Winter in Apache Junction is a bust time of year. Lost Dutchman Days, the Rodeo, the Renaissance Festival, hiking while the weather is amenable…
I am still painting, getting ready for my exhibit in May at Gallery 50 in Bridgeton, NJ. Today I ordered frames for the newest paintings, almost finished.
And locally, there is an exhibit of Found Object art. I entered four found object sculptures to be juried in. Hopefully they accept one of them.
Unlike my paintings which have no real message, my found object assemblages usually have an underlying theme. I try not to be preachy, nobody wants and artist telling them how to think.
Most of my sculptures touch on the religious and political. I will not pontificate, but rather rely on the imagery to speak for itself.
Too often we create god in our own image. I thought it was supposed to be the other way around. We cage god in, and in the process we erect walls preventing us from knowing god.
We treat our politics as a religion, and build barriers against those who would presume to disagree with our omniscient point of view. Friendships sink like a proverbial Titanic because of political affiliations.
We are quick to judge people because of lifestyles, or who they voted for. We disparage and demean those that do not line up lockstep with our own beliefs. We fail to even consider that other might have a valid reason for their own belief system. After all it is so much more fun to cast aspersions and mock others. After all, we are all knowing, so they must just be plain stupid!
At best, we consider them morally inferior. But allowing someone with a radically different viewpoint into your inner circle does not necessarily mean you endorse their position. It simply means you are human, and they are human, and we can agree to disagree without becoming violent and hurtful.
I have discovered that even those that espouse political views I find abhorrent believe the same as I do, that we want a better world for ourselves, our children, and our loved ones.
Whether one is a political junkie or political whore, whether one is religious, areligious, sacreligious or non-religious, we want what we think is best for humankind.
We put god in a box. We jail him, her, it or whatever. We nail god to a cross, along with the innocents and the guilty. Perhaps it is time to step back for a moment and embrace humanity.