Recent Aesthetic Encounters

Two artistic projects have recently caught my attention, and I feel like sharing them with all y'all here at the blog. The first of these, is Dappled Things.
Dappled Things is a relatively new journal of Catholic art and writing including essays, poetry and short fiction. I am saving up my meager student income for a subscription, but for now much of the content is available on the website. I highly recommend it, if you have any interest in the intersection between faith and art, whether you are Catholic or not. Roman Catholics, I find, are particularly good at creating art that deals with religious themes without being "religious fiction" in the sense of thumping a heavy hand on a bible every few sentences. For an example, see any piece of fiction by Miss Flannery O'Connor; judging by the content of Dappled Things, she seems to be their unofficial patron saint, which is a good sign. I also note that their definition of what makes a piece of art "Catholic" is not at all narrow, although they ask that it engage in some way with the Catholic tradition, even if only in a very subtle way.

The second glorious artistic discovery for me has been Spark.
Spark is a collaborative effort between artists working in different media. The 15th round just finished, and the art is going up on the online gallery over the next week. Two artists, say a writer and a photographer, are randomly paired. Each sends the the other an "Inspiration piece," some work in their medium, and each takes about 10 days to come up with a response inspired by what they were sent. The idea is to stretch yourself by both the time constraint and by trying to get inspiration from a new sort of subject.

I was introduced to Spark by the Wonderful Author of Without a Map, who has been participating for a few years. Despite my intense reserve about sharing my creative work others I decided to go ahead and participate in this round and you can read my short story, inspired by a lovely photograph from Mr. Brian MacDonald, here. At some point, my inspiration piece (a poem) should also be up, with Mr. MacDonald's response. While I am not terribly happy with my story, I think it had good elements, and it was worth writing just to know I could write a piece given the constraints.
I highly encourage those creative types who happen to read the blog to think about participating in the next round of Spark!