Contemplating Art

Ponder w/ me - the "Affliction Clothing" line that is N highend retailers & boutiques right now... they make a lot of use of religious themes albeit N a dark way...but are they Christian? Anti-Christian? I haven't found anything offensive, to me. I've seen some designs that R offensive to Catholics. But R they bringing 2 light our mortality & sin affliction N their designs? Is that so bad 2 B reminded of?

Here's one offensive to Catholics.. but I'm not catholic, so I can actually see some good in this shirt... b/c Mary was human and suffered affliction same as the rest of us.

(You can click on the photos to see them better)

Is it a statement towards catholics?

Even this simple design, what does it mean:


Is it saying to NOT live like there is no tomorrow, that our life is fleeting, that we are mortals and need to be concerned with the matters of the cross?

This one seems to represent "death" personified, looking through the book of death (as opposed to the book of life)



What is this one saying? A mortal, holding on to the cross with passion:


Now there are a lot of things that I disagree with in these images, but as ART, what are they trying to say?

This one received a lot of attention recently:


A catholic lady had it pulled from the Nordstom retail chain. It is an adaptation of the famous Millenium painting. This one depicts Mary, again, as a mortal... using the skeleton to symbolize that

Here's another that deals with Catholics again.

This one seems to be promoting prayer, in this case catholic prayer, because of our mortality and sin affliction.

There are a lot of Christian clothiers right now that are less questionable in this vein - Rebel Spirit, Sanctify, and NOTW to name a few. They have high end clothing that has a Christian message in a "cool" and artistic way. But does Affliction really belong in that list?

I'm always on the side of the artist when it comes to any art- whether you are painting with sound or on T-shirts. But I always search through to what the artist is trying to communicate with his work... b/c that is what all artists are doing when they work.... communicating a thought or question in a creative fashion...

So, that being said, do they show case mortality and affliction for the cause of contemplation or do they glorify our sin affliction? Should they be considered as Christian messages, or maybe Anti-Christian messages?

Or maybe, the worst answer of all: maybe they are simply combining things that will sell and there is no artistic significance whatsoever... that thought is always tragic.

(c) 2009 Reformation Productions
www.ReformationProductions.com

Head from the band KORN speaks about his life

Another little tid bit to tide over until we're completely up and running again.
We are moving equipment into the studio this week, installing, etc. Their A/C still needs it's sound proofing and a couple of small things but construction is just about complete. Hopefully, we'll be up and running soon.

Todays Post:
Brian Phillip Welch (born June 19, 1970), better known as Head, is an American musician best known as the former lead guitarist of the band Korn. Welch left the band in 2005 due to contrasting personal beliefs, to focus on life as a father.

blog post: selling out vs. sustainability

This post isn't mine. It's from Brandon McCormick and it's too brilliant not to share. Brandon is an independent film maker and owner of WhiteStone Motion Pictures. You can view his work at www.WhiteStoneMotionPictures.com

As we continue in the reconstruction of our facilities, I hope to be blogging with you again soon.... and in video :)
Enjoy!
-Z

blog post: selling out vs. sustainability

12:37PM by Brandon McCormick  |  Catagories: Blogs and Thoughts

At the halfway point of the year, there have been some new thoughts that have been rolling around in my mind.

This year for Whitestone is the year of sustainability, in the most simple of words, the year we learn to make money.



As an independent filmmaker, just the thought of making art for money is enough to make my skin crawl. This idea has become a taboo path in the indie world, associated with the selling of your soul. However the other picture in my mind does nothing for me either. The struggling artist who can’t take care of himself or a family because he is ‘misunderstood’ by the world and can’t find a way to monetize his art. As one of my creative mentors said to me, this route ends with the artist high in the mountains, alone and with a bullet between his eyes.

I want nothing to do with either picture.



My first step is to create a distinction between what I want to do, and what I don’t want. Here is what I’ve come up with so far.

Selling out is doing something you don’t want to or believe in for money. It’s also another way prostitutes are described.

Sustainability is doing something you love and believe in, but getting someone to pay you to do it.

It’s a subtle difference on paper, but of profound difference in real life.

I can write this post because I’ve done a healthy amount of both. I’ve done countless business videos, conference openers and yes, even weddings, that I did just for the money.

