Introducing Buy More Art, a subtly-titled weekly collection of art and art events I'm recommending to the world. A close runner up name for the new series: Love your Artist Neighbor, Buy More Art! (borrowing language from Lauren Winner's advice for art patrons in this book)
After writing 101 Monday Mixtape posts, I'm throwing a farewell party and welcoming in the new guy. You'll notice the mixtape lives on in spirit. We're just hanging up the jersey on the metaphor.
In case you're wondering, a couple of things I consider when I'm putting together my collection:
Is this an emerging artist who could use a shout-out?
- Is this an emerging artist I've met, friend of a friend, reminds me of someone I know?
- Do I enjoy the painting/print/tunes/exhibit/piece/pages so much I want to own it for myself?
- Does this artist have a risk-taking story I'm cheering?
- Does this work feature the banjo? Move it straight to the top of the list.
-- 1 --
fund Bright Came the Word from His Mouth by Matthew Clark at indiegogo
Matthew Clark is another artist I owe the privilege of knowing to the Laity Lodge Ministers to Artists retreat. Specifically to the Saturday-night, post-concert sit-around-the-fire, ale and cigar and conversation on the patio. I always feel a bit awkward, not knowing how to initiate meaningful conversation without resorting to small talk cliches. Matthew Clark does not suffer that problem. He has a gift of gracious, kindhearted openness that made sharing story and meaning feel easy and comfortable. I feel like I got to know his sweet wife, his home in Memphis, and his music with just one conversation around the outdoor fire.
Now you have the opportunity to get to know Matthew through his music. Knowing the little bit of Matthew that I do, it comes as no surprise that he'd take a risk on a collaboration, joining his gifts with the ideas of others. Bright Came the Word from His Mouth is an album of songs inspired by Sandra Richter's book, The Epic of Eden. Clark's goal for this ambitious project: to "create a cohesive telling of the epic journey of God and his children from the Eden of Genesis, through the long and broken journey of humanity to Christ, all the way to the final restoration of God's original intent - God's people, in God's place, flourishing in unbroken access to God's Presence."
Less than two days remain for the indiegogo campaign to support this project.
Go to the campaign home page for more information. (Funding levels begin at $5.)
Listen to a song from the album: Let Go the Floodgates
-- 2 --
Artists donating 100% of Proceeds to Sandy Recovery
-- 3 --
Songs for Liturgy: A Cardiphonia Compilation album
Artists donating 100% of Proceeds to Sandy Recovery
via This is Colossal:
New York based artist Sebastian Errazuriz is offering this thoughtfully designed cotton shirt titled I Still Love NY through Grey Area. Photo courtesy Jordan Doner.
Visit This is Colossal to Buy More Art and donate to Sandy Recovery: First Responder Artists: These Designers, Artists and Photographers are Donating 100% of Proceeds to Sandy Recovery
-- 3 --
Songs for Liturgy: A Cardiphonia Compilation album
Cardiphonia provides another rich treasure of music from the church, for the church. Twenty-two worship leaders from across the United States offer different perspectives for liturgical music.
via Cardiphonia:
" ...these short songs do a wonderful job at helping to remind us that the Gospel proclamation is an ever evolving and flowing narrative where neither Word, nor prayer, nor song, nor table has the last say…but in all of them together is Christ made full.
So we offer up this collection of incomplete songs as a testimony that Christ is died, Christ is risen, and Christ will come again. It’s a fitting song to sing as we prepare for the advent season. The full song of salvation hasn’t sounded yet."
Download the album at Bandcamp. While this album is a free gift to the Church, for the first 30 days "name your own price" donations for downloads go to to support Sandy recovery efforts in NY/NJ.
Visit Cardiphonia for free download of the entire songbook for this album.
“Waterfalls, with a sound/ Like rain”
—Ch’u Ch’uang I
via BMW Guggenheim Lab blog:
"Poem Forest took place November 2011 at the New York Botanical Garden, which was celebrating the renovation of its 50-acre old-growth forest. The Garden, in conjunction with the Poetry Society of America, asked me to do something poetry-related on site. This commission excited me because I wanted to pull poetry from libraries, magazines, books, etc., and put it in the world....
So I “installed” 15 lines pulled from 2,500 years of poetry along a trail through the old-growth forest. Visitors spoke each line (printed on a handout) at specific locations (marked by small orange signs) to which the lines corresponded conceptually or physically....
Urban planners, artists, and citizens around the world must open poetic space within increasingly cramped, increasingly bottom-line-driven cities. Our political animalness gets claustrophobic. We require the commons to encounter each other and the physical landscape."
Here’s a 72-second audio piece that features Poem Forest participants reading their favorite lines.
-- add your art --
Now it's your turn! What art are you making, selling, buying? Tell us about it in the Comments below. If you've written your own post, share the link.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------"The God who impoverished himself is also the God of abundance, and somehow, perhaps at times nonsensically, Christians are called to live out of an ethic not of scarcity but of abundance—an abundance that extends both to the homeless neighbor and to the artist neighbor. . . " -- Lauren Winner, from her chapter THE ART PATRON: Someone Who Can't Draw a Straight Line Tries to Defend her Art-Buying Habit in For the Beauty of the Church
