photo by Sweetmart

via NPR

HT: Josh Hanks

I am amazed at this work by Justin Gerard. See his gallery here. I have come back and looked at this over and over again. It is magical. Click to enlarge.

Amazing.

There are much more here. And you can read the fascinating story behind the anonymous creator.

Thanks to Vivian Cochrane (an art teacher from my high school) for the link.

I just spent the last hour with my son looking through the fine illustrations of Zach Franzen and Justin Gerard. He’s 6 and spends a lot of time drawing. He wants to be an illustrator some day (as well as a writer, actor, movie-maker, preacher, etc.) so I love putting these guys in front of him as examples. (Especially since they are operating out of a worldview in happy devotion to King Jesus.) Zach actually did an illustration for one of my stories that was published a couple of years ago. It remains an ambition to work with Justin in some capacity. (I mean other than our secret work for the Shadow Government run from the Moon. From the futuristic base on the Moon. Lunarville. It’s called Lunarville.)

I saw today that Justin (pictured above -with me- doing Blue Steel or a variant) has a new sketchbook out for 2011. I promptly ordered it to enjoy for myself and to serve as inspiration for my young future/current illustrator. I say current because a few days ago he created a fine, comic story, well-illustrated, about onions. It did not make me cry, but I did laugh out loud.

Maybe Justin hasn’t sold out of his Sketchbook yet. (You can order it here.) And be on the lookout for more fantastic stuff from him and Zach.

From Zach’s Gallery

From Justin’s Sketchbook

Marriage is a poem, but it’s other things too.

A friend of mine is doing a project I wanted to share with you.

He and his wife are photographers and they have a thriving business in Huntington, West Virginia called Boekell Photography (Boekell is their name). They aren’t like your aunt’s cousin who has a digital camera and a Facebook page (no offense). They are professionals and this is their vocation. They are artists.

Anyway, now that I’ve made everyone and their aunt’s cousin mad, I’ll tell you about this artful, uncomplicated project that I’ve enjoyed watching.

They are taking one picture each, without consulting one another, and then sharing them together in something (I had to look up) called a diptych. They are going to do this every day for one year. They are using only an iPhone and only Instagram for editing.

They started it on their 3rd anniversary. It’s called the life.together project.

The results have been neat so far. Go over and check out the site where they are daily displaying these pairings of separate things into a joined up work of art. And maybe think of how beautiful marriage is.

Marriage is a poem. It is a diptych, an ongoing work of art. We are not really less when we are paired, only more.

This, obviously, is one of their images.

I continue to occasionally dream that I will someday write a story worthy of being illustrated by Justin Gerard. In other news…

In one of your classic dumb moves, the Peterson brothers have asked me to speak again at Hutchmoot. In one session, I’m privileged to tag-team with oustanding children’s author Jennifer Trafton on the subject of imagination, play, wonder, and children’s literature. I’m excited about that. (The original line-up of Jennifer and Sarah Clarkson would have been amazing –but hey, I’m happy to come off the bench since, sadly, Sarah isn’t able to be there this year.) Anyway, here’s one semi-coherent, sort-of- sentence from my (thus-far) rambling notes:

“Fairy-tales and the existence of bogey, or boogeyman…and Christianity as Dragon-fighting religion (or, Why Saint George is better than Precious Moments).”

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Photo by Josiah C.P. Smith. (Click to enlargify image.)

I stoled this quotation from Justin Taylor who stoled it from some other dude. It’s Martin Luthur on the value of literature to prepare the way for good Theology –though not necessarily the way you think. I call it very true.

It sort of has some of the same themes from this post I did at the Rabbit Room about the spiritual value of imaginative literature. Me and Luther, you know…the um, er….top sources for this sort of thing. Ahem.

“I am persuaded that without knowledge of literature pure theology cannot at all endure, just as heretofore, when letters [literature] have declined and lain prostrate, theology too, has wretchedly fallen and lain prostrate; nay, I see that there has never been a great revelation of the Word of God unless he has first prepared the way by the rise and prosperity of languages and letters, as though they were John the Baptists. . . . Certainly it is my desire that there shall be as many poets and rhetoricians as possible, because I see that by these studies, as by no other means, people are wonderfully fitted for the grasping of sacred truth and for handling it skillfully and happily.”

Luther

Note: This is a repost from a few years ago.

“Reason respects the differences, and imagination the similitude of things.”

P.B. Shelley, A Defense of Poetry

By: Nils Eisfeld HT: 22 Words