When Things Fall Apart
Recently, we visited an art exhibition by our neighborhood friend, Brad Bell, who is a painter by profession and a creative by vocation. The exhibition entitled “When Things Fall Apart” consisted of a series of painted terra cotta parts in many stages of decomposition. In fact, it was a “living” exhibition as we observed the pots slowly crumbling and shifting before our eyes.The process was amazing! Wet sand had been placed in the unfired pots shortly before people arrived. The pots began to randomly break down at different speeds throughout the evening until eventually every pot fell apart in fascinating ways.
The colors Bell chose for the pots were beautiful combinations of both harmonizing and contrasting hues. As the pots crumbled, the colors mixed with the sand and shards creating something new, as beautiful and the original and sometimes even more interesting. The space occupied by the crumbling pots also varied from a few inches around the pot to extending many feet as some pots fell to the floor and scattered in all directions.
Entering into this world of “When Things Fall Apart,” I really wondered what I had gotten myself into. Wandering around the hall, I began to appreciate the whimsical creativity in the exhibit; it was fun! Then began a conversation with each piece as my wife as I reflected over the diverse stages of breakage. Ideas of brokenness, beauty, movement, and change all converged in our thinking, much like the art we were seeing. Writing this now, the experience gives me the sense that the relationship between brokenness and beauty is a bit messy, much like the floor around the crumbling pots. Traditionally it is understood that beauty often emerges from brokenness, but the exhibit suggested there is another way to look at things. Perhaps each life moment holds both brokenness and beauty in dynamic tension, mingling them together with the incredible potential to create something new.
September 2022/Craig
*image posted under fair use of copyright material in recommendation of the exhibit
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What a fun and incredibly creative project worthy of much thoughtful reflection! I like the idea you pose at the end….brokenness and beauty existing in dynamic tension moving towards the creation of something new. Perhaps the recognition of this reality would allow us to enter into life more fully, embracing what is pleasing as well as what is challenging and open to the personal transformative process at hand. Thank you!