A Quality Never Before Experienced

IT TAKES NERVE to be an artist, according to Marvin Bartel, Goshen, Indiana. Like a farmer or businessman, he said, the artist must risk failure in the creation of something new.

Marvin, art profession at Goshen College, considers himself first and foremost a teacher. But the production of art, he feels, is essential to his teaching. His artistic specialty is ceramics – porcelain, ovenware, and stoneware. His work, such as the silk-screening of photographic images on clay, represents a cutting edge within the ceramics field.

Although Marvin liked to draw and make things since early childhood, he was not aware of the meaning of art until he began to teach it as an adult. “Through childhood and adolescence my understanding was that if I could produce the likeness of something, I was an artist.”

His understanding of art is still evolving, he said, but he now claims that a basic function of art is to help us recognize our real selves.

“If an artist is able to work without restraints, he is often able to give us insights into who we are,” said Marvin. “On the national level, for example, a celebrated artist, Robert Rauschenberg, has made a career out of compositions made up of discarded material. His art offers a striking commentary on who we are as a society, whether we want to see it or not.”

Are artists within the church able to critique the church as Rauschenberg has society on the national level?”

According to Marvin, the answer is no. “In one sense Mennonite artists are blooming, but our art is still very much at the adolescent stage,” he said. “We have got to grow from vulnerability to confidence and freedom in order to say who we really are.”

The barriers to Mennonite artistic maturity are varied. “Some of use are too comfortable not taking the risks of the perceptive artist,” said Marvin. “Some of us, frankly, are too stupid to know how to do it, and others feel intimidated  by theologians and church leaders who are more skilled in the verbal articulation of spiritual or churchly matters.”

But artists within the church must continually strive for quality, he said.

ONE WAY for the church to gain some artistic insight is to provide opportunity for children to express themselves in Sunday school.

Marvin, who wrote “A Study of  Art Activities in Religious Education” for his master’s thesis, maintains that art is useful in the teaching of biblical concepts to children.

“One way to illustrate the creation story, for example, is to give children three primary colors and have them “create” as many new colors as possible,” said Marvin. “When they create and share the new colors they can understand better how God felt about creating things, not only for Himself but for us too.”

Adults should also be conscious of visual message they want to communicate when they build or add on to a church. The physical building, just as much as singing or drama, should honestly reflect the congregation as a people of God.

Marvin’s own home, which he designed and built, makes a statement about his own character. Dishes, vases, sinks, and even the mailbox have the authentic stamp of Marvin Bartel.

“Art is a new way of seeing and expressing things – ordinary things we take for granted.” said Marvin. “If I make a chair, for example, that is different from any other, I would hope that people would return to their regular chairs with a whole new sense of feeling and understanding. Art gives life a quality never before experienced. It awakens our sensibilities.”