Collaborative Sculpture
Collaborative Sculpture: Expanding Our Students' Writing Toward Beauty and Truth presented by Helen Walker, Messiah College
Students need to be hooked on language's capability to expand into beauty and even truth. Participants will be led through an inner journey toward beauty by working with an artistic medium--clay. We will discover how the physicality of the process can resonate within the body and leave its experiential impression there. We'll explore writing assignments that flow from this experience.
posted by brd @ 3:18 PM
11 comments
11 Comments:
This session was fun and helpful. My daughter, who studied under Helen, attests to the fact that her insightful use of creative pedagogy makes for instruction that allows students to truly improve as writers.
Our group was a wonderful mix of personalities, making for a great time of learning.
This is Helen here. My sense is that art is what will transform the world. I am not sure what that means, of course! This workshop was for the purpose of priming our minds for stepping out in the direction of an "artful process."
It makes sense that as we consider and care about what is beautiful and how to make everything about our lives more beautiful (this is Beauty with a capital B here), then we are moving in the transforming direction. With directional living, the next step on the path shows itself after taking the step before it. Yes?
I have been thinking lately about whether the artist is responsible to crusade in terms of justice as well as beauty. This thinking has been fueled by reading works by Richard Wright (crusader) in contrast with works by Eudora Welty (not-crusader).
Can art and beauty transform the world without addressing issues of justice as well? That is a hard question for me.
I have been reading Richard Wright lately. He says in an essay on writing:
“Here are those vital beginnings of a recognition of value in life as it is lived, a recognition that marks the emergence of a new culture in the shell of the old. And at the moment this process starts, at the moment when a people begin to realize a meaning in their suffering, the civilization that engenders that suffering is doomed.”
Wright is talking about a transformation of culture and one that is brought about through the catalyst of writing and the arts.
I get frustrated that living for Beauty with a capital B does not always create visible transformations. I just got back from vacation and my friend who is not terribly philosophical and who is very practical said that these transformations I am yearning for only happen one instance at a time, one person at a time. If that is true, and if beauty can transform a person, then I suppose beauty can create a more just society. However, that is an almost imperceptably slow process.
I think that Wright hopes for something more revolutionary. I guess I do too.
Selah!
In terms of slowness, Betsy, I am thinking how very interconnected we are.
For example the idea of the 6 degrees of separation (for everyone in the
world--only 6 levels to being connected to everyone on the planet. The
people you know, connected to the people they know, etc. That is an
incredible play, by the way. Movie not so good.) So if you are transformed
by Beauty, then you are influencing others and so on. I am saying this,
but I don't believe it with my whole spirit. I too am inpatient and need to
see the visible proof! But I believe it a little. And then there is the
thing that if one person is changed, then that is everything! I really love
that. It is not about numbers. I do love that. Don't you? And then
the ripples too...
Helen
I believe in the transformation of spirit through beauty too. . . At least a little. When I read what you said in your email my mind when to the scene from the Wizard of Oz with the Cowardly Lion saying, "I do believe in spooks. I do believe in spooks. I do, I do, I do, I do, I *do* believe in spooks."
Are we convincing ourselves that it is so, or are we so afraid and convinced that it really is so that we have to say it over and over again just to keep our minds focused on it. I'm not sure.
Then I keep remembering that I believe in God, not because I can prove it, but because it is a presuppositional "truth" that I cling to because it allows me to begin in the process of the search for meaning.
Beauty may be presuppositional also. I presuppose that beauty and good influence the world and it's occupants. I don't believe because I really want it to be so, but I believe because I've considered "Life" without that presupposition in place and it makes no sense whatsoever.
By the way, I'll see if I can find the Dillard book. I have lots of the Annie Dillard ones, but none of C.B.
This is fun, isn't it?
I have been reading stuff lately (does this happen to you? Ideas converge
from all different directions, once you have your eyes turned toward a certain interesting thing you want to consider more?) about how we are NOT our mind. We (our being? spirit? what is most the essence of us) is beyond our mind. That our mind is one of our tools. But because many people think they ARE their minds, they are blinded to the real essence (started by the guy (Kant?) who said, "I think; therefore, I am." Which of course goes along with this Age of Reason which says logic and intellect is more important that body, soul, etc.
I guess I believe most deeply what I personally experience (and thus "know"
is true, for me). And that the spiritual truth is the real stuff. That
the purpose of life is (for me, and maybe everyone, when we get on that
path) is spiritual wisdom. And our life task is to choose that purpose, and to get all the stuff out of the way which clouds our pursuit of this.
Things like fear and our personal wants and desires and expectations and
aversions ("I can't stand so and so") and doubt and anger. They all keep
things from being clear. They keep things from being clear for ME, I
know. And there is a sense that I do have a way to work toward getting
rid of these things... That going toward spiritual wisdom is what the
human being is capable of if we choose it.
What do you think?
--Helen
Descartes, I think. I will have to spend more time responding to your very interesting thoughts.
To Maria's Web site references. It took me a while to visit these sites, but both are fascinating in different ways. I loved the WMD alternative. This is the very kind of action that has a great amount of artistic/social action type power, I think.
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