Art for Credit - Part 2

Art for Credit - The Ethics of Life and Death

Here's what Dr. Erin Dufault-Hunter's syllabus told me about how to do art for and get credit for it for her bioethics class last quarter:

Plan B in lieu of book review: An assignment we work out together
I understand that while linear argumentation is useful—and highly valued—in academia, some of you communicate and engage issues in non-traditional ways. These might include using the arts (e.g. drama, screenplays, poetry, fine arts) to reflect on these difficult issues. You must initially submit a proposal for approval by me, including reasons why you wish to respond in this medium rather than a research paper, how much experience you have had with this medium, and the project as you envision it including size (e.g., no. of pages or measurements of the canvas, etc.).

Evaluation of Plan B:
Such creative endeavors are extremely difficult to grade. Your grade will depend on two factors: the number of hours spent on the project and the quality of your reflection on the project (three full pages, double-spaced). Your reflection on your piece/project should indicate thoughtfulness and critical reflection on the topic in addition to being technically and stylistically sound. So, if you wish to exercise this option, you must contract with me according to the hours of work on the project to be eligible for grades as follows:
• 40+: A
• 35 – 39: A-
• 30 – 34: B+
• 25 – 29: B
• 24 – 28: B-
• 23 – 27: C+
• 22 – 26: C
• 21 – 25: C-
• 21 hours or less: not acceptable.

You must attach three documents to your alternative project: 1) Your typed-out, approved idea for an alternative project (signed by me); 2) a signed statement as to the number of hours you spent on the project; 3) a three-page reflection paper.

As you can see, her scheme forces the artist/creator to commit to a certain amount of time on the project and makes that the main criterion of evaluation. I found this difficult because of the way the image I painted came to me all at once (this is not usually how I work), so I didn't have to spend as much time hashing out what I would be drawing. That said, I appreciated the way this focused more attention to holding the student accountable to investing fully in the learning process rather than doing an art project as an easy short cut. It was also nice to know that the grading was going to be more objective. You do the time, you get the grade. With my first project for Dr. Goldingay, it felt like more of a gamble since the grade seemed contingent upon how the work hit him.

It was a joy to spend finals week last quarter laboring over a painting rather than struggling to fit 3 weeks of research into 1 week of frantic thinking and writing.

I used google image search and photo shop to cobble together something of a sketch to work from. The hands are central to the image I was going for but are always so tricky to draw well. I don't really feel like I got down the watercolor technique I was going for until the final pair of aged hands on top, pictured here.


This piece went up in the Catalyst (student center) for Arts Fest and had an abridged version of my explanatory essay of the painting that accompanied it as an artist's statement.

The central image of the child encased in needles is actually a piece I did during my wife's first pregnancy. Incorporating it into the center of this piece was central to the message I was trying to convey about the way the community of God transforms our experience of fear, uncertainty and danger, not by denying those things but by placing them within a larger story of a caring God whose hands are everywhere his people are.

"Welcome" mixed media, water color, 32"x 40" Matt Lumpkin

Art for Credit - Part 1

Last quarter I had a couple of opportunities to propose and submit art projects in lieu of traditional written assignments for my Seminary class-work. This might seem strange for a graduate school. I suspect it owes a lot to the pedagogical open-mindedness of Drs. Erin Dufault-Hunter and John Goldingay who left room in their syllabuses for such things. It also owes a lot to something called the Brehm Center for Worship Theology and the Arts which is an institute on our campus, working to remind that God created us and thus we aught to see our own tendency and need to create as a part of our participation in His image.





Art for Credit: Writings

I first attempted this for Dr. Goldingay in his Old Testament Writings course. I learned a great deal about the way that scripture, particularly the Psalms teach us to pray with honesty out of our experience. This connected directly to several experiences I had working as a chaplain in the hospital.





Here is what Dr. John's syllabus says about how one might do such a thing:

"(3) You can do something “creative” (e.g., poetry, art, music) for the second paper. Here are the rules for that.

1. Check out with me what you propose to do.
2. Remember that what I have to judge is how/what you have learned from the scriptures we studied. Your project should be a means of discovering something about the scriptures and expressing it that you could not have done by means of a regular paper. You can turn in any form of art that enables me to see that.
3. Sermons, teaching outlines, and the like do not count as “something creative” in this connection, because they are more designed to communicate than to discover or express, and it is thus hard to tell from them whether they reflect sufficient graduate-level engagement.
4. Most forms of art need to be accompanied by two pages of interpretation. Poetry might be an exception.
5. An artistically profound piece has a head start because its artistic nature should reveal part of the answer to that question. A more amateur piece may need more reflection in the accompanying pages of interpretation."

