Carnations and St. John's wort berries
Hana style: Carnations and St. John's wort berries / Arranged by Leila Currah

Art can serve many purposes.

Art is made in a million forms. From fine art to videography to yarn bombing, to Zen gardens, finger painting, advertising and even political propaganda. Art blends and bends with the fabric of human experience and culture. It is self-expression, story-telling, decoration, mental manipulation, and divine inspiration.

Art, in the way of service, is art that is created with the express hope of uplifting the human spirit. It is created to awaken us to deeper truths, to arouse our intuitions and true feelings, to help us unveil our perceptions of the world, and to support us collectively on the difficult path of being human.

As the world is changing, I feel that humanity needs this kind of support more than ever, and that Art is in the unique position of having the capacity – beyond any other means of communication – to bridge our many differences and bring us to common ground.

This is in a sense, not a beginning, but a stepping up of my response to what I feel is my calling. My web presence is new. It is the first time that I have been in a position to present my work and my thoughts and my ambitions to a public audience, and I wish to declare my commitment to serve humanity as best as I am able with whatever talent I can muster.

And I will, of course, have to hope that it is not too incredibly crass to profess such a lofty goal. After all, isn’t beauty in the eye of the beholder anyways? If that is true, I will do my best to reflect in my art the limitless beauty that I perceive all around me.

1 thought on “Art, in the way of service

  1. right on. Sun Ra – great jazz musician – said that creativity _is_ prayer. sending our best upward, to the creator, in thanks.

    PK Dick tells a lovely story, which I’m going to mangle a bit: God is disappointed with his works, ie humanity, and is going to start over, wipe everything out. With one exception. Who would that be, O Lord? the rabbis, the philosophers?

    Nah, God says, the merrymakers, the jugglers. Those who help to raise people’s spirits… them, I like.

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