The Discipline of Beauty

During the frantic endeavor of trying to make a perfect composition for the outdoor sculpture, I slowly became troubled. The more and more I worked, it seemed, the worse and worse my ideas became. I had a general idea of what I wanted to do, but even it wasn't as fulfilling or exciting as I had been hoping. For several weeks I have been learning new skills, which is great obviously, but I think I made the mistake of relying on skill acquisition to be in itself my perception of good creation. Essentially, I became so worried about how to weld, cut, grind, balance, and every other non-intuitive thing you can do to metal that I forgot how to make things look beautiful. And not just having a pretty weld.

I realized this when, through a friend, I came across the work of Andrew Hayes.

Bold, beautiful lines of steel combine with the lilting pages to create simple, yet totally profound, visual statements. The steel is the flimsy pages' antithesis, warping itself around the other. There is nuance and subtlety, yet almost a violent contortion of the book that becomes essentially another medium. All without anyone paying attention to the impeccable forging and welding it took for the viewer to even see these things clearly.

EH-HEM.. Pardon the drool..

It was my response to this work that was most intriguing. To be honest, this work isn't even earth-shatteringly contemplative, it's just darn pretty. I feel like I recognized beauty in a sculpture for the first time in a long time without thinking about how it was made. This drove me to look at other work, not for it's techniques, but for it's aesthetics.

So I went and found 30 artists to observe. I needed more examples of beauty; to fill up my visual tank, if you will. It was very similar to reading the Word. Sometimes you get excited about God, so you read the Bible, and sometimes you know you aren't relating with God in the way He intended, so you read. I would never call art God, but this process showed me the value of spiritual discipline. I couldn't pour out without being poured into. I thank God He's used work to sanctify me in that way.