On Pilgrimage

Nowadays, it is rare to hear the word “pilgrimage.” Even more rare is when someone should invite you to participate in a pilgrimage. Somehow, though, when this very thing happened to me a few months ago, it didn’t come as a surprise to me. My time with Gioventù Studentesca hasn’t been long, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned it isn’t, it’s predictable.

It wasn’t until well after the pilgrimage that I realized what a senseless thing to do it would seem to someone not led by my motivations. To walk ten miles from one church to another, across an unfriendly landscape, carrying a statue on a litter on my shoulders, no less. Many would call this absurd.

This realization has caused me to question myself: Why should I want to go on a pilgrimage? Perhaps suffer discomfort and inconvenience? And most importantly, does this pilgrimage change anything in any substantial and meaningful way? I certainly was far from a fully realized person before this pilgrimage, so if it didn’t get me closer, was it worth it?

One reason to go on a pilgrimage is one that made itself present to me more than I expected, indeed, more than had ever even crossed my mind. We go on pilgrimage to bear witness to others. How strange it must be to see ordinary people walking along a trail where no one was meant to walk (seriously, I don’t remember crossing someone else’s path a single time). There was something definitely joyful about jarring people who seemed to have no business being jarred during their daily routine. But miraculously, people looked at us, people smiled, they honked their horns in approval. Some even asked "what on earth are you doing, and what’s that you’re carrying?" I almost wouldn’t know how to answer them, I’m just now figuring it out myself.

I, like many, have a very distracting life. And as most young people are, I’m exceedingly preoccupied with my future. I’m always trying to avoid the bad outcomes of life, and working to make the best one possible happen. But this whirlwind can make it hard to think about anything else. Now, I don’t think you should give up on your life plans, just consider why you have them.

While going on a ten-mile pilgrimage may seem like a pointless trip to nowhere, I think it was just what was needed. All my plans for what I want to be in the future mean nothing if I can’t find worth in what I am now. I was able to slow down and just walk, not for the sake of getting somewhere, but for the sake of being someone. And not just being someone, but encountering someone. I believe that God loves to meet us during events that are paradoxically both everyday, and bizarre. It’s His way of saying "Look! This could happen all the time, if you let it."

This pilgrimage opened up a new way of looking at the relationship between God and reality precisely because it took me somewhere I didn’t know I wanted to go. I saw with fresh eyes the nature of grace in the same way that a long absence from a familiar place brings back memories you forgot you had. It was a way of bringing my life back to the origin, finding a meaning to my plans that I couldn’t find while looking at them from the inside. Sometimes you just need that one crazy person to bring you outside of yourself. It’s better out there.

This article was originally written in response to the August 15th, 2014 Youngstown Marian Pilgrimage. All editing and formatting liberties are taken to reproduce this article.

Musicians in the Orchestra

This oil painting by Edgar Degas was made in 1872, and gives us a worm’s eye view of a stage on which ballerinas dance, and places us directly behind three musicians in the orchestra pit.

The musicians that have their backs to us play, from left to right,  a violin, a cello, and an oboe, respectively. Along with their instruments, their differing hair colors (brown, black, and white) give these men character: they aren’t just standard extras in the performance, they are humans contributing their passion to it.

Beyond layers of sheet music and violin bow tips, we see the edge of the stage. A line of flowery-dressed dancers trails off into the background, while one stands apart from them, gazing forward open-armed. Though she smiles toward the audience, the position that we are in makes it seem that she is looking towards the pit, and by extension, at us.

The backdrop that the ballerinas are set against is abstract and impenetrable. Wide brush strokes of silver, blue, and green only just define a tree and sky. The crude and scattered markings become smoother around the figures of the ballerinas. It is obvious that Degas wants us to be paying attention to the musicians in the foreground—the little people whom he has made big.

The image is split down the middle horizontally by the stage, defining two separate worlds. The ballerinas are adored by the audience, floating beatifically across the stage, while the musicians below them often go unnoticed. The top of the image is also somewhat divided, but vertically, subtly pointing out the greater admiration given to the leading role than to the background characters. Upon close inspection, one can see contempt on each one of the secondary ballerinas faces. It’s hard to believe that this is an accident, given the expression of the lead dancer.

It’s likely that Degas was inspired to paint this image after witnessing a performance similar to it, and realizing the important roles the musicians and minor dancers play. In creating Musicians in the Orchestra, he lets us into his mind; we enter into a realization of the profound within the forgotten details.

This paper was written for my Visual Art and the Catholic Imagination college course. All necessary editing and formatting liberties were taken to present this text.

