Tuesday, October 25, 2005

Breaking Ground with Daniel

Spurred by a non-architect's comments, I bought and started reading Daniel Libeskind's Breaking Ground: Adventures in Life and Architecture last night. An entirely theoretical architect until the last few years, this name has always been an intriguing mystery to me, and I'm excited to read his book - it looks actually pretty light for such an enigmatic character: I hope it's authentic. Of course, Libeskind has been in the news as the named champion of the New York WTC design competitions.

If anyone is interested in reading this with me, I guarantee you'll have no trouble keeping up. Let me know.

Sunday, October 16, 2005

Is Art Un-Presbyterian?

I've begun a study of Presbyterian thoughts about art. This started when I bumped into the Westminster Larger Catechism's explanation of the Second Commandment:

". . . the making any representation of God, of all or of any of the three persons, either inwardly in our mind, or outwardly in any kind of image or likeness of any creature whatsoever."

Our associate pastor has gotten me going on this too with some articles about the absense of Puritan art and general discussions of art in the church.

Reading Calvin's commentary today on the second commandment was very helpful. A few points: 1) All representational art is not wrong. 2) Representations of God are wrong because they insult God - so there's the bite to chew on. 3) Calvin and Westminster might not be saying the same thing.

Anyway - here's a link to Calvin on Commandment #2: http://www.ccel.org/c/calvin/comment3/comm_vol04/htm/iii.htm

Some comments from our associate pastor:
http://twosons.blogspot.com/2005/02/packer-pictures-of-christ.html#comments

If Calvin is right, what should we do with the Sistine Chapel? I can do without El Greco, and I still haven't seen Mel Gibson's Passion, and Monte Python's "Brian" was already blaspheme, and those laquered Jesus pictures always weirded me out, but Giotto and the Pietà Rondanini will be harder to let go.

This discussion will be continued on Peace Arts - www.peacepca.org/arts

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

samples that sing

A quick qualifier in choosing materials -
I ordered some samples last week for a project: glass block and acrylic "glass" block. I tapped the glass one with my pen and it rang out this happy note - the tone changes depending where you hit it on the block. The acrylic block makes more of a "thud" tone. A famous quote says that, "architecture is frozen music." So . . . maybe I'll tell our client that we should use glass block instead of acrylic because in a hailstorm it would sing a nicer song. It might be easier to find another excuse.