I was sitting at the GRAM around this time last year looking at a Frank Stella trying my darnedess to figure it out. I was just finishing a class that surveyed the history of art and the Grand Rapids Art Museum just so happened to have an exibit that featured Stella, who I had taken an interest in. My sister Erin and I stood facing these huge works of art that were suppose to tell the story of Moby Dick. Both Erin and I reached into our limited art vocabulary to describe what it was the painting was doing to us, helping us see. It might have been that we had not read Moby Dick or it might have been the sheer abstract-ness of Stella’s work, but we left with our minds limping. Once our headaches were cured by a few sips of MadCap coffee and two brief conversations with some professors from GRTS and then some student who were apart of Mars Hill-who were filming a ‘man in the street’ video concerning politics, we plugged around town.
Stella makes his own paper and his work is always characterized by color and texture. They invite you to imagine yourself as a moving character in the art piece, surfing the tides of color and sea creature like shapes. The art does something to you, perhaps this is Frank’s goal. It is as if he is saying your never going to figure this out so you might as well just join in, enjoy-ride the waves. There is some kind of parallel that the abstract has with the life of faith. It is a nuanced world filled with texture and color that you just can’t quite figure out. But it does things to you, it invites you. Also, the abstract has relational qualities to it. That girl, that boy, that spouse, parent-you just can figure them out can you? And they do something to you, they invite and confuse, leaving you limping.
My friend Jeff Manion invited me to be apart of a teaching group that met together once a month for a while. Jeff said that abstractions need an interpreter, someone to come alongside and begin a conversation. Advocates and counselors do this as we give our lives over to interpretation. The greek word Jesus uses for the the spirit of God has this ‘alongside idea’ embedded in it. God comes alongside and interprets the abstract. Because it is all very confusing, shaping even wonder evoking. But our minds and hearts walk way limping clouded by implications while trying to surrender to beauty.