On the other hand, I’ve been able to do a lot of what I love to do, getting visionaries (much smarter than I am) to buy into the bigger picture with me.

The key part is believing and living for a bigger picture.

If what you’re about and what you want to create isn’t for something bigger than yourself, you’ve not much of a chance in getting anyone to buy into you. Your vision cannot rise and fall on only you. You must think beyond yourself, think beyond the status quo and selfish instincts to find a place where what you do matters to the world at large.

Another element of sustainability is timing.

We’re in a sort of digital renaissance. A magical but frightening place where the old business models no longer work. As art continues to become digitized, it magically becomes shareable world wide. The downside is that once something becomes easy to obtain, it’s perceived value drops almost immediately to zero.

This is both good news and bad news to the independent artist.

This means on the one hand, I can push a button, and BLAMO, my work has worldwide distribution.

On the other hand, I’m competing with millions of others pressing the BLAMO button at the same time. The basics of supply and demand say that my work has just become lost in a sea of ‘competition’ eventually driving the price to zero.

Why pay .99 cents for a short film when I can pop over to Vimeo and watch hundreds, if not thousands of excellent short films.

Art has the same basic binding principals in the market as any other commodity. One of those basic principles is in the form of a question

Does it add value to someone’s life?

The question I’ve been asking myself lately is do our films, our ideals and what we stand for, add value to anyones life. If not, how then could I ask them to trade money for what we have to offer, be it films, ideas or inspiration.

So now I’m left with this question. I have many ideas, many of which you’ll see later this year, some may work, others may not. I leave the question out there and unanswered. Until we have cracked the code, we won’t be the ones answering the question with a definitive answer, but we hope to be one of the few asking it in a new way in a new time.

And as Socrates might say, sometimes asking the right question is more important than having the right answer.

semper ad melora

blog post: selling out vs. sustainability

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At War With God

We will be moving to video blogging in the near future, but I wanted to move forward and post previous text blogs to this page now for your enjoyment and edification:


REPOST FROM October 18, 2008

Ok, first - I can't take credit for the idea of this analogy. My father-in-law used part of the following comparison in a conversation with my wife yesterday. Rachel and I then used the following in conversation with our son last night.... and God pressed in and saved his soul. SO I'M SHARING:

Our world is at war. Our lives are at war. God has a set standard... the commandments in the bible. We are in rebellion against His standard. (Go through each of the commandments asking yourself where you stand on each of them. You will find that you come up short every time.)

When we are born into this world, we come with our sin nature and our own agendas. As a human, you are born at war with God. We want to live life our own way. We become lord of our own lives and start to manipulate the world around us to get the things that we want. You can see it in infants: they want food, so they cry until someone gives it to them. They don't want to go to bed, so they cry to get out of bed. They are not concerned with the fact that the mother may be asleep or that there is an intense conversation going on in the next room. No one teaches a child how to lie, children start lying to get what they want, to manipulate the lives of those around them in an effort to control their "world". These efforts are weapons in your regime..you start in their skills at your first cry.... that's when you start your own battle.... your first cry: "Put me back in!". You have your own army with yourself as the general. Every time you go against one of God's standards, you are in rebellion against His kingdom, His authority.

Now, how does a nation win a war? Well, one army has to either surrender or be captured.
As John McCain knows, if you are captured, you are put into jail as a POW and punished, often torchered.
If you surrender, treaty negotiations ensue and rebuilding follows under the new ground rules of the conqueror.

As a "lost person", you are battling God everyday.... you want to stay rebellious and head of your own life. Satan is on your side. He wants you to stay rebellious as well. God is on the offensive, He sends Christians (soldiers of God) in to do His will in our lives. You are shown truth, love, joy, compassion, etc. God is sharing Himself with you as an effort to win the battle you've started and to squash your rebellion. God talks to us in 4 ways, his four branches of the military:
1. Through the bretheren
2. Through the Word
3. Through circumstances
4. Through prayer
If you can see God working in one of these ways, He is communicating with you...

Make no mistake, God will win the war. And He will do it in one of the two ways:

You will be captured and pay the penalty of your rebellion and rejection - - you will be cast into hell as your jail and torchered in the lake of fire's flames.

You will surrender to His authority, you will discuss with Him the terms of your surrender, and He will help you rebuild your life under His authority.