The Stoning of Saint Stephen

This oil painting from 1625 is the first work of the Dutch Golden Age master, Rembrandt van Rijn. It tells the biblical story of the martyrdom of St. Stephen, who was stoned until dead by the Jewish citizens for his Christian faith.

The image strongly uses light and dark, or chiaroscuro, in its layout. We see a rear view of a man on the back of a horse, as well as one of Stephen’s executioners, both in relative darkness. In contrast, Stephen, surrounded by a group of men holding stones, is in direct, almost heavenly light. You can even make out the very line that separates the light from the darkness, as if it were a spotlight on the action.

Strangely, Stephen wears a bright red robe with tassels and intricate design, while the men around him wear simple white or dull colored tunics. Though this may be historically unlikely, it certainly draws the eye towards the Saint, who is the focal point of the painting. The man on the horse is also in scarlet, though, and wears a feathered turban. Behind him and to the left, even deeper into the darkness, is a similarly dressed man, and in the background, on a hill, stand a huddle of officials watching the stoning, and talking among themselves. All of their clothing seems to be inspired by Southern European Renaissance garb.

Even farther into the background stands an aged castle, beautifully designed and overgrown with foliage. It stands against a foreboding grey sky, one that looks like it may at any time open up to witness the tragic and transcendent event below.

We find Stephen himself on his knees, one hand stretched up towards the heavens, the other opening up towards the ground. The line of motion of his arms gives his figure a sense of urgency and dynamism. In his face we see fear, but also acceptance of his fate. His eyes squint in anticipation, his lips purse.

Directly above him, a bearded man stands ready to crush his head with a stone. His arms are raised above his head dramatically, forming that familiar triangle shape. The other men’s faces generally display either hatred or agony, but this man is collected, exhibiting only a stern pity. Next to him, we see a man who has just released his stone. Catching Stephen in the small of the back, the stone is shown in midair just beyond the edge of his side.

This painting uses prominent contrast of light and color to illustrate religious persecution, and the humanity of the players, which often gets muddled up in the process. Though our sympathy lies with Stephen, the design of his murderers leads us to think about their emotions and motivations, as if made clear by the same divine light that illuminates their bodies.

This paper was written for my Visual Art and the Catholic Imagination college course. All necessary editing and formatting liberties were taken to present this text.

Resurrection of Jesus

This 1424 image is by Master Francke, a German Gothic painter. It shows Christ emerging from His stone tomb, surrounded by drowsy guardsmen.

The style of the painting is idealistic, but with a sense of caricature, especially of the guards around the tomb. Heads are made large for their bodies, and the faces are grotesque and distorted.

In the center of the painting, we see a tomb that looks more like a standard coffin than the traditional cave-like structure we’re familiar with. Christ has His back to the viewers, one leg over the edge of the tomb. He’s draped in a triumphant red cloak, and holds a scepter bearing a red banner and capped with a gold cross. His halo is nothing but a thin circle around His head; it uses the golden morning light in the background as its coloring. Though we can only see the top half of Christ’s face, His eye and eyebrow convey a sense of strength and determination.

Against the horizon stand brown rocky cliffs and evergreen trees. They are simply crafted, and are designed to lead the eye back to the main action.

In the foreground we see about ten of the grotesque guards, all dressed in bright and diverse clothing, and completely surrounding the tomb. Many of them carry spears or swords. While some of their faces are hidden in their sleep, others seem just about to open their eyes and catch sight of the escaping figure of Christ.

The image lacks realistic perspective, and seems to crawl up rather than back into space. The general composition of the image presses flat against the viewing plane, and uses the triangular shape of the guards, the tomb, and Christ Himself to point directly to Christ’s face.

What is the artist trying to show us with this image? Jesus isn’t here to just stare back at us: He has places to go. Whether it’s over the hills we see in the background, or past the edge of the painting, He is headed out to complete His mission. His stare also seems to fall on the sleeping and inattentive men around Him, too distracted to notice the glorious event they might have been a part of. Whatever we do, we certainly should not be like the passive soldiers in this painting. I think they are representative of, not those who are purely evil, but those who simply take no notice of the Christian life, like in the parable when the seed falls upon the path.

This painting can be seen as a call to action: to get behind Christ and follow Him into eternity. We’ve witnessed His triumph over death, and now we can walk away from those who are spiritually asleep, and wake up to new life.

This paper was written for my Visual Art and the Catholic Imagination college course. All necessary editing and formatting liberties were taken to present this text.

The Carrying of the Cross

The Carrying of the Cross by Jacquemart de Hesdin, a French Renaissance painter, depicts Christ on His way to Calvary amid a large group of people. I would call the style idealistic, with a focus on the characters depicted and their role in the overall narrative that connects the separate parts of the painting.

