The art of worship

YAHSHUA OF NAZARETH hung out with prostitutes and tax collectors. I hang out with a similarly disreputable group known as artists. In addition to making the more interesting gallery openings around town, I always enjoy parties in wackily decorated lofts or warehouses-turned-studios.

I love artist dwellings because they are typically so un-"adult"-like; they make me feel right at home. One can imagine the artists' moms being present nagging them about cleaning their rooms -- and what exactly are they going to do with all that junk, all those half-completed paintings or sculptures?

This makes me realize I'm not really a packrat, I'm just a maker of "found art." I collect and save stuff other people throw away. For one, something within me simply rebels at the stupidity of our society's habit of trashing things -- such as containers -- which are still perfectly good. I prefer to try to reuse them or to attempt to make them into something else useful. And by hanging out with other creative types I've realized some people just put a little more time, space, and decorative pizzazz into their collecting/recycling than I do, and then they call it art, and sometimes, they even manage to sell it to someone. (As I remarked to my friend Annabelle Echo, if have a house full of junk and you live in the country, you're white trash; if you live in the city in a refurbished warehouse loft, you're an artist.)

Since I'm a journalist as well as man-about-town, I've been trying to come up with an angle that I can write about for some local publication, preferably for the Tribune. Last week I got the idea to examine how much of the local arts scene is about making art and how much is about making excuses to party.

So, at the party on Saturday night, I turned to friend Vito for his opinion. (Vito is a middle-aged poet and teacher who's been around the scene a long time. He also knows where all the interesting parties are.) Sounding slightly wistful, Vito related how the collective behind this particular party, the Surrealist Ever-So-Secret Order of the Lamprey, used to be a somewhat serious group that got together and made and critiqued each other's art. Their house, an old white two-story with a basement workshop, a courtyard in back and a rooftop deck, is indeed a living museum of "junk" art. But now, Vito says, they mostly just throw parties.

Another local arts and media collective, Lumpen Media, has never been shy about the fact that it exists to throw parties and produce and publicize fringe art -- perhaps in that order.

But the thought is not so scandalous when you realize that art and celebration (or if you prefer, revelry) naturally go together.

First of all, artists -- despite what you've heard about angst and depression -- like to have a good time. They are playful people (many would seem to fit the classic "attention deficit hyperactivity disorder" profile). You can't produce much art of a truly creative kind without having a youthful spirit of playfulness, of curiosity, of let's-throw-this-against-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks experimentalism. You have to be willing and able to let go. These qualities make for unbridled creativity, and for better and for worse, also make for an insatiable hunger for stimulation of all kinds .

Second, when work does get really intense -- such as right before your show opens and you're feverishly working to finish, transport, install and show your pieces (or your band's gig or your play or whatever it may be), then you need to be able to let your hair down.

Third, galleries and other venues probably realize they'll sell more art when free wine, cheese, and beautiful people are present: it creates a certain atmosphere, and of course, the wine helps cloud the judgment and greases the way for the buyer to plunk down perhaps more than he should on a piece of art.

Fourth, it's likely that a lot of the artist personalities. being "ADD" and feeling slightly out of whack when sober, are drawn to alcohol and other drugs as a form of self-medication.

Lastly, partying is a time-honored tradition. Artists do have a reputation to uphold.

HANGING OUT AT SUCH events always gets me thinking -- particularly when they're all over and I'm heading home -- of my other life in that other world known as the world of church. The thing about that world is, I like a lot of the people in it, but its design and aesthetics leave much to be desired. The interaction between the two worlds makes me wonder why the church world isn't more like the world I hang out in for fun: full of color and life and vibrancy and ferment and creativity and wackiness for its own sake and invention. And art! And real music. And slightly cracked people like myself. Well, okay, there are plenty of cracked people in the church world too.

But the world of religion (or "churchianity") that I've inhabited since childhood -- and that includes church-of-god-ianity -- is as far from the art world as possible: a world of stultifying squareness, of primness and propriety and pretension, of tidiness, of everything having its place, of everything happening on time, of the human spirit struggling to burst out of that box of religion, and religion's attempts to force it and vacuum-pack it tightly back in.

Instead of cutting-edge art and music, it's a world of stained-glass sanctuaries and musty pews, or drab rented motel rooms and lineoleum-tiled school buildings where folks' idea of a good time is singing hymns written in 1908. It is a world of uniformity, at relentless attempts to make everyone the same, of the fear of art and creativity and innovation and deviation. It is a world of corporate business values imposed upon worship, and of the desiccated, lifeless result which is sold to people as "the faith once delivered," when it could hardly be further from that faith.

For me, participating in other communal rituals and other forms of fellowship with a whole different crowd makes me question and re-examine the need and importance of some of the cherished traditions and conventions of churchianity. For instance, the convention of "dressing up": Is it really about looking good for God (who tells us repeatedly that he looks not upon the outward appearance but on the heart), or is it about impressing men? Or perhaps also, about looking uniform, looking the same as everyone else, which is conducive to sameness of outlook and feeling and opinion? Does the attire favored in the church world have the same purpose in church as it does in business or the military -- to impose uniformity of thought?

When church convention frowns upon creative or whimsical or individualistic styles of dress, is it not also frowning upon creativity, whimsy, and individualism?

It's a shame to have to say so, but "the church" could stand to learn a lot from the world. In fact, I've come to the conviction that a lot of the artistic people I hang out with also are in the ekklesia: they just don't know it yet.