Art Creations

Art Creations

Art Creations

Art Creations

Richard Caemmerer – Art & the Gospels

Our mornings have been filled with slide presentations of artwork related to the Gospels and Richard Caemmerer’s vast international experience, varied insights, and numerous anecdotes. Wednesday we learned about representations and symbols of the four gospels. Mark is typically depicted as a winged lion; Matthew as a winged human; Luke as an ox with wings, and John as an eagle. Our assignment was to depict one of the gospel symbols; I chose Luke and included the infant Jesus because of Luke’s focus on the nativity. Janai used her typography skills to create an amazing lion (see her artwork) and our classmate Kate (from Trinity Seminary in Columbus OH) incorporated all four symbols into a single design. I am humbled ….

Our next lecture focused on specific representations of the annunciation and nativity and the “sacra conversazione” (sacred conversation – think of Mary and the infant Jesus inviting Grandma Anna and John the Baptist over for tea along with a couple saints and patrons of the particular work). Our assignment for Thursday evening was to draw several vignettes – a quick gesture drawing with a splash of color. I have to confess that I’m a slow learner – I kept wanting to color within the lines instead of outside. But I have learned and am really excited about being able to capture subjects quickly. Good lesson for a detail-oriented guy like me.

We discussed Rublev’s “Holy Trinity” icon – the one I chose to draw for my Church History project last semester. Once again it was pressed home how presumptuous I was in doing this – but I’ve learned so much about this icon and iconography through these lessons. Finally, we saw and discussed Rembrandt’s The Return of the Prodigal Son, a deep, touching and mysterious representation of the homecoming. (see Henry Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming).
Our last two lectures have been about representations of the life and teachings of Jesus. The artwork shared has been both historical and contemporary, of both eastern and western traditions (did you know that Byzantine paintings typically have a gold thread meandering through them?), and African, Japanese, North and South American, Native American, and Caribbean origin. Richard also shared some children’s artwork that spoke to the topics with directness, joy and simplicity.
Friday afternoon we did a shaded detail drawing of our thumbs (not much room for creative interpretation there) and a contour drawing of a glass drinking jar. This seemed a little easier for me. Our assignment Friday night was to create our own interpretation of Jesus’ baptism (Mark 1:4-11) for a bulletin cover. We’re supposed to share our renditions this afternoon …..
Fun fact: Richard Caemmerer designed the Budweiser beer logo back in the 50’s; supposedly his name is hidden somewhere on it. No one here has found it …. Let me know if you find it!

During our final lecture, we explored some of the hundreds of church/sacred space/stained-glass windows that Richard has created over the last 50 years, and talked about art in liturgy, sacred space design, and Christian community. We came away with a lot of ideas on how to draw community together through art.

Creation#1,1b

#2

"How do you visualize Jesus and in what environment would you place him?"

Brian's Drawings

Exercise 3: Contours, shading, perspective

Assignmet 2: Additional vignettes

Exercise 2: Vignettes/thumbnails

Assignment 1: Symbol of the gospel of Luke, first attempt

Exercise 1: Quick studies with color

#1

"We share a belief, but how we live, visualize and speak of Jesus belongs to each his own."

Welcome to the 2009 Grünewald Guild /LSTC Weblog!

2009 LSTC J-Term: Art and the Gospels at Grünewald Guild

We are Janai and Brian, first-year students in the Masters of Divinity program at Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, and we thank you for checking out this web log in which we recount our journey and experience here at the Guild, up in the Cascade Mountains of Washington state.

I’m Brian, and I’m a second-career student following early retirement from a 29-year career in the corporate world of research and development and manufacturing/product support. I never took art courses through all my schooling years, yet have always had an interest and have done some drawing and painting over the years when the time was available and the inspiration hit. My journey to the Guild (and to LSTC and ministry) began about six years ago when my wife handed me a pamphlet for the Guild and told me that I should go to this place where faith and art come together. I resolved to do just that, but had not found an opportunity until I saw the J-term course offering in the LSTC catalog. So … here I am!

I hope to use this site to share information about the Guild, what I’m doing while I’m here, and what I’m learning (or not) on this journey to the snowy northwest (which is slowly melting away right now, in case you haven’t heard).

I'm Janai, and I graduated from the University of Nebraska at Kearney with a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree and German. I am also a published author of In His Presence: Intimate Moments Between a Woman and Her Lord and will soon have anothor book coming out in the Spring. Coming to the Grunewald Guild has been an awesome affirming experience and will impact my life for many years to come. We have great art professors that each share their abilities with us in a unique way. My mission here at the Guild to sharpen what I have, gain a solid confidence in what I already know, and be open to what I do not know about. I also do have a theme that I wish to create while at the Guild. Its' focus is on the four gospel symbols that have been icons throughout church history, and my attempt to translate, through typography, how those symbols would look today. I am just thrilled to be here especially with Brian so that we can support one another in keeping our gifts in art alive while undergoing seminary studies.

