as He is to the very beginning of the world (because time!) meets your imagination (aka — you thinking through images) and in that moment you are apprehending a greater reality — your imagination bearing witness to the truth. When this occurs, there is a rupture of sorts, a rustling between the walls of the world and the veil is ever so slightly lifted up, even for a moment.
I say more: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is —
Christ — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men's faces.
— Gerard Manly Hopkins
The natural world is powerful because I think we get more of a ‘raw’ glimpse of God — but we can’t forget that it is humans who are made in God’s image, not the natural world. Humans are reflecting God’s work of creation by creating. So, whatever art you make, whatever expression manifests itself in your work, we all act as veil-lifters for others to experience Heaven on Earth when our art is beheld. Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.
A poem does not live on a piece of paper. It lives entirely dependent on the reader or listener beholding it. That’s where it lives. In the moment of beholding, the veil is lifted and a glimpse of the Real World becomes apparent.2
meaning-makers: hold up
Let’s pivot back to being a viewer. Dr. Weichbrodt mentioned that at a faculty meeting, she walked her fellow colleagues through an exercise on beholding contemporary art. She starts with close-looking. She observed that the Chemistry and Biology professors excelled at this. They were able to close-look at a piece of visual art without jumping to symbolism, meaning, or story. They simply observed what was in front of them.
The English department floundered their way through this. They tried to jump straight to meaning, symbolism, and story. This is my struggle too. When beholding, I jump straight to meaning. Dr. Weichbrodt said that I need to think of looking at visual art not like it’s a story, but more like it’s poetry. Pay attention to structure, form, details, material, observe the solid reality of what is there before jumping to meaning and interpretation.
As a photographer, I also jump to meaning first and foremost. Where is the story in this image? Where is the conflict and resolution? Who are the main subjects? How do I capture those story elements? In branding it’s the same thing — how do I help businesses tell their story through photography? How do I capture their round characters and their highs and lows in a way that’s honest, beautiful, and true? What I don’t spend a lot of time on is simply observing. Taking note. Not imposing meaning too hastily and inaccurately, or bringing my assumptions to the story. I want to grow as a maker by letting the story unfold through observable details.
Community also plays a very essential role here. Along with art-diet, are we surrounding ourselves with people that help us see? That help us lift the veil? That help us observe without jumping straight to meaning? And, lastly, how do we be generous and generative in the work that we make? How do we keep ourselves from becoming cloistered in the towers of pride and ego, of putting the burden on others to understand our work instead of generously inviting others into the process?
Hard stop, there’s more here, but I have a midterm to write.
Cultivating an art-diet reminds me of VPSS’s latest substack post: What’s to be done about a society with low appetite?
It’s cool to think about being a veil-lifter when making. One can veil-lift for centuries if we make things that last.
“Our viewing is our making.” 💯💯💯