If you can imagine it…
…you can build it. 🙂
I don’t know why I love this TED Talk from artist Janet Echelman so much. I just know that I do.
Maybe it’s her perseverance. After all, she was rejected by seven art schools after college and yet didn’t give up but struck out on her own.
Maybe it’s her resourcefulness. When her paints didn’t show up for a show she promised to do in India, she turned to the local fishermen and solicited their help in producing a new piece of art…and art form.
Maybe it’s her relentlessness. Again and again, there weren’t materials or technology yet suitable to execute her ideas, so each time she found partners to help her pioneer a new method for bringing her artistic dreams to fruition.
Maybe it’s her vision. Janet wants to share beauty with as many people as possible through her billowing, wind-swept art forms that adorn the public spaces of cities around the world.
Maybe it’s all these things. I just know that I found these ten minutes captivating and joy-filled. I hope you do, too.
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At the beginning, Echelman talks of her walk on the beach and seeing something she’d seen every day, but in a new way. For me, that is what the best art, poetry, music, writing, and preaching do. And that new vision leads, as Echelman says, to the rediscovery of wonder.
Janet Eichelman’s perseverance and love of what she is doing in kinaesthetic art with the idea going back to the fishermen’s nets in India is amazing. There is no limit to man’s ingenuity when combined with a spirit like Janet’s. Thank you for sharing!
I can’t help but interpret your description through the lens of living out the Great Commission…
– working WITH the people in a given community
– perseverance in faith and relentless passion for the gospel
– creating authentic and organic conversations and experiences in partnership with others
– being resourceful and thinking outside-the-box, particularly when the needed resources (of all kinds) are lacking
– an honest desire to share the beauty of life with Christ with as many people as possible
– pioneering a new method or community for bringing God’s dreams to fruition
– living out God’s vision, which becomes our vision, so that the love of Christ can adorn the public and private spaces of cities around the world
– captivating and joy-filled
I have yet to watch the TED Talk, but I’ve already felt refreshed by your description and its intersection with faith, the Bible, and life. Blessings!