There are a few more items but this is the core of the concept. So I set out to make a connection between what I was learning in scripture about prayer by means of painting a picture of an experience I had once of a profoundly honest and transformative prayer I witnessed in the hospital.

If you are someone who is involved in teaching people things, especially religious and spiritual things, I hope you will consider adding something like Dr. John's clause quoted above into your syllabus or lesson plans. It was uniquely challenging and a different way of seeing where my life and the Bible come together.

If you're concerned about whether there's enough evidence that learning took place, for "credit" then you can take a look at my explanation. Here.

"Family Room" Watercolor, ink. Matt Lumpkin 2009

Peter Storey on Prophetic Preaching

Peter Storey was back in full force the day after the Preaching Summit, lecturing (preaching?) for Clay Schmit and Marguerite Schuster's Homiletics classes in the preaching lab.  To say it was inspiring and challenging is an understatement.  Storey's age, experiences and commitment to speaking the truth as he sees it make him an important voice that the church in America would do well to heed.

Stand Out Quotes:

"If you're going to worry about losing members you'll never be a preacher."

"Aparteid would have ended 10 years earlier were it not for cowards in the pulpit."

When he began confronting apartheid in the pulpit, and the subsequent loss of many church members,

"For the cost of 200 members we became the church of God.  We became a real church."

"God's future is very disturbing to people who are comfortable now."

"People ask why the church [in America] has lost its voice.  It's simple.  It is too rich...  Prophets are never born out of comfortable churches."

"The problem is our location.  If we locate ourselve with the rich and powerful rather than with Jesus we will experience a tension between [our allegiance to the kingdom of God and the kingdoms of this world]."

Culture Making and Preaching with Andy Crouch at Fuller

Fuller's Brehm Center hosted an evening "Preaching Summit" last night. It was interesting getting such a generationally diverse response to Crouch's observations of cultural change, though more often than not, the panel seemed resistant to acknowledge the truthfulness of his assessments. Still the group was a wealth of experience and wisdom for young people preparing to preach the gospel today.

Peter Storey was by far my favorite voice on the panel. I managed to catch him again this morning during a session on Prophetic Preaching for Clay Schmit's homiletics class. I'll try to have more from that session later.

Standout Quotes from the evening:

Renita Weems:
"Great preachers expose what was previously hidden."
"People change because of relationships, not eloquence."

Ken Fong:
Speaking of his experience volunteering in a drug clinic,
"I wish I had gotten out of the church earlier... to be with people stripped of pretense."
"People change when they face crisis. So we've been letting the gospel put them in crisis."

Peter Storey:
Speaking to the American church as a South African,
"Until you unwrap your gospel from the red white and blue you have nothing to say."
In response to Crouch's noting of the shift from Walter Cronkite to John Stuart as America's source for news,
"I have to say, I regard John Stuart as a prophet."
"What's in the sermon must be in the preacher first... Guard your devotional life... Who am I unless I have come from the presence [of God]?"

Faces

"Obama Vows to Fight Somali Pirates"

Useful Gmail Labs Tweak

I have been using the "Multiple Inboxes" feature since it rolled in gmail labs out a month or so ago to keep track (using stars) of the emails I had read but still needed to deal with or address in some way. It was awkward though because the second inbox was displayed to the right of the regular inbox, squishing it and making subject lines hard to read on my smallish laptop screen.

Now you can display it above or below your normal inbox. It's a great way to keep important emails from getting buried. And once you're done with them, un-star them and they disappear on next reload.

Good Friday

Thanks to Glen Molina at Altadena Baptist Church for a well planned, reflective good friday service. It made good use of the many images of the crucifixion in art. It was wonderful to be able to respond visually to the spectacle of the death of God.

Mike and Abbey

I like to draw in church...

Tasty Quotes from the First Week of the New Quarter

"God sets men at different angles to the truth, so that one may see what others cannot, and, thereby, more of her virginal beauty and perenial loveliness be revealed.... Pluck the fruits of controversy from the New Testament tree, and you have not only stripped it of its most precious growths, but left teh branches so bare that they cease to be a sheltering home for the wearied nations of the earth."

- John Clifford, 19th century English, Baptist preacher and theologian, quoted by
Sydnor Lorenzo Stealey, A Baptist treasury, (New York: Crowell, 1958)
cited in
Bill Leonard, Baptist ways : a history (Valley Forge PA: Judson Press, 2003).



More drawings and art stuff are on the way soon...