Previous Projects
I was going through old photos and thought I would recap some long forgotten moments in art making.
Here we have a couple pieces from the summer 2009 I believe. The first now belong to the archives of art collector Erica Sheets.
Here we have a modest (and cynical) comment on spiritism (notice the octopus head on the green cnadle).
Here are a couple pieces that I think well of but have never found a successful installation site , which I have learned in most instances is just as important as the piece itself. These works, as with much of my undergraduate work, brought attention to an undefined yet central space – a space evoking meaning yet left abstract. I am critical of these works in general as they attempt specifically to evoke a sense of God. In the duration of this period I am all but directly telling you that some perceivable and intangible force is there. The great “beat around the bush” so to speak.
I still enjoy them however. This one carried a more relatable and humorous problem. Viewers (especially children) had trouble following the title and just “being still.” Who could blame them. There’s primary colors. Who wouldn’t want to play with them and spin then and stuff?
This One combined scraps from other drawings. I guess it’s just too damn long. 
It currently resides in my humble abode.
Here’s my graduation show, and one of my final moments with my father.
Moving to Oakland changed things dramatically for me and there are some paintings better left unmentioned. Dare I speak of the commission ”Angel of Respect?” Painting on this car seemed an appropriate reentry to creating as an avocation.
This was a lot of fun too. Over the course of several weeks, children who were a part of an after school tae kwon doe group collaborated on this piece in response to learning the concept of shalom – a concept of peace dependent on community where all parts are intertwined to create a more brilliant and strong whole. Sounds pretty intriguing…
Further, our group consisted of children from multiple ethnicities and cultural backgrounds. Weaving their creative work together consisted of challenges, and I think some had trouble understanding what the point of any of it actually was. Nevertheless, it gives a better, more visual representation of what was happening in reality. These children’s stories and histories are now interwoven. They begin and end separately yet there is a point of tension and interaction in the middle. What we are left with is this big and somewhat odd piece of art, which now graces the sanctuary of Re:generation Church.
My Nephew’s Song
Hastily written in the backseat of my sister’s car on the way to the San Diego Airport, my nephew delivers a simple and profound song:
The also hastily made rendition:
A Plain Account of Imperfection
I have noticed it particularly easy to dismiss much of my experience this year as either negative or non-beneficial. However, that would be to evade some responsibility for my own shortcomings and would also undermine the wonderful things that have happened.
Just last week I had a staff member confront my smug attitude towards non-completion of my studies and responsibilities. It was a natural position to take as it has been very difficult to keep up. Of course I have my excuses, but for some reason I consider it less justifiable to admit grief than to suggest the intern studies be a waste of time. In reality, they are not. If anything I have found the Bible this year to be invaluable as I have taken a much closer position to full-time ministry. So what is it? Why the cynical attitude?
It finally hit me while performing a temp job at a small retail shop in the middle of an outdoor mall. I was helping the groundskeeper take items to the dumpster and in our short ten-minute interaction discovered he was a bass guitarist who owned two tube-driven speaker cabinets and played for a band back in the 80’s. He was the burned out rambunctious type, always running into people he used to know. At one point he ran into an acquaintance from Macy’s. They exchanged hugs and as soon as she went her way he explained this woman was a Jehovah’s Witness attempting to convert him. I inquired further only to hear his explanation for life: “The way I see it, if everybody just took responsibility for their own problems and mistakes the world would be a pretty good place.” I didn’t challenge it further, nor did I explain anything pertaining to God. I just listened to him, and when our time was up we both went our different ways. His name was Steve.
His words stuck: “… take responsibility for [my] own problems and mistakes.” Perhaps it’s much less profound, but I imagine he’s right. Not owning up to my shortcomings has hurt a lot of people close to me. They are either the victim of insincerity, devalued as the result my over-commitment to important activities, or even resented for infringing on the acquirement of my needs.
So, between the activities, events, and circumstances of this year I have discovered all the more just how limited I am in my abilities as a human. It is impossible to help everyone, and a lot of the people willing to receive help are much more capable of manipulation than they are to ever receive compassion.
Personally, I cannot stand to help the person who is going to walk over me, but what does grace teach? I for one am sure my intentions have never been pure either before people or God, yet of course He knows and alas He uses them. I tend to imagine Him saying something like: “Yes, go west. Pursue your passions and ideals with conviction. And I will reveal to you the state of your heart.”
One year has almost passed since that decision to go west, and I have started to learn a couple things in that time. I have learned that a true servant’s heart inside a human is nothing short of the grace of God. I have also discovered the prospect that the work of ministry have any lasting effect on people’s lives is nothing short of a miracle. In the service of the Lord, I suppose those are good lessons to learn.
Happy Father’s Day
So, originally this was a Father’s Day gift. It was kind of a rough mix at the time. After I gave it to him, I straightened it out a bit. That was two years ago yesterday.
Looking back I have to wonder a little bit about what exactly I was thinking. There’s an edge to the mix, a message, that really makes me sad. Music was one of the few ways I could ever really communicate with him.
