http://www.thursdaypm.org/blog/rachelle/index.html This is why all-artist churches are a bad idea. Church is not about art. God is not about Art. And in an all-artist setting, it's easy to forget that. It's easy to forget that sometimes your work is really bad, and no-one understands it except other artists. It becomes a very selfish and self-serving religion. This is not to say that there should be no art in church; I am far from being an iconoclast! But art shouldn't be the church.

At the moment, this is something I am struggling with. Well, two things, really. First of all, how do I let my art be a gift to my church, and to God, without letting it take over? For the moment, all I know to do is to continue making my art better, in hopes of making it a gift someday.

Secondly, how do I fit in? In my honors program, my being an artist has, at times, been an unpopular thing. But in the art department, I rarely let anyone know that I'm in the honors program, because that is unpopular there. I can't win. I am not the typical honors student or art major, but it's so easy to pigeonhole someone that people don't usually want to work to figure out where I stand. Because I'm an artist, I'm expected to be liberal, and I'm not. Because I'm an honors student, I'm expected to hate contemporary art: I don't, not all of it. (My two contemporary obsessions are Julie Taymor who put The Lion King on broadway http://www.angelfire.com/musicals/rafiki/taymor.html and Bill Viola, a video artist who recently had an exhibit at the Getty, The Passions. http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/viola/ ).

But one thing I do know: art is great, and since it is so powerful, it much more easily becomes an idol and a false religion than does a lesser pursuit. My reccomendation for artists: find a church that makes use of images, and also has a very strong intellectual tradition, and one that has an ancient liturgy. We must be rooted, for we too easily go astray.