Aesthetic Evangelists

Jaron Crespi

Evelyn Serrano

Arts and Community Engagement

4/4/16

The Influence of Your Personal Sphere

The artist has great influence upon their personal sphere of influence. Through community-based art, a society can be transformed from the inside out through the power of the artist. In Grant Kester's essay Aesthetic Evangelists: Conversion and Empowerment in Contemporary Community Art, he warns the artist creating community-based works of failed processes that have exploited communities and the danger of a priori "solutions." He explains these obstacles by bringing to light the, "...Representational politics of community art… the current ideological and cultural context within which community-based public art must operate, as well as its historical antecedents… and a short case study of a particular project [Dawn Dedeaux's, "Soul Shadows: Urban Warrior Myths]," (Kester).

Within the representational politics of community art Kester introduces two interrelated meanings of the term "representation." The first of the two, "...Refers to the act of political representation - a process by which the community, through its own electoral procedures, selects an individual subject to speak its collective will in political debates, etc." (Kester). The second mode of representation (symbolic representation), "...Occurs when the delegate confirms and legitimates his or her political power through the act of literally re-presenting or exhibiting the community itself, in the form of demonstrations and other political performances," (Kester). There is a problem which Kester points out with the latter of the two which is the artist's ability or inability to "exhibit" a specific community, and the authority to declare a position that is sanctioned by that group's social experience. Kester points this out with an extreme example quoting Alice Walker, in regards to being identifying with African women who undergo genital mutilation, saying, as she describes it, "...She received her own 'patriarchal wound' when she was shot in the eye with a pellet gun by her brother when she was seven years old," (Kester). The artist is warned to not claim somebody else's suffering as their own, and then to create an art piece out of it apart from an acceptance and recognition of a certain community who has delegated that priviledge to them, if it isn't the artist's experience to begin with in the first place. It is crucial for the artist to approach a politically coherent community with a spirit of humility, not knowing-it-all but with a teachable attitude and willing to surrender their pre-supposed lenses in exchange for understanding through being taught by the community.

Historically our culture has approached poor and homeless people as a deformed and morally flawed society, whose distorted morality bears relation to their economic, emotional, social, and creative "disempowered" status. The primary focus of our society concerning the poor and homeless has been on their moral regeneration as opposed to any systematic changes in the surrounding society. Kester states that, "At the center of this model is a matrix of personal transformation derived originally from evangelism, due in part to the fact that many of the most influential charity agencies and social reform movements of the late 18th and early 19th centuries were sponsored by evangelicals and evangelical denominations," (Kester). Not only has the church been partially responsible for the cultural focus on moral regeneration rather than a systematic tweak in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, but there is a lack of a societal change and activism within the church body today. In the late 60's and early 70's christian artist Keith Green wrote songs provoking the church make lifestyle changes that would image the compassionate, servant-hearted, humble Jesus they so boldly proclaimed to follow. He wrote songs that say, "Go to the hungry ones and fill them with his bread… Is your house open to let strangers enter there? Give to the least of them, show them someone cares," (Go To The Hungry Ones - Keith Green). Through his message during that time many homes began to open up to people in need of food and shelter. Communities were totally transformed through Keith Green's direct influence on the christian community during that time. The work of Keith Green did not demand obedience to a moral law. His art changed his immediate social system and mode of thinking to help provide for the real needs of people. Keith Green exemplifies how an artist can directly influence his or her direct personal sphere of influence and witness the transformation of a community starting with their life and then spreading outwards and beyond.