My Art and Music Weekend

Hello everyone,

How are you? I ended up having a major right brain weekend, following a major left brain week, so I feel pretty balanced right now.

First of all, I found a new musician that I really like. His name is Ben Shive and the album I have is called The Ill-Tempered Klavier. I don’t really know how to describe his style; perhaps jazz/alternative piano (I know, that sounds weird, but it sounds awesome). He writes and plays with Andrew Peterson, which is how I found out about him. At any rate, I’ve been loving it, especially when walking back home at night because the songs makes the city’s lights dance with the rhythm. This isn’t meant to be an advertisement, just an illustration of the start of my music and art adventures.

I needed to stay local again this weekend in order to save some money for a belated Thanksgiving in Oxford next Saturday. So, on Friday evening I went to a coffee house that my church hosts once a month as an outreach and ministry. This time we had an Irish Folk concert from two local musicians, a flutist and guitarist. It was just good, fun music and good, fun conversation.

The sky was crystal clear on Saturday (for once…), but there was a bitter cold wind. After a quick internet search for local attractions, I decided to make the rounds of Sheffield’s art galleries. Now, historically I haven’t been particularly keen on art galleries, but art galleries are typically indoor and heated, so the choice was an easy one this time. My first stop was the Millennium Galleries, which houses both the Ruskin/Guild of St. George collection and an impressive winter garden.


The Millennium Gallery (behind the ball-things)



John Ruskin was England’s preeminent art critic during the late 1800’s inspiring both the pre-Raphaelite movement and a return to Gothic architecture, but he is also remembered for his social theory and sometimes controversial personal life. Although Ruskin led a privileged life, he became a champion of the working class and was an outspoken critic against the abuses of England’s industrial revolution. Ruskin and his followers, the Guild of St. George, wanted to establish an art and natural mineral museum in Sheffield, the heart of industrial England, to inspire and educate the steel-men and factory workers with the beauty of God’s creation and man’s imitation. Sheffield certainly needed a little extra beauty; a black, sooty smoke from the steel works blanketed the city, life expectancy was well below average, and slums grew up around the factories. The city was in such bad shape that George Orwell once noted that "Sheffield, I suppose, could justly claim to be called the ugliest town in the Old World."

Well, times have changed (thankfully). Sheffield was devastated by German bombing during the Battle of Britain in WWII, which some consider a blessing in disguise because it allowed new buildings to be constructed where the dirty, old factories were destroyed. Sheffield is still struggling to define itself now that most of the heavy industry has moved overseas, but for the most part, things are looking up for the old city. The Millennium Galleries is one example of the ongoing revival.

My next stop was the Graves Art Gallery, above the city library. Although this is a fairly small and obscure gallery, it has a surprisingly impressive collection of works ranging from the 1500’s to the present, including some pieces by Turner, Cezanne, Boudin (who tutored Monet), De Goya, etc.

There was one exhibit in the gallery that especially caught my attention. It was a pile of clothing on the floor – a crumpled heap of trousers, a white shirt, a pair of dress shoes, glasses, a belt, underwear, etc. Unfortunately I didn’t write down the artist's name, but he was a performance artist who had entered wearing a business suit, stripped, and left the room buck-naked. Critiquing the impersonal nature of the modern office culture, he named the clothes on the floor “Self portrait.” Thank you postmodernism.

It occurred to me that Ben Shive, the musician I mentioned earlier, raises a similar theme in one of his songs:

“Monday, it dawns, the alarm’s crowing on, ring, ringing the new day in,
She’s up out of bed making breakfast and dreading heading to work again, she’s tired, so tired.

She’s swept off of the train then out in the rain, carried away on a stream of strangers,
Men gaping up from their papers at ladies, weightless as vapors, make her tired, so tired.

The telephone calls and the windowless walls siphon the life from the halls where all these half-human beings sit staring at screen, repeating routines without meaning, leaving her tired…”

And the song continues.

The thing is, I like Ben’s song, but something disturbed me about Self- portrait. Both see essentially the same problem, but the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that the crucial difference is their conclusions. At the end of Ben’s song, the woman hears her own name spoken by God – this is the crescendo and the resolution; she is personally known by God, she is not merely a half-human being… repeating routines without meaning.” The artist in the gallery, on the other hand, sees himself as the empty pile of clothing – it’s a self-portrait after all; there is no resolution, just meaningless nakedness.

The ironic thing – the sad thing – is that the hope and resolution that Ben sang about has been painted literally all throughout the gallery; nearly every aspect of Jesus’ life, from his birth to his brutal death to his resurrection, is there for everyone to see. It cost God the death of his son to restore the relationship that we broke, yet we can’t be bothered because we’re too busy looking at a pile of laundry on the floor in self-pity. I can only pray that one day the artist looks up and learns the good news for himself.

Well, after the Graves Gallery, I went downstairs to the Sheffield City Library. In keeping with my music and art trend, I picked up some guitar sheet music; Coldplay, blues, and classical (OK, I’ll admit it. I also got Guitar for Dummies).

Speaking of books, I broke down and bought a Yorkshire to English dictionary…seriously. I now know that “Ahm fair capt to see thee agen” actually means “I’m rather surprised to see you again.” But I digress.

My final destination for the day was a quick tour of the Sheffield Cathedral. Our cathedral is not as famous or awesome (in the literal sense of the word) as Peterborough, Westminster, or St. Paul’s, but it’s still quite a treasure – a nine hundred year old treasure at that! I like the way the pillars and vaulted ceiling make you feel like you’re in a stone forest. The crazed-mosaic of light from the stained glass windows adds to the effect, reminding me of the way light breaks through the forest canopy. Well, there is plenty more to say about the cathedral, but I need to keep some things a secret so there is still a bit of mystery if anyone ever comes for a visit.



So there you have it, my art and music weekend. Next up: Thanksgiving… at Oxford. Like they say here, 'A more jammy so and so I nivver met!'

Bye for now,
Will