Interesting install

today and not done yet. Hummm, issues of weight, torque, brackets
ripping free from the wall, brackets bending, and omg is the wall even
structural cause I am seriously wondering if the work might topple the
wall. So tomorrow I'll pick up c-clamps to prevent brackets from
bending open from the strain of the tork, I already put in longer lag
bolts and some toggles where I couldn't hit a stud, and will add a few
tire tube elements progressively to each side of the wall so the wall
itself won't pull free.

Healing Our Hearts Through Forgiveness

How can we forgive those who do not want to be forgiven? Our deepest desire is that the forgiveness we offer will be received. This mutuality between giving and receiving is what creates peace and harmony. But if our condition for giving forgiveness is that it will be received, we seldom will forgive! Forgiving the other is first and foremost an inner movement. It is an act that removes anger, bitterness, and the desire for revenge from our hearts and helps us to reclaim our human dignity. We cannot force those we want to forgive into accepting our forgiveness. They might not be able or willing do so. They may not even know or feel that they have wounded us.

The only people we can really change are ourselves. Forgiving others is first and foremost healing our own hearts.

---

The Grey Area upcoming exhibition

The Grey Area 
February 4 – 21, 2010
Opening reception Thursday, February 4, 6pm – 9pm.
UTSA Satellite Space, 115 Blue Star, San Antonio, TX 78204

Press for upcoming show in San Antonio at the UTSA Satellite Space, 115 Blue Star, TX 78204

The Grey Area features sculptures and wall reliefs by Houston artists, Devon Moore and Kathy Kelley. Moore’s pristine use of scored, folded and painted steel contrasts with Kelley’s repurposed and recycled industrial materials. Both artists deal with the increasingly blurred line between sculpture and painting, using monochromatic palettes to extremely different ends.

Devon Moore’s work is meticulous and meditative. The gleaming metal panels hover between traditional landscape and austere minimalism. Kathy Kelley’s tube fabrications reference environmental and feminist issues with aggressive projections into space created from discarded material.

The UTSA Satellite Space is the off-campus gallery of the Department of Art and Art History of the University of Texas at San Antonio. Throughout the year, exhibitions are devoted to works by UTSA graduate students as well as nationally recognized professional artists. Since its first exhibition in 1993, the Satellite Space has become one of San Antonio’s most respected venues for challenging contemporary art. This exhibition is free and open to the public.

Parts assembled but not fluffed yet

Range in scale from 3 to 6'. Gallery wall has 14" gap running along
it's top length separating it from ceiling. These elements will appear
to be draining out of that gap. Four to five other of my works will be
displayed in collaboration wit works by Devon Moore (curated by Tommy
Gregory and Jessica ). Galley is UT San Antonio next to Bluestar.
Opening will be Thursday and Friday, February 4 & 5, 2010. It is also
San antonios first friday art evnt (meaning art everywhere). Road trip!

Receiving Forgiveness

There are two sides to forgiveness: giving and receiving. Although at first sight giving seems to be harder, it often appears that we are not able to offer forgiveness to others because we have not been able fully to receive it. Only as people who have accepted forgiveness can we find the inner freedom to give it. Why is receiving forgiveness so difficult? It is very hard to say, "Without your forgiveness I am still bound to what happened between us. Only you can set me free." That requires not only a confession that we have hurt somebody but also the humility to acknowledge our dependency on others. Only when we can receive forgiveness can we give it.

These reflections are taken from Henri J.M. Nouwen's Bread for the Journey.

Visit HenriNouwen.org for more inspiration!

Beached whales

Parts prepared for hides

Parts

Too much splatter

Off my little Lincoln. Eventually I'll make functional welds that are
also pretty.

Whom do I expel or exclude in my life?

The absolute religious genius of Jesus is that he ignores all debt codes, purity codes, religious quarantines, and the endless searching for sinners. He refuses to divide the world into the pure and the impure, much to the chagrin of almost everybody—then and now. Unlike most churches, he is not into “sin management.” He is into transformation.

Jesus is shockingly not upset with sinners! He is only upset with people who do not think they are sinners. In most of history, religion thought its mission was to somehow expel sin and evil. As if it could. After Jesus we find out that the real sin lies in the very act of expelling. Jesus knew there is no place to expel it to. It only hides underground.

Either we carry and transform the evil of human history as our own problem, or we increase its power by hating and punishing it “over there.” It will eventually come back to bite us. Jesus taught us how to hold, absorb, and transform the human situation, not to deny it, punish it, or project it elsewhere. He then dramatically illustrated this pattern on the cross, and it became resurrection!

Mantra:
Blessed are the peacemakers

Adapted from Hope Against Darkness, p. 151

Copyright © 2010 Center for Action and Contemplation
PO Box 12464, Albuquerque, NM 87195-2464 (505)242-9588
www.cacradicalgrace.org

Same girls over a decade ago

Katherine, Rachel, Tessa, Katie, Erin, Amanda, Kelly, and Amy. Eighth
grade I think. ?  For the life of me i couldn't find one of the trampoline outfit pictures!

Just thought I'd compare it to previous post taken 12/2009.

i can still remember them from 8th grade, jump jumping on a trampoline

in particularly coordinated outfits and even Katie's polar bear with porcupine needles in its nose on ice (a sixth grade comment. i'd tell you what it means, but then i'd have to kill you...confidentiality clause and such) and all the various, um, stuffed but very important animals that accompanied many of them on sleep overs :)

Rachel, Katherine, Katie, me, and Amy.

They're all grown up. I was impressed with who they were in junior high and i am impressed still with who they are continuing to become, each very unique in their own beautiful way!

The Still, Small Voice of Love

"Many voices ask for our attention. There is a voice that says, "Prove that you are a good person." Another voice says, "You'd better be ashamed of yourself." There also is a voice that says, "Nobody really cares about you," and one that says, "Be sure to become successful, popular, and powerful." But underneath all these often very noisy voices is a still, small voice that says, "You are my Beloved, my favor rests on you." That's the voice we need most of all to hear. To hear that voice, however, requires special effort; it requires solitude, silence, and a strong determination to listen.

That's what prayer is. It is listening to the voice that calls us "my Beloved.""

These reflections are taken from Henri J.M. Nouwen's Bread for the Journey. Visit HenriNouwen.org for more inspiration!

Tell me please

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

Excerpt from The Summer Day by Mary Oliver

http://www.panhala.net/Archive/The_Summer_Day.html

Almost done with this piece

Solution starting to manifest itself

Little army of future understructure clamps

Working on elements that extrude from door windows

These will pierce through the broken window frames in door.

My morning around Navasota; second day new year