The use of color in the painting involves bold contrast. The entire image seems to burn with a golden glow, with large patches of red and deep blue scattered across it. Christ and Mary are linked together with striking blue robes, as she follows Him, weeping. Christ is turned to face a cluster of women, who reach out to Him mournfully. We think of Jesus meeting the women of Jerusalem, as well as meeting his mother, a juxtaposition of the fourth and eighth stations of the cross.

The cross that Christ carries is T-shaped, and hanging impossibly far back behind and over His shoulder. A man with some semblance of a halo around his head, similar to one around Mary’s, reaches out in wonder as if to support the end of the cross. Perhaps this is meant to be Simon of Cyrene, or perhaps Simon is the older man whose face is sharply inserted between Christ’s and Mary’s.

The painting has a busy background, though it gives the impression of moving straight up rather than back into the distance. Soldiers, clerics, and warriors armed with shields and spears crowd behind Christ. One of the thieves who is to be crucified alongside of Christ carries an identical cross behind Him. The shapes of the two crosses intersect, and provide a strong geometric framework that bisects the painting. Just behind him, you can just see the second thief.

Behind this sprawl of people, a rocky cliff crawls up on the right, and a castle is placed opposite it on the left. Between the two is a brilliant night blue sky with a morbid scene against it. We see Judas hanging himself from a tree, one hand grasping the noose symbolically. A ladder leans against the tree beneath him, as what looks like a winged demon flies around his head. A small figure, half hidden by the horizon, looks up at Judas in horror. This whole scene is greatly out of scale: while logically, it must be farther away than the castle, it’s painted big enough to be much closer.

Christ Himself doesn’t seem to be the main figure in this image, or at least not the only one. He almost seems to be lost among the action that’s going on. When you consider this along with the relative size of Judas, it’s clear that the artist wants much of the attention to be on the recent suicide in the background. The story is clear: the man above is responsible for the events below, and the event below is in turn responsible for the choice Judas finally made. The man now dead will soon be joined by the man he betrayed, but will most likely have a less glorious epilogue.

This paper was written for my Visual Art and the Catholic Imagination college course. All necessary editing and formatting liberties were taken to present this text.

What I Know and Don't Know About Art

Because I’ve grown up in an artistic family, I feel like I have had more positive experiences with art than usual. For as long as I can remember, I’ve not only been surrounded by books about and prints of fine art, but been encouraged to create my own art as well. As far as visual art goes, I mostly have experience drawing in pencil and marker.

Creating art has always been my primary mode of self-expression in my everyday life, even if most of my art is kept to myself. I think art can be used to show an audience otherwise inexpressible things about oneself, and also about what the artist believes about the world and what lies beyond it. While art can be meaningful when kept between the artist and God, the primary direction of art should from the artist to humanity.

I think there is an inherent mystique about art that makes it hard to ever know everything about it, whether in general as a concept, or in reference to any specific work. This tension can be frustrating, but also very liberating. It opens up a new way of looking at things for both artists and those who merely observe.


Because of the mysterious nature of art, and the fact that it is a term spread across such a disparate group of mediums, it is hard to come up with a satisfying definition of art. Anything you try to come up with seems to exclude one thing or another that could be considered art.

The best definition I can think of is “a work of human production that in some way can bring us closer to Goodness, Truth, and Beauty.” Now a huge amount of things can fall into this category. Not all of them might be considered ‘good art.’ One thing I don’t know about art is any particular way of deciding whether it is good, or whether such a thing even can be done. Perhaps if it falls under my definition at all, it automatically has some worth. But surely some art is better than others?

The theme of paradox that is prevalent in this course seems to fit well with my experience with art. I know that art is often found in unexpected and unexplainable places, and can change your life in seemingly impossible ways. There is something beautiful about the fact that a thing that may seem so small and unimportant (as many people may see art, especially amateur art) can be the seed of the greatest existential conversions.

Art is often described as something which is used to produce an emotion, whether positive or negative. While this is indeed a function of art, it is important to allow the artwork to carry that emotion to its natural conclusion, which should be some sort of greater realization of the previously mentioned Transcendentals. Finding out exactly how this next step, the resolution to an experience, will play out is one of the most exciting parts of art for me.

This paper was written for my Visual Art and the Catholic Imagination college course. All necessary editing and formatting liberties were taken to present this text.