How much snow is too much?!

How much snow have you had this winter? Here in Plain, Washington it's been...well...

abundant!

Can you tell what this really is under the snow???!!!

(Hint: Some of you spend hours sitting on the Chicago highways in one of these!)

Grunewald Week #1

We've arrived!

This year, there are three of us LSTC students experiencing the beauties and creative spirit of the great Northwest! When you arrive "here" - you find yourself in a wonderful valley in the Cascades in the town of Plain, Washington...but let us tell you the area is anything but plain! The mountains are spectacular, the view is amazing and the snow... well, let's just say there is more snow than you can imagine! The snow itself is about 3-4 feet deep and snowbanks are as tall as we are!

This is our home away from home - otherwise known as the Homestead. Our own rooms with sinks, bath down the hall, laundry room, eating area, common room and a kitchnette all help to make it a great place to stay as well as the fact that it's built out of amazing logs and lots of wood...and the mural on the stairway wall is amazing!

We started our first week here with class in the mornings led by Richard Caemmerer (the artist who painted the mural) who with his wife Liz, founded the Guild in 1980. Rich started us off by looking at the art and architechture found in churches from early Christianity on. We've made it through the Romanesque period with next week starting on the Gothic era. The amazing thing is how much time, effort and thought has gone into so many of the buildings and artwork through the ages. Things we often see as simply old churches! Rich is also helping us see the images around the images painted or carved - seeing shape and color and texture in form and light as well as the image itself.

Afternoons at the Guild are spent actually getting to do art! This week we started off in the pottery shop - first doing freehand and then we moved to the wheel - learning how to make bowls and such. Working on the wheel is not as easy as our instructor Scott, makes it seem, but under his tutelage we are all getting pretty good at centering our clay and making really fun things!



As we get better at centering and working with the different clays what we end up with looks better and better all the time, too! Once the pieces are all off the wheels and have time to dry, they will be kiln dried and then we will glaze them with a special glaze called Raku Glazing. Letting them dry once again.

On Friday it was time to finish all our clay pieces using the Raku method of firing. The pottery is heated in a kiln fairly quickly to about 2000 degrees and then it's taken out of the kiln and quicly placed into a metal can filled with paper strips. As soon as the paper starts on fire, you throw on the lid for a few minutes, then carefully take the pieces out of the metal can and place them in cold water. When they come out of the water they are amazing colors! It's a wild and fun process and the pieces we made came out great!

The weekend came fast upon us and we spent Saturday doing errands and spending time in Leavenworth a little Bavarian town nearby. We walked, shopped and ate some great German food. Sunday we walked down the road and across the foot bridge to worship at a great little church - Plain Community Church. After lunch we each took time enjoying the beautiful country God has called us to for these few short weeks.

The folks of the guild

The people here at Grunewald really make the place. I can't speak for the summer months, but in the winter the feel of the place is really set by the community of staff members who are here. There are five staff members here at present, and they come from a bunch of different backgrounds. Everyone has their own way of living life and the mesh that this brings in community is rather neat.
Living in intentional community is something that i've done in my own life and I find that I draw a lot of strength and energy from it. Yet, though I might think that "i've done this before" being a part of this community reminds me how unique each experience is. The blend of personal histories, passions and vision always make something new and different. In my own experience a closed community (one that doesn't have members joining or leaving throughout it's span) can change in the period of its existence. Here at Grunewald there are constantly visitors, old and new friends, family members and travelers stopping to share their time and their stories.
This community is continuously open. It may take awhile to understand the rythm and the little nuances are more meaningful once you figure out the relationship behind them. But like any community I will join in the coming years, it's the figuring out that I will enjoy.

Worship

The first Sunday we were at the Guild we had the chance to go with Liz to the small Lutheran congregation in Leavenworth. I think it was called Faith Lutheran. It was cute and quaint, yet modern because Rich had done a mural in the entire worship space. The mural included loaves and fish with the resurrection near by and running water. The pastor, Alex, gave a wonderful sermon that included quotes in memorial of MLK day.