What we tasked our son to do is to figure out what weapons he was using in his army to war against God. What weapons did he think that he was using to battle the Lord. One was the fear of the unknown... it was keeping him away from surrender. The other was self-obsession, he loved attention and saw that he was always seeking attention for himself in everything He did. Every one has a weapon that God must over come. For me it was my self-pride. I didn't think I needed God because... well, I was awesome. One of God's assaults on my rebellion brought that weapon in to clear defeat as I was injured and all of my fame and "awesome-ness" was stripped away from me because I could no longer play the part of the rockstar in my world... God was in control, and I saw it. With Davy, we took each of his weapons and talked them out to where he could see that they were useless in his fight and that God had already defeated his tactics. All that was left was for him to retreat, having faith in his weapons or in future weapons that he might come up with. ... or to surrender.If you surrender, you are acknowledging that He is the supreme power, that He is in control and that you and all your efforts are weak in comparison. That you are a weak, dreadful sinner that have done things to offend Him...and you are sorry for it.

Next, you go into peace talks / treaty negotiation... that's "the prayer". You acknowledge that He is Lord, ruler of your life, and that you accept His terms. His terms? After realizing that you are a sinner at rebellion with God, you have to realize that God had to make a way to restore His relationship with you, with humans. Because humans are born with a sin nature and cannot have a relationship with God on their own, God came down in the form of a human... in Jesus Christ. He paid the penalty for our sins so that we could be restored into proper relationship with God. You see, the penalty for sin, is death. Blood covers sin so that God can commune with us. In the Torah, it was through a precise ritual that included the sacrafice of certain animals... this made a temporary covering (or atonement) of sins so that God could have a relationship with His people. It's all about restoring the relationship that we had (mankind) with God in Eden before the fall of man when sin entered the world (before our rebellious regimes, when we were still at peace under God's authority). When God came to earth as Jesus, He made the ultimate sacrafice... His blood covers our sins permanently.... so we can have an everlasting relationship with God and our relationships with Him, as humans, are restored. You acknowledge this truth, we call it "accepting Christ", in your peace talks... in your prayer and in your testimony to others before baptism.

After that, God starts to rebuild our lives from the inside out. It starts with setting up a new government... a new mindset. Then the rebuilding spreads into the rest of the defeated country.

Ah, good stuff! ... good analogy! Feel free to comment below and discuss...share what your weapons were and how they were proved useless against God.


(c) 2009 Reformation Productions
www.ReformationProductions.com

Daily Walking - Sept 14, 2008

We will be moving to video blogging in the near future, but I wanted to move forward and post previous text blogs to this page now for your enjoyment and edification:


REPOST FROM September 14, 2008

John 7:24 - Judge not according to appearance, but judge righteous judgment.

I have sat firmly on this truth for years. But it can be observed in so many different ways. Only God could give us a book that has one simple sentence, that can be viewed multiple ways and every way be of truth.

1. Do not look at the outside looks of others and judge them holy or evil, because it is what is on the inside that counts.

2. Do not look at the behavior that people show you and judge them holy or evil, because it may not be what is on the inside.....and the inside is what counts. The inner man is what determines his character, who he really is.

3. Do not put on a show for people and for God, because He sees the truth... that which is on the inside

4. Don't hold someone to a law and be "nit-picky", if what they did and why they did it truly shows the character of God. Again, it's the inside, the why they did it.

5. Do not exalt someone based on what they've done, if they did it with a low character, for the wrong reasons, and/or with the wrong heart on the inside.

God cares about what is on the inside...and why you do the things that you do.

Your outside appearance doesn't matter.

If you have a 6 inch mohawk that is purple

If you have Sarah Palin's hair style

If you have multiple piercings

If you more closely resemble the conservative appearance of the President of the United States.

If you wear pants or not.

If you wear a suit to church.

If you have long hair or not.

If you wear make up or not.

If you dress in Ann Taylor or not.

God doesn't care.

Your behavior isn't the point either:

If you give to the poor or if you can't.

If you go to church every week or if you don't.

If you sing southern gospel music or if you thrash your head.

If you preach the gospel

If you write books

If you write music

If you draw

If you are good at a budget

If you, If you, If you

All of this is not the point.

Look at your inside, the true you. That is what matters... that is what God sees. That is what He instructs us to look at.