I remember, just a few weeks after giving it to him, he asked me curiously about the craft of djing. He actually listened to the mix! He actually listened to me! His reply was a sincere “I get it.”
I’m still not exactly sure what there is to get though. I had no objective with the mix other than that it would be for my father. Likewise, I don’t really know what to take from my father’s life. I’m pretty resentful, and perhaps also a little happy that he’s gone. Still, the short of it is that I miss him.
I know that doesn’t make a lot of sense, but I guess it doesn’t have to.
I hope you enjoy the tunes!
I think I like it here
Big glasses and pointy, you know Wilma from the Flintstones, hair. We’re talking circa 1950, 75 years old. Her name was Faith… well that was her prophetic name. She received it from some Tibetan…uh.. you might understand more from listening:
I accidentally pressed record about 20 minutes into our conversation.
(please note: the recording is such that you need to be alone in your room with all the lights off while you listen)
Faith is just one.
I’m finding that this place is full of characters.
Just the other night, some friends and I had an outing to Oakland’s very own art murmur. I’ve never seen so many hipsters. We walked through the crowded streets and mixed aromas of Pabst Blue Ribbon, cigarettes, and marijuana. At the end of the block there was the typical homeless person, who is most probably more educated than you, shouting out: “Gentrification at its finest!” Art murmur has little to do with art.
Yet, some people are just intriguing.
The other night it was this one guy. We had our first words about 2 hours into our 5 hour interaction:
“Hi, my name is Zach”
“Hi, I’m Scared”
It’s funny. The first part of our interaction was the result of him following a young married couple into the church and being weird. He made himself at home in our cafe. When I asked him if there was anything I could do for him, he just looked at me, pulled out a bag of Bali Shag and began rolling a cigarette. “Alright then.”
I retreated to a distance and continued to observe the strange specimen with interest and great suspicion. “Was he waiting for someone?” “Was he on drugs” “Did he need anything?” As I would soon discover, as is often true with many suspicions, the answer was “yes.”
He stood. My eyebrow raised. He put the Bali joint in his mouth, and fiddled through his pockets. I was about to pull the trigger.
His eyes brightened when he found his lighter. He slowly pulled it out and slowly lifted it to his face. He literally jumped at the sound of “NO!”
“GO OUTSIDE!”
Without a word he gathered his things and began to walk out the door. All the while multitasking the feat of lighting a cigarette in a church. How rebellious.
I was on the guy’s heels, rushing him out. He didn’t much enjoy that, and he voiced it in making a break midway for the back door and alley. However, it wasn’t before I grabbed the back handle of his backpack and started dragging him out the front door.
I lied earlier when I said his first words were “Hi, I’m Scared.” His actual first words were “whauuuuuuattttt…Stop doing that maaan.”
He assented to leave of his own volition, but he lied. He took advantage of my relenting and remade the break for the back door. He slipped out of his back pack and flung his finally lighted cigarette back towards it.
His maneuver worked. As I was distracted with the cigarette and backpack, he ran.
Something told me it was okay. Following a crazy man on drugs into a dark alley is not always a good idea. I let him go. I called the cops.
He eventually ended up out front of the church on the curb. This guy is just crazy. He doesn’t need to talk to the cops, he just needs to leave. I added two to my force and brought his backpack out to him. We inquired, once more. He took the backpack, looked wirely at us, sat it down and began to open it up. Now, I’m thinking: “He’s going to pull out a gun or knife or something.”
Goji berries. The dude brings out goji berries. He throws a few back, puts the package back in his pack, zips it up, slings it over his back and walks away.
End of story right?
No. Remember the guy’s name is Scared. We didn’t find that out until a couple hours later. The OPD had come by and we chatted about the recent layoff of officers. They went their way, and the dude came back.
He was a little more open to chat this time around. I don’t even know how to describe our conversation other than: disjointed, psycho-spiritual guilt-driving, manipulation to get a place to stay for the night. That’s about how much sense it made too. We spent something like three hours with this guy.
It’s funny. We helped him in a number of ways, but at the end of the night he refused our offer to put him up in one of the shelters for the evening. He refused our doorstep too.
Turns out he was just another lost student of Oaksterdam University. He wondered aimlessly into the night. We’ve had a couple sightings of Scared around town since then. I don’t think we’ve seen the last of him. One day we might actually know his real name.
But, yeah. People. Crazy people. Faith, Scared, the intellectual homeless, there’s plenty more. Fodder for inspiration. Opportunity to be a part of things being set straight in another’s life. To close on a semi serious point: Would it be that we are all wonderfully human in our quirkiness? I’m not real sure why I enjoy these interactions so much, but there’s plenty of them to be had around here. I think I’m really starting to like it here.
It’s Raining Poop
I still believe the past several years have been preparing me for where I’m at right now. While I was in Denton, I became passionate for the arts and earned a degree in painting and drawing. First and foremost though, I began to see validity in the life of Christ. As I sought to know more about Him, I met people who countered the hypocrisy we’re used to hearing about in Christians and learned from them how to live life with integrity.
