They may know Paul, but not Art

Gordon Smith.  “Eggbeater Jesus” or “Cosmic Christ”.  1966-73 & 2016-22.  Huntsville Alabama.

Yesterday, i saw a video of two comics who were visiting a church, at random, in Whitesburg Alabama. For a lark, the one mentioned [a possible]First Baptist Huntsville to a congregant. He just made a guess of its existence, there is no shortage of Baptist churches in the South, and they number them like New York City numbers elementary schools. And she said, Eggbeater Jesus? Well, it exists and is a roadside attraction. Huntsville calls itself Rocket City. Apollo's Saturn rockets were made there. So when the Baptists were going to build a new church, they chose a glass mosaic that spanned seven arches after the seven churches mentioned at the beginning of the Apocalypse/Revelation. As soon as it was installed, pieces started to fall. After so many years, they decided for a fix. They were told, it wouldn't work. It would have to be redone, and it was redone by Italians.

So, i started using the computers' search engines, using the terms: Protestant art, American Protestant art, American Christian art, Contemporary Christian art, Baptist art, Southern Baptist art. The searches did not help. They found the Reformation's rejection of Catholic art, depictions of John the Baptist, and a few others that didn't fit. In a couple of scholarly articles that needed subscriptions, and showed part of a page; the names Warner Sallman, and Thomas Kinkade [sic] were mentioned.

I touched upon this before [click], also, and.  We do not do church in the same way.

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postscriptum noon 24 April 2023:

Now, there is some comparison to Notre Dame's 1964 “Touchdown Jesus/The Word of Life”. Which is better art, and religious but not ecclesial, and it stayed in place without crumbling. With Jesus there are many other people, representing what is in a library: historical figures, writers, saints of learning, et cetera. 

 

I was once on campus in 1988(?). Touristed with my nephew, and kicked an imaginary field goal on the football field. This was before inexpensive, digital cameras. I cribbed the foto supra from nd.edu. I have seen other fotos of it. Light, and angle, and perspective make different colors appear. The mural is made of panels of 81 different stone varieties.

 

Millard Sheets was an artist that did many outdoor mosaics, and murals on prominent buildings. Sheets was a California regional realist painter. I haven't studied if it is so, but American regionalist art has some affinity to the spirit of Vatican II.

 

Also, there was another Touchdown Jesus. It had other names: King of Kings [official], the most descriptive was “Big Butter Jesus”. It has a few quintessential American Evangelical Protestant qualities. They do not do subtlety. They go for loudness on a budget. It was in Monroe Ohio, next to Interstate 75, north of Cincinnati. It existed from 2004 to 2010. This was part of a 'megachurch' [non-denominational (Baptist)]. The statue was in the baptismal pool. Other fotos show a pale yellow color. Closer views showed the surface to appear as applied pats of not quite solid material. The skeleton was shaped like a goal post, and most of the volume was styrofoam, the surface was fiberglass. The overall texture, and color reminded people of the giant butter sculptures in state fairs. It was struck by lightning, and became Fireball Jesus. [click] It has been replaced by another huge statue, Hug Me Jesus, designed by CAD software. It is better, sort of like a South American Mountain Jesus as if designed by Mormons, and the Macy Parade.

foto by Rob Lambert

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n.b.:  not one of these three fotos are mine

weather changes in April

Daffodils, unless protected by shade and micro-climate, have wilted. I am waiting for the morrow, i have had snow cover up daffodils before, and they have sprung back after the melt. I do not remember snow on spent daffodils.

I type this Monday evening, A couple hours before, there was snow pellets/graupel. The five previous days, the temperature was kissing 80°F. There often is funny weather around here. click

(Sunday) Our little Principessa does not take sun and heat well.  Wearing a white shirt is much cooler than exposing black fur to the sun. Every once in a while, she flops down. Here it was in magnolia petals.

(Monday) Karma leading through the Latvian portal.

Birch catkins in the Latvian Cultural Garden.

Birches on the traffic island by the Shakespeare Garden.

Well, as a Slav, i think i am almost required to enjoy birches. Robert Frost loved birches too, 

"When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,"

Monday, midday, and these tulips were in color, but closed tight at Rockefeller Greenhouse. Many tulips were still green, and many had been eaten before they budded by deer. The grotesques are from the Pennsylvania train station. Workers were there, and almost no visitors. It began to rain.

Inside the greenhouse, jasmine was in bloom. The scent was light.

daffodil deputy

There are some peculiar, or rare, job descriptions. Johnny Carson used to have guests on who had those jobs. But, does anyplace in America, other than Cleveland, have a daffodil deputy?

 

difference a day makes

This morning Karma sits in an orchard of newly opened blossoms.

blossoms of brookside

Tokyo, and Washington DC had excellent early blooms of sakura (cherry blossoms). Athens Ohio's bloom was evident Easter Sunday on the banks of the Hockhocking. To-day was the opening of a few blooms in Cleveland.

Some picture takers came to see the progress. Her dog is looking at me, and my hound.

Karma is looking at a stone script she cannot decipher.

Greyhounds are long, and narrow athletes.

A giant sign was put up at the closest point to the freeway.

Fabrication, and installation is still being done. Eventually there will be lighting, perhaps landscaping. We were wondering why they had carved the hill, now we know.

Holy Friday 2023

 

This year the procession started from St. Michael the Archangel Cleveland, it then proceeded to St. Colman, and concluded at La Sagrada Familia. This is what Catholics do (or once largely did) on the Friday of Jesus' crucifixion. In alternating years the start and terminus is exchanged between Michael's and La Sagrada. Colman's is in the middle (geographically), a few years ago it was St. Patrick's.