Let's take this a little more indepth.If you are on the platform at church, leading worship...is that a "good" thing? Well you really don't know... you can't make a judgment based on the action alone.

If you are up there because you can play well, you like the attention it brings, you want to show people what you've got, to feel you are in a position above others, etc. Then ... not so much. Those are self oriented, "wrong" motives from you inner man.

However, if you are up there because you want to help lead others into worshiping the almighty God, because you consider it a blessing for God to be able to use your skills and talents to help the Brethren praise the Father, because you worship Him through playing your instrument, because you are open to others viewing you as a true follow of Christ, or you have been asked to serve and are humbled by the opportunity to follow God's will in your life. This are good motives from your inner man.

Everything is this way... look at everything you do.

You like wearing short skirts.... is that good or bad? Let's look at the why.

Are you wearing it to feel younger than you are, because you are jealous of the younger women, to feel more attractive to men, to distract the pastor so he has difficulty in delivering God's message (because you never really liked the whole Christianity thing any way, you are just there because a friend of yours or your parents made you go), because that's how you were raised - your mother wears them, your sisters wear them, your friends wear them, because what you wear is not as bad as other people you've seen, or because it's the fashionable thing to do? Why are you wearing it? Figure that out and see if it lines up with the character of God... remember, more like Jesus is our goal.

Ok, one more - You are an evangelist. You are pumping the streets everyday tell others about the reality of Hell. Telling them that Christ is the only way to heaven. Is that a "good" thing?Well, where is your heart?

Are you doing it because you are super spiritual and you have to call out sin where ever you seen it? Obviously, you have none because you are an evangelist...even if you did it wouldn't be as bad as theirs.

Are you "helping" God because without you and others like you, He'd never be able to find all of the folks to populate this new place He's building called Heaven?

Are you doing it to try and prove that your way is right and that all other ways are wrong?or

Are you doing it because you love people? Because God loved you enough to save you from your trip to hell, so you want to help others realize God's love for them too.

Are you doing it because you dedicated your life to service God through reaching out to others with His heart as your own?

Why are you doing it?

It's all about the "why".

(c) 2009 Reformation Productions
www.ReformationProductions.com

A Study Of Parables

We will be moving to video blogging in the near future, but I wanted to move forward and post previous text blogs to this page now for your enjoyment and edification:


REPOST FROM August 13, 2008 (editing 4/2009)

Our natural ambitions for career and wealth need to be replaced with zeal and passion for Kingdom work.

Are you trying to regain the things you surrendered when you joined the Kingdom? When you told Him that your will was His will. That you couldn't do it on your own and that you relinquished your own self-implied authority to His.

Give up all that YOU have and are and join God's Kingdom. Surrender to His Lordship.

God will bless us based on our work for Him... not on our work for ourselves. And blessings we gain for ourselves are nothing.

God can do great things through seemingly insignificant or small means (people). Don't force it. It's not you doing it, it's Him doing it. If He's placed you somewhere to effect the Kingdom, allow Him to do it.... don't try to do it on your own out of desires for yourself. Your works are hay and stubble.

(c) 2009 Reformation Productions
www.ReformationProductions.com

Hard-Headed

We will be moving to video blogging in the near future, but I wanted to move forward and post previous text blogs to this page now for your enjoyment and edification:


REPOST FROM July 27, 2008

My mother used to tell me that I was "hard-headed". I used to think that it was just a way that people of the older generation would insult a boy. But now, old enough to be a parent myself, I think I finally understand what that term means.

Being Hard-headed means to embrace a character flaw in yourself. You know that it's a flaw. You know that this character trait doesn't help you or others in any way, and yet you cling to it, claiming it as part of "who you are". It doesn't serve to help you in any way, except to make you feel that it's part of who you are. But let's remember, your character isn't what you do, it's why you do the things that you do.

Examine yourself for a moment... why do you do the things that you do. The things that make your parents, your spouse, your friends, or your children upset... why do you do them? Do these things help you or them in anyway? Or do you cling to them as something that you do or don't do because it's just "the way your are". Is it a character flaw? Do you resist changing or altering things because it will be "out of character" for you, even though it would be the right thing to do?... Are you being hard-headed?

(c) 2009 Reformation Productions
www.ReformationProductions.com