“He has made everything beautiful in its time:” Ecclesiastes 3:11 NIV
As a child, our walls were bare, except for the 1970’s octagon shadow box filled with seeds, grass, and dried flowers my mom received as a wedding gift. She eventually purchased a picture or two from a popular MLM company. With oak veneer frames, the pictures featured children with washed out peach palates and country blue clothes. In Maslov’s hierarchy of needs, my mom expended her energy on getting dinner on the table and paying the bills by working overtime in a diecast factory, setting aside any idea of creating beauty.
As I entered my teens, my artistic style budded by plastering magazine pictures of Duran Duran, Tom Wopat (yes, I was one of the few who chose Luke over Bo), and Andrew McCarthy across my walls with scotch tape. In college, the fangirl pictures came down, and I hung Anne Geddes prints and inspirational sayings on my dorm walls. After college, I discovered discount design stores and commercial art. Later, the 2010s highlighted the modern farmhouse look, coupling chicken wire with inspirational scriptures declaring my Christian faith. I jumped on the bandwagon, including a large “Welcome to our Nest” sign on my living room wall.
Somewhere along the way, I discovered art and dreamed of having some original artwork on my walls. My Aunt Brenda, an artist, created a picture of cypress trees in the Tuscan countryside for us. I hung this picture as a prized possession, hoping someday to add more to my walls. Meanwhile, I continued to shop at discount stores for artwork, pleased with the esthetic I was creating.
About six years ago, Terry and I spent a weekend away in West Chester, exploring the Brandywine Museum of Art. We fell in love with George Weymouth’s landscapes, along with the fact that he had a Wisconsin connection, being a friend of Herb Kohler. We bought two prints and quickly framed them. It was then that I realized that art was attainable for me. I started hunting for treasures to fill my walls.
At art fairs and local markets, I felt like a child digging through a treasure chest, hunting for the perfect print. I would hold one up and ask Terry’s opinion, only to set it aside because I thought I would find something better. I didn’t know what I wanted, I just knew I would love it when I found it. Some I passed on with regrets, and some I passed on because of budget constraints, but I continued the hunt. Eventually, I found a fruit print in Charleston, SC along with a vase of flowers print from Lancaster’s own Lucy Smucker (her parents own Nooks, one of my favorite independent bookstores). A friend gave Terry and I some artwork that had been collected by her late father-in-law, and soon I had enough pieces to create a gallery wall.
This weekend, while the massive heat dome oppressed our area, Terry hung my gallery wall. Despite missing a few 5×7 frames I plan to fill with original artwork done by my grandchildren; I love how it turned out. It makes the room feel complete, emanating beauty from the dining room throughout our living space.
I may not have celebrated America’s 250th with parades, BBQs, or fireworks. But knowing some of the founding fathers’ art collections, I believe that when they wrote that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” that they were envisioning a country where people could flourish. Human flourishing is not only about providing basic needs, such as food and shelter. It is about creating a world where beauty is celebrated both in nature and in the creativity of human beings.
Today, my mother is no longer hustling in a factory and raising four children. Despite her health problems, she chooses to surround herself with things that bring her joy. It may not be paintings, but instead artistic tchotchkes that delight her, along with music that fills her life with beauty. At any age, we can make a conscious choice to pursue beauty. It points us toward our creator and helps us flourish.
“He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, He has put eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end.” Ecclesiastes 3:11 NKJV
Despite being a resident of Pennsylvania for the last 13 years, I still identify as a Wisconsinite, and more specifically, a Sheboyganite. My hometown is famous for its picturesque lakeshore, championship golf courses, award winning bratwursts, and hard rolls. The city and its greater community are also home to some world-renowned businesses, including Kohler Company, Sargento Cheese, Johnsonville Sausage, and Acuity Insurance. Sheboygan is no stranger to pop culture, including references in the movies Some Like It Hot and Home Alone, reinforcing the popularity of polka! Even in Fall River, Massachusetts, a nurse shared with my son her own familiarity of Sheboygan. On the day my grandson was born, the nurse chuckled when my son reported that he was born in Sheboygan. As a child, her mom had threatened that someone would take her to Sheboygan if she misbehaved.
Like all areas, Sheboygan has its own folklore, idiosyncrasies, and even its own dialect. When we go to bakeries, we also eat bakery, aka donuts and pastries. We are super polite at four-way stops where everyone waves to everyone else to go first, even if everyone sits there for a minute or two. We don’t grill out, we fry out, and brat frys are the major fundraisers for local charities. We eat brats on a hard roll, which are not in the shape of a hot dog bun, but rather a hamburger bun. We also call the drinking water fountains bubblers after a local company that made them.
Like bubblers, certain products are identified by brand name. We no longer mop our floors, we swiffer them. I call tissues Kleenex, although I only buy Puffs. I never refer to my phone as my cell phone, but instead my I-Phone. Some brands elicit a strong feeling of loyalty. I once tried to use generic toasted corn flakes in place of Kellog’s Corn Flakes in one of our family’s favorite Christmas cookies. My husband’s discerning taste buds recognized the difference immediately, and since then, we only use the name brand.
Companies protect the names of their product by submitting a trademark with the United States Patent and Trademark office. A trademark is a type of intellectual property consisting of a recognizable sign, design, or expression. The application itself is straightforward, but the process of getting something trademarked can take time. Trademarks can’t be used on something general, like ice cream or ketchup or tissues. But it can be used on specific brands, like Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey, Heinz Ketchup and even the swish on Nike athletic shoes. Once something is trademarked, that intellectual property belongs to an individual or company and can’t be used by any other person or company.
