Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write off the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Showing posts with label Art in Community: ArtPrize 2014. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Art in Community: ArtPrize 2014. Show all posts

Saturday, October 4, 2014

ArtPrize 2014 - Envisioning Community Through Art




Each fall for the past six years the city of Grand Rapids, Michigan, has undergone a purposeful re-transformation for 2-1/2 weeks remaking its community of urban dwellers into a thought-provoking collection of humorous, wacky, wild, and colorful presentations of art running from good pedestrian street art and entertainment to professionally produced pieces providing commercial or public appeal. Displays can range from the very sad and sobering to those filled with light and laughter. Each wishing to revision the common place worlds we live with the subtler, sobering truths found behind the screens of our daily lives. Many pieces are simply there to heal or make aware of deep injustice. Others think to confront in thoughtful shock or presentation. Still others wish for its viewing public to laugh with the artist in insightful revisioning of life's promises and failures, abuses and all-too-frail realities.

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"ArtPrize® is a radically open, independently organized international art competition and a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.

For 19 days, three square miles of downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan, become an open playing field where anyone can find a voice in the conversation about what is art and why it matters. Art from around the world pops up in every inch of downtown, and it’s all free and open to the public.

It’s unorthodox, highly disruptive, and undeniably intriguing to the art world and the public alike.

What Makes ArtPrize Unique?

Open Call for Artists and Venues
: Anyone over the age of 18 can be an artist and any space within the ArtPrize district can be a venue. Anyone can participate.

Independently Organized
: The entire ArtPrize exhibition is independently organized by venues and artists who connect through artprize.org.

Public Vote and Juried Awards: 
Two grand prizes worth $400,000 and eight category awards worth $160,000. Half decided by public vote, and half decided by a jury of art experts.

- The ArtPrize 2014 Committee


ArtPrize Street Venues

Artprize 2013 - All Dressed Up with Somewhere To Go

Artprize 2014 - Imaginations

Artprize 2013 - Woodland Serenity



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Re-Purposing Light

Artprize 2014 - RePurposed

Instead of throwing away hundreds of disused lamps this artist had the vision to split the lamps in half and re-purpose them into a contemporary art setting. Many times in life this is what the Lord does with us as we move through life's many stations of living and working. Taking old collections of memories and talent and making them fresh and new and filled with light-giving vision to an unseeing world.

Because the work is 40 feet long one does not readily see the word "shine" spelled out before them. In the fish-eyed photo below the word can plainly be seen reminding one of the verse in Matthew 5:16, "In the same way, so let your light shine before others, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven."

I'm sure there is both a paradox and a truth to the sublimity of "unseeing the light before us" even as we are "light-bearers in our unseeing frames."


- R.E. Slater

During the 2008 financial crash, industrial designer and business owner, Mark McKenna, lost his shirt. Six months earlier, Mark had taken out a large business loan to produce his newest product, the Betty Lou lamp. Two weeks after receiving the inventory, the crash occurred. Business dried up across the board, leaving him little choice but to close up shop, still bearing the enormous financial burden. It was a personal catastrophe, bringing Mark to the edge of bankruptcy and challenging his emotional and psychological resolve. Today, In Light of Failure is composed of the remaining unsold inventory. Each lamp -once a symbol of failure- is now a pixel of light and beacon of perseverance. The murals are a demonstration of the beauty that we can glean from our greatest life failures, and a celebration of the strengths that can be earned only through defeat. On the last day of the exhibit, viewers are invited to take a lamp; the artwork will be consumed, the failure figuratively erased.

- Artist's Statement


Artprize 2014 - RePurposed


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Memories of ArtPrize 2014

Below are collections of art we have found in our walking tours.
The names given to the art pieces are of mine own convention and
do not reflect the artist's titles. Which pieces may be found on the 
listing pages of ArtPrize here. Enjoy. - R.E. Slater



Artprize 2014 Venue - SITE:Lab Skateboarders as Apocalyptic Art






Artprize 2014 - a quilted arrangement, Mackinac Bridge on the Straits

Artprize 2014 - a quilted arrangement, Life on Mackinaw Island

Artprize 2014 - America on Parade

Artprize 2014 - Walking

Artprize 2014 - A Late Night Artist at Work, Blue Night Angel

Artprize 2014 - Unmasked

Artprize 2014 - Breathe More O2

Artprize 2014 - Envisioning

Artprize 2014 - Formulas in My Hair

Artprize 2014 - Now is the Time

Artprize 2014 - Absurdity

Artprize 2014 - A Search for Healing



Artprize 2014 - Walking on Water  by Makoto Fujimura, NYC

Artprize 2014 - Patrons in Evening Reflection

Artprize 2014 - At War & Peace

Artprize 2014 - Speaking with a former Life Magazine photo journalist

Artprize 2014 - An LP Record Played "On the Edge"
by a simple Business Card pressed to its circle

Artprize 2014 - Community

Artprize 2014 - A Walk-Around Xylophone (best done on a tri-wheeled bicycle!)

Artprize 2014 - Night Train

Artprize 2014 - Nightmare



ArtPrize 2014 Venue - Sex Trafficking






Artprize 2014 - Indoor Venues at DeVos Conference Center

Artprize 2014 - Rapid Thoughts

Artprize 2014 - Rock Solid

Artprize 2014 - Bird Song

Artprize 2014 - Enigma

Artprize 2014 - The Cube: The Interplay of Light & Dark in Shadow Studies of Motion

Artprize 2014 - A Very Large Wall Size Mural, Quiet Spot

Artprize 2014 - Whimsy and Playtime (can you find the red parrot?)

Artprize 2014 - Visiting with Friends at Rosa Park late on an October Evening