Other times we worshiped were as a community at the Guild with a member of the community leading. Bill lead two and I led one during our three week stay there. Normally it was a "bring your own tradition" thing and could be as structured or unstructured. I went more traditional with a song from the LBW and a meditational piece by Howard Thurman.

crazy weaving

Despite the 3-4 feet of snow on the ground, there was much creativity to be had at the guild. The basics of drawing and such were a nice refresher as it's been a while since any formal art training came my way. With the "big" painting underway, Manda and I learned to weave on looms in the Fiber Arts Studio. This is also the building where our guest rooms were. It was very relaxing once I got past dressing the loom, which took me about 2.5 hours. Weaving also has a rhythm to it similar to a military cadence. The first project I did was a scarf that I gave to my wife, the others were stoles. Of course Manda thought I was going crazy on the loom, but I just wanted to make as many things while at the Guild.

Warping and Wefting

Another one of the arts that we were taught at GG was the art of weaving. At GG they just built a new Fiber Arts building and it houses over 12 looms. Liz is Rich's wife and the co-founder of Grunewald and she was the person who taught us how to weave.

We started off by learning how to dress the looms, that means how to figure out the measurements and products of the piece that we were going to weave and then getting the loom set up and ready to use. This process is way more difficult than one might imagine and can take a few days some times. But we were entirely too eager to let that happen so we did everything that first day. Liz had us use chenile for all of our projects as it has the best lay (meaning it looks good on anyone-ha!). We made a scarf for our first project. We used some sweet yarn for our warp (the threads that lie lengthwise) and then experimented with different colors for our weft (the threads that lie width-wise). Weaving comes with it's own language and we're still arguing as to what terms we have right and which ones we just made up out of thin air.

Liz is a wonderful and patient teacher as well. She is very knowledgeable when it comes to what will work and look nice and what won't and can always figure out where we've gone wrong or why we're stuck. We've been able to spend hours in the studio with her and her dogs, a crackling fire and yarn in all the colors of the rainbow to experiment with. Erica, another staff person and a woman from a nearby town are also weaving this winter and it's neat to see their projects turn out as they complete them. Weaving can be a noisy practice with the banging of the looms, but we've managed to tell stories and generally have a good time after we get a rhythm going.

Scarves completed we move on to making our stoles. Picking out colors to match the liturgical seasons has been wicked difficult for me so i'm making a white stole. This will be something that I can use outside of the worship of a particular parish; baptisms, weddings, dedications....an all-around stole if you please. Justin's gone a little mad if you ask me...he's eager to put this time and equipment to use and he's making a green, blue and a red stole. Ok, to be fair he's only started the red one and will finish it in Chicago...but still.... At least his zealousness gave me time to get a few pictures of the process...

my first time

So yeah, I've never really painted before, and yeah I don't really consider myself an artist, but did that stop me from coming out to GG for three weeks to learn about and create art? no. And i'm glad it didn't. I was a little afraid that I might not live up to the lofty expectations of the Guildmasters or other artists, and maybe I didn't have an artistic bone in my body, but I do love to create and the process brings me a peace and wholeness that I can't describe.

So I felt a little guilty that Justin had to start at the basics with me in drawing and color before we could get our hands on some brushes. When we finally did get brushes in our hands and had practiced a little with the paints and mediums Rich set us up with a still life and put a HUGE blank canvas in front of us. I was frozen with terror. He said to start putting paint on the canvas right away and get the general colors of our composition on there. OH MAN! I don't think i've ever been so intimidated by an inanimate object! But with the support and encouragement of a great artist (two including Justin) I began to put my brush to work.

As we worked Rich began painting a new composition over one of his old pieces that he had decided didn't work. The confidence with which he layer on paint over paint, letting the idea come toward him from the canvas gave me courage that my painting too can be ever-changing. I liked my composition, and my subject was special to me...so I really got drawn into what I was doing.

I love working on the painting for over a week and while there's not a lot happening on my canvas, I worked on each part or piece at least twice before finally leaving it alone. The whole time it was as if I was learning a new way to see things...as if I was seeing beyond what was in front of me and learning to reinterpret that as a representation on my canvas. I learned more about coloring, shadow, space, texture and feeling than I ever knew was there. At one point I had a pepto-bismol pink background and couldn't figure out how I was going to get it to look like fabric. Rich got really creative with some hunter-reflective orange paint and although i'm sure he's right and it does work....I could never see it. Once I changed my background to a color that I liked, I was able to play with technique and color until I saw my vision appear on my canvas. It was awesome.

I'm still not over my fear of a blank canvas...that's still as intimidating as it is exciting. At one point Rich had to give me a deadline and said that every inch of the canvas had to be covered in paint by the end of the day. And I still look at my piece knowing that there are things i'd like to do it it, and that it's not a masterful work of art, but darn it I don't think I did half-bad for my first time! And to me it represents a new love. It was a process that i'll never forget, and one that I want to repeat many times over. Through this painting i've learned to see differently...everything. I have more of an appreciation for the process of making art, rather than being quick to judge a piece on the value of it's end product.