Metropolis (1927) and A.I. (2001) - A Comparison

Fritz Lang’s masterpiece classic Metropolis (1927), and Steven Spielberg’s modern fable A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) are joined together by the common theme of cyborgs infiltrating the ranks of humans. While A.I. experiments with the idea of cyborgs living among us as humans, and the consequences of their longevity, Metropolis shows the perverse effects of a single troublesome robot.

A. I. plays on your emotions, gaining sympathy for it’s protagonist cyborg, David (Haley Joel Osment), a beautiful boy child, who is sweet and innocent and wants nothing but genuine love from his “mother.” As the movie progresses, we feel his desire, and the performance of the character drives the movie. This is in contrast with Maria (Brigette Helm), of Metropolis, who is a demonic trickster, a manipulative seductress designed to subjugate, and who eventually leads to the utter chaos which colors the film’s climax.

David represents technology with a face, it makes us ask ourselves if we could ever create something which surpasses us in dignity. We are presented with the notion of a robot who can love, which leads to ever more complex questions: “What’s the definition of love? Is love symmetrical? Is it always based on reciprocal emotions? Is family love, by parents and siblings, a biological given or culturally conditioned?” (Levy, 2005).

Both films involve the idea robots as sex workers, Gigolo Joe (Jude Law) being a prominent character in A.I., and Maria engaging in a hypnotic erotic display: “He literally rebuilds Maria and reintroduces her to the masses as an exotic dancer in a seedy nightclub. Here the robot Maria dances half-naked in such a seductive fashion that a riot breaks out and during the chaos the local waterworks is all but destroyed and the lower levels of the city become flooded” (Cornea, 2007, p. 18). This might suggest that technology cannot love, but only be the instigator of lust, that if one tries to treat robots as humans, it will always lead to perversion, sexual or otherwise. On the other hand, in the case of David, it may demonstrate a widespread misunderstanding of the robotic being: that they will love if they are shown love, that they simply need to be viewed with a transformed eye.

The social struggle between humans and cyborgs is brought to the foreground when David is captured and forced to participate in the Flesh Fair: “The Flesh Fair represents orga angst against mecha. Many orga see the mecha as a threat to the future of humankind. To quash their fears, captured mecha, most of whom have pain receptors like David, are subjected to terrible ends” (Kowalski, 2008, p. 258). This kind of sadistic purging ritual is exactly what happens in to Maria: “In the last chapter of this picture, after the artificial Mary has turned traitor to Rotwang and Masterman, the "woman" is discovered and burned. During this scene the manufactured Mary suddenly changes into the form of the metal creature” (Hall, 1927). While some level of malice seems to be necessary to destroy such life-like machines, one must admit that such a display is only criminal if the robots are, indeed, alive. Should these robots, which seem exactly like people, be treated like people? This is the question that infects A.I., and the film never gives a clear answer. Metropolis, on the other hand, has a clear answer: Maria is evil, the science that brought her about is perverse, and nothing but ruin will come of her. She represents a complete corruption of the human form, down to the fact that she is identical and opposite to the virtuous leading lady.

While Metropolis tells stories of cyborgs with a warning, A.I. is much less sure of itself, and far more open to contrasting interpretations. The robot Maria represents the moral decay that infects the city of Metropolis: “When the film ends with the apocalyptic destruction of the city and the start of a new future, we have been warned of what modernity could become” (Prakash, 2010, p. 4) David, on the other hand, who is almost definitely the most virtuous character of the film, represents the kernel of goodness inside humanity, in fact, he is only ever violent against a robotic double of himself. His inability to be corrupt may represent his worthiness—or it may just be a hint that he has far less in common with humanity than he thinks.


REFERENCES

Kowalski, D. A. (2008). Discussing Five Spielberg Films. In Steven Spielberg and philosophy (p. 258). Lexington, KY. The University Press of Kentucky.

Cornea, C. (2007). Introduction: The Formation of the Genre. In Science fiction cinema between fantasy and reality (p. 18). New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press.

Levy, E. (2005). A.I. Artificial Intelligence: Spielberg’s Grimmest, Darkest Sci-Fi. Emanuel Levy. Retrieved from link.

Prakash, G. (2010). Introduction. In Noir Urbanisms (p. 4). Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press


Hall, B. (1927). Metropolis. The New York Times. Retrieved from link.


This paper was written for my Science Fiction Cinema college course. All necessary editing and formatting liberties were taken to present this text.

"Made Up" - Miscellaneous Concept Art

Here are the last bits of Made Up concept art. The futurist city one merely showcases my poor ability to draw mechanical-architecturey things, but I'm actually really pleased with how the first one turned out. Click for full size, it's worth it.

Tell me what you think below! All your support is appreciated! View on Tumblr here and here.