Who could have ever planned for that? Purposeful and genuine living is attractive. I don’t know if I asked for it so much as I was enveloped in what I knew was right. So, there was a question: “Do you believe in Jesus Christ as the atoning sacrifice for your sin?” Yet I’m finding that a Christian is so much more than merely saying “yes.” A Christian is identified by the resurrection. “Do you believe that Christ, who was crucified, has risen and is now glorious? Do you believe that we are being made into the likeness of His glory?” Well that’s what the Bible promises. Once more, I’m not so sure if following His life is something we merely decide to do as much as what we are enveloped to do as it is right. Whatever it is, it isn’t static.
So here I am in Oakland, Ca. and this is where life has me. Things have been a little rough. Last Sunday was typical except for a few small details. As is normal, we cleaned the church before hand and set up coffee and snacks in our café. Normally we’ll meet and greet people who come in and help out with random needs as they come up. Things were going unusually well. The church looked good, and people were beginning to arrive. The first Sunday of the year was off to a good start. That was, until someone ran into the café to inform me that a toilet was overflowing. No problem.
I was prepared for this. Just a month prior we were serving hamburgers and playing drums out by the buss stop adjacent to our parking lot. One of the homeless people we were hanging out with needed a bathroom so we let him into the building. The dude blew it up. He came back out a few minutes later and politely asked for a plunger. I don’t know why I told him it wasn’t a big deal. I guess I just wanted to make him feel welcome, but if I knew what the bathroom looked like I would have ran for the plunger. To be realistic though, I don’t think he would’ve had much luck cleaning it up. I plunged the crap out that toilet for like an hour.
Following the natural inclination to spiritualize everything, I can’t help but relate this all to sin. I once thought about making a stencil for bathroom stalls. When using a public restroom I would stencil this on the inside of the stall door so that when people sat down they would read “confession.” You know, like a catholic confessional booth… As you sit and talk about what’s really going on in your life you are simultaneously relieved of the great pressure in your bowels. Poop is a lot like sin you know. It’s a disgusting and private matter that everybody does. If you don’t take care of it, you might either severely injure yourself or you’ll embarrass yourself when it comes out at the wrong time and place. Well, sin also has a way of resurfacing when we thought it had drifted away.
So, back to Sunday: Someone runs into the café telling me a toilet is overflowing. “No problem” was my thought. Even so, I was caught completely off guard when I ran out to see water, and bits of toilet paper, and bits of poop all floating out into the hallway. And this is about 10 minutes before service. Great timing huh? First thing I do is turn off the water. No dice. All sorts of nasty was coming up. I started to plunge. That didn’t work either. At some point though, the water stopped flowing and a couple other interns arrived to help with the project. God bless them.
We were able to get enough of the mess out of the way to be slightly composed for the service. Downstairs, where we couldn’t see, was a different story. A lot of the water that had flooded the hallway had actually seeped through the floor and was now dripping downstairs…where we have our kids ministry. Fortunately, our Children’s ministry director took evasive action and relocated everyone without any fatalities.
I didn’t know how bad the situation was until later. One of the elders and I went to the store to get a rug doctor, and we had plans to use it right after the morning services. At that point I would discover what the real problem was. Most people cleared out to go to lunch but I decided to stick around and shoot the breeze with Betty (That’s a whole other story). Once she started to fall asleep midsentence, I thought to assess the toilet situation and begin cleaning. It wasn’t pretty. The toilet was overflowing again and our slightly composed hallway was looking pretty bad.
This is when it clicked. I ran upstairs to see if some of our church residents were using water, and they were. Whatever went down their drain was coming out of our toilet. To compound things for this family, the woman of the house was with child and this was her due date. How unkind to tell them to stop using water. God Bless them.
That was about the time all these people started showing up. Betty rolled on over to talk to me about my Christmas with family and ask if she could use my phone. “Sorry Betty, I’m trying to take care of the raining poop.” Greg came by to let us know he had dedicated His life to Christ and also ask for a sandwich. “Hell yeah Greg!” Guinn also showed up to share some new developments in her life. I didn’t even get into it with her. At some point you just have to laugh a little bit. Who could have ever planned for this?
So here we are, the toilets are exploding and simultaneously we are seeing fruit of the ministry. People are confessing. Sin is in the open, and alas the door for reconciliation hath appeared. It might be raining poop downstairs, yet, there enters a profound sense of joy in it all. I didn’t even know this was possible.
Now the real work begins. The remainder of the day, and all the way up to just a few moments ago, 5:00pm Wednesday afternoon, was filled with cleaning, tearing out soiled carpet and ceiling tiles, repairing plumbing, and putting in new materials. Following the natural inclination to spiritualize everything, I can’t help but relate this to following Christ.
His relationship is dynamic. While “believing on The Lord Jesus Christ” and being “saved” is part of it, actually following Him entails so much more. His work in our lives is much like repairing a church of exploding toilets, which happens from time to time. Following Him is purposeful and genuine living. It is attractive because the people who do it are filled with joy. So how exactly can cleaning poop and fixing exploding toilets fill you with joy? I’m not sure, it’s sort of a strange analogy, but I think it’s funny and also might be worth thinking about next time your on the pot.
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