I was outside waiting for it to start, and a fellow asked me about it. He did not know the day. I told him. He said he saw a hearse (during his walk), and thought it was a funeral. I said, "no", answering to what he thought, it was part of the procession;but he was right, it was a funeral procession, but the body was not now on earth.

There are two kinds of rude idiot photographers. One type has expensive equipment, and the other has a telephone. Both like to be as close as possible, and being an obstruction is the bonus.

This year they turned on to Clark, a main street. The path has been subject to changes.

Bier carrying the Corpse.

Women of the parish carrying the Sorrowful Mother.

The women of Jerusalem. Veronica holds the veil.

click past years: 2008, 2010, 2013, 2014, 2017, 2022

Procession with St. Michael's in the background. This church was the tallest building in Cleveland for a time.

A new generation rides.

preparing the carpets

Las Alfombras de Semana Santa, a cartouche is drawn on plastic, and then colored sawdust and/or sand are applied until complete.

This is one of the annual events i enjoy to see each year. I am saddened more people do not see this art and devotion. An earlier pastor, Fr. Reidy, brought this Meso-American cultural celebration to La Sagrada Familia. He is now at a parish in Brook Park, and they did one here.

Click previous years: 2015, 2017, 2019, 2021, 2022

Some are made by an individual. This one a Guatemalan family did.

The Virgin of Guadalupe is a favorite subject. Here she comforts Pope Francis.

John and Karma came last year with Cassius.

There are five rows this year. Not shown is a partitioned area for the repose of the Sacrament on Holy Thursday.

In the sanctuary the vesting for Sorrowful Mother for to-morrow Black Friday.

Richmond Greyhounds

Well, there is a teevee show on cable that is now celebrated, Ted Lasso. Recently some of the actors were invited by our President to the White House in recognition for discussing mental health. So, i just finished watching the first two seasons (22 episodes); and then the first three episodes of season 3. A recurring theme is the psychic damage a problematic father does to a child.

Now, the locale is an English soccer team, Richmond Greyhounds. At the beginning of the second season, the mascot Earl Greyhound is killed by a penalty kick. In the last episode of the season, there is a new mascot, Macy Greyhound. She has a helmet.

Now, humour is spliced in with history. Edmund Tudor was made Earl of Richmond in 1452. His posthumous son was Henry, who later became King Henry VII. His mother was Margaret Beaufort, whose family's badge was a white greyhound.

John from Warren County Ohio, a participant of jousting teams, was wearing this tunic of Henry Tudor, in Cleveland last summer.

There is a lot of dialogue in the show, many references to music and film. Some the Anglais understand, and some not. Corn in the Field of Dreams was not in their ken. Football (soccer) does not have the magnitude in the US as it has in most of the world. Also, the Britisher lexicon is not the American. So the American in London is comically misplaced. So i read in the Los Angeles Times, and the Athletic that the programme is not popular in Britain. To be honest some terms used in the one country, are known to be used in the other (but in different frequency). I know their are Anglais who object to Americanisms. Some Briticisms are good, but not all. The mandatory use of 'nil', and 'pitch' are not necessary. There are a certain group of East London, Essex, and Estuary English that abuse my ears. Cleveland had a college basketball coach from Boston, he was painful to hear. I do not go back and watch episodes again, but Sudeikis' accent was a little grating. I was surprised, he was from Kansas City. And i never want to hear anyone say "ya'll". The British cast is uniformly excellent, another reason i was surprised of the meager reception in Britain. Waddingham and Goldstein deserve their Emmy statuettes.

It is stated in the series, that it is to be on for three seasons. The team is delegated, the team is promoted, the team wins the championship. Reading the episode summaries, the show reads like a soap opera. 

But noticing, how many times a character is forgiven, hints are offered for further resolutions. There is a lego set, and Henry Lasso asks why is Nate separated from the other characters. Immediately, Ted puts toy Nate next to toy Ted. Nate has gone to the dark side. He is manager of another club, whose owner is the former owner (Rupert Mannion) of the Greyhounds, and former husband to the new owner of the Greyhounds. Nate betrayed Ted, and his team's owners office is like the emperor's in Star Wars. Nate has gone to the dark side, they both wear black. Rupert and Nate enjoy being evil by delighting in causing pain. This is not a religious show, but prodigals (Jamie) have been forgiven.

There is a lot of crying in the show, i'm ok with that, but there is too much soap opera. Rebecca (Waddingham) hires Ted, and sets him up for failure. Slowly she is won over by Ted. They come to care for each other, both are betrayed by their former spouses; although Ted has forgiven his wife a year and an half before he finds out. Will they live happily ever after? About hints again, Rebecca is told by a psychic that she will be a mother.

Getting back to the bad fathers: Jamie, Rebecca, Nate, Phoebe (niece of Roy Kent, who may very well have had a bad father) had bad fathers. Ted had a good father, but we find out his father killed himself when Ted was sixteen, and that was not forgivable. So Ted has mental problems of anxiety, panic, loneliness, and abandonment. Roy is a father to Phoebe. Jamie and Roy hate each other, and then Roy sees Jamie's father, and Roy becomes Jamie's father. I can only remember that Sam the Nigerian ball player having a good relationship with his father.

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postscriptum 7 April 2023: watched the 4th episode of the third season. Nate showed a glimmer of recognition that he was way, way rude to Ted. He did not notice he refused to shake his hand.  Also, checked imdb, only Ted is in all 34 episodes according to imdb. A character named Disco is listed for the final episode, he is Nate's assistant.

2023 Miscellany #5

at Upper Edgewater one of the snapshot script Cleveland signs

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

eared grebes compared to Canadian geese

song sparrow

mourning dove on fence

Do  you remember the secret agent, Secret Squirrel (voiced by Mel Blanc) mid 1960s?