Recently, the food world was in uproar over a company’s trademark on chili crunch, otherwise known as chili crisp. This popular condiment adds a finishing touch over dumplings, noodles, eggs, and avocado toast. The crunchy, oily, spicy condiment is made of dried chili flakes, crispy fried garlic, or shallots, and sometimes sesame seeds. Some cookbooks and websites are dedicated to finding more ways to use the condiment, including as an ice cream topping. Self-proclaimed foodies have multiple jars of different chili crisps in their refrigerators. Terry and I discovered the joy of chili crisp, adding it to stir fries and spaghetti.
The controversy came when Momofuku, a company started by celebrity chef David Chang, decided to trademark his brand of the condiment with the name “chili crunch.” Soon small businesses who used chili crunch in their product name were sent cease-and-desist letters by Momofuku’s legal representation. These small companies, many of whom are using family recipes, had ninety days to rebrand their products. Many food writers and chefs opposed Momofuku’s right to trademark the name “chili crunch”, arguing that the term was ubiquitous for a cultural product.
As a Christian, I have acted like Momofuku, thinking that Christians owned the trademark on truth, love, beauty, and righteousness. As a home educator, I surrounded myself with history books from Christian educators. If a musical artist was not explicitly Christian, I concluded that the music didn’t glorify God. If an artist or writer had any moral failures in their life, I wrote off their painting or book as not important. I thought only Christian organizations were doing important and worthwhile charitable work. I also thought that Christians hit the mark on righteousness and held themselves above reproach.
I have realized my thinking set Christians, me included, above others. Only God has the trademark on truth, love, beauty, and righteousness. All truth, love, beauty, and righteousness reflect the glory of God, no matter the source. This shift in perspective has opened me to more empathy and humility. As a Christian, it helps me validate the importance of the work others are contributing to science, history, medicine, art, music, and writing. I can read Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass, a book built on her indigenous spiritual worldview, and find some principles, like honorable harvest, rooted in the Bible. I can listen to a Taylor Swift song and see in her music her longing for a lasting love, a desire in all of us only fulfilled by Christ. I can follow Jasmine L. Holme’s Instagram page and find resources that explain how Southern confederate biases influenced some of the homeschooling material I used. I can read poetry by Mary Oliver that speaks beauty into my life.
This trademark belief was also evident when Christian apologists believed that abstract art reflected a post-modern world. I held on to that view for many years, denigrating modern art. Like all my self-righteous thinking, my views on modern art began to change. It started when my sister brought a modern art piece for her kitchen, and it surprised me how much I was drawn to this piece. It added a touch of color to her kitchen, anchoring it with a sense of calmness and warmth. After discovering that I liked that piece, I started looking at more modern art, finding some pieces that inspired joy in me.
French Port by Laurie Anne Gonzalez available on juniperprintshop.com
Later, I discovered Makoto Fujimura, an abstract artist who is a leader in the slow art movement. He uses a Japanese technique called Nihonga. This style involves the artist grinding colored minerals in a fine powder and layering them onto his art piece. Each layer takes time to dry, and some of his pieces have sixty layers. His Walking on Water series started off as an elegy to the victims of the 2011 Tsunami, and has evolved to pieces addressing climate change. At the end of his book Art + Faith: A Theology of Making, Fujimura writes a Benediction for Makers: “May we steward well what the Creator King has given us and accept God’s invitation to sanctify our imagination and creativity, even as we labor hard on this side of eternity.”
Based on his writings, Fujimura makes a difference between being an artist who is a Christian and being a Christian artist. He warns that art should not be a tool to evangelize and disciple others, instead it should glorify God. By glorifying God, we open the door for conversations with others. Even artists who are not Christians can glorify God in their works by reflecting the beauty of the created world. None of this is more evident than artist Jackson Pollock. Like Ian Falconer’s children’s book character Olivia, I believed I could splatter paint like Jackson Pollock and call it art. How naive and prideful I was, again believing I knew and understood the trademark of beauty.
Jackson Pollock painted his famous artwork by using a “drip” technique. He involved his whole body to paint and used force to cover the whole canvas, almost like dancing. For some, his pieces looked unpredictable and shocking. But again and again, people were drawn to his art. In 1999, physicist and artist Richard Taylor became interested in Pollock’s work in relation to fractals. Fractals are the repeating patterns found in nature starting at a large scale moving to the smallest scale. Imagine a tree, and it starts to fork out into big branches, and then eventually into smaller branches, and this same pattern is repeated down to the veining in a leaf. This pattern is a fractal, and research demonstrates that we find these fractals reassuring and harmonious. Using computer analysis, Taylor discovered that what others had determined to be random drip marks were actually fractals. Pollock referred to his painting style as “I am nature”, but his artwork tapped into God’s creative design in nature. This same computer analysis was used to determine that some recently discovered works thought to be Pollock’s were fakes, later confirmed by paint analysis. I am looking forward to my next visit to MOMA and viewing Pollock’s work with new eyes.
Because of the backlash, Momofuku has dropped the trademark disputes. It’s not clear if they are going to exercise their legal trademark rights in the future, but right now, they seem to have taken a break from owning “chili crunch” as intellectual property. I am a Christian, but I no longer believe that I hold the trademark on truth, love, beauty, and righteousness. I need to keep my eyes on God, who holds all truth, reflects all love and beauty, and is truly righteous. I can also look at both my fellow believers and those who don’t believe and discover how the image of God is reflected in their lives. This curiosity for discovery can help bridge the gap in a divided world.
By Sherry Collins 