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| Jul 29, 2010 - 06:44 PM |
Queen City News - Helena's FREE Weekly Newspaper |
Helena, Montana |
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It isn’t easy to convey with words the essence of the latest project by Helena artist Tim Holmes. It’s experienced in an “art performance” consisting of a reception dotted with monitors showing his work, a narrated gallery slide show, and a chapel “service” accompanied by films he’s made.
“It’s not really describable,” he admitted during a recent conversation at his rambling, art-crammed studio on Hoback Street. Nevertheless, he gave it a shot: “It’s kind of a three-dimensional poetry project”, adding, “It’s all about the value of the body, and what I’m trying to do is invite a dialogue between art and religion.”
In the third and final part of his one-night performance Thursday at the Holter Museum, Holmes had painted mystical texts from various religions traditions in ink on the skin of models, and, as they gracefully moved and posed, the words spelled out a phrase, and, at the end, the 23rd Psalm, with a moving narration by his late father, the Rev. Robert Holmes.
The bodies in the films may not be what you’d expect, although many are young and lithe. Some are older and surprisingly affecting as a result, including that of his father. The message isn’t commercial. It could be described as spiritual yet earthy, which may be exactly what Holmes has in mind.
“Our bodies are the leaves of God,” the words spell out, a quote from St. Teresa of Avila.
A self-described devout Christian, Holmes has been an artist for 30 years, mainly doing bronze sculpture and drawings of the human body. Working with nude models for so long set him musing on the conflicted and schizophrenic ways our culture views the human body, from the early spiritual and mystical portrayals to today’s “commodification” of the body as nothing more than a tool for satisfaction through some form of consumerism.
The second, slide-show part of his performance focused on this aspect by showing advertising images from Europe and the U.S. over the years. They start off relatively benign and get increasingly blatantly sexual over time – “transition of body to commodity”, as Holmes put it in his narration.
“If we can’t have the body, the product will do”, he said, showing a slide of a man with a bar code tattooed on the back of his neck.
How we view our own bodies is another area of inquiry for the artist, who noted the alienation many Americans seem to have from their own physical selves. “Who should fix it?” he asks. “Is it a secular or a religious problem?”
And, since there is surprisingly little discourse about this issue in our society, he said that it’s left to the artist to explore the connections between the sacred and the sensual elements of the body. This is important work because, Holmes believes, neglect of the body leads to neglect of the earth, and, “we respond with violence when we cannot feel the connection”.
Specific examples abound. Former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft is shown in the Justice Building in Washington, D.C., in front of the bare-breasted Spirit of Justice statue, which he later had strategically draped. A woman with an average-sized body stands in front of a funhouse mirror, which shows her distorted reflection as short and pudgy.
Holmes’ art performance touches on pornography, cutting and physical/sexual abuse, plastic surgery, anorexia, cosmetics and other cultural practices that involve our bodies, gradually drawing parallels that illustrate a statement he made earlier at his studio: “We are a culture of puritan principles overlain with a thin veneer of pornography and commercialism, so the body is abused both ways.”
After the performance, he asked for audience response and got some thoughtful comments and questions. One person found it a “spiritual experience”; another wanted to explore the sociological significance of tattoos; another wondered how to celebrate the body and love God at the same time.
Tim Ljunggren, an Episcopal priest in Great Falls, videotaped the performance for use in a documentary. He said he had shown Holmes’ films to his congregation during a service and, while most found them enlightening, a couple of people were confused or didn’t think it was appropriate in a church.
Holmes has shown his recent work in religious settings and will spend six weeks this fall working on the project at a Washington, D.C., seminary. He will then head to Vienna, Austria, for a two-year stay while his wife teaches there.
While he doesn’t always find a receptive audience for his ideas, it’s clear that won’t deter the effort. “Somebody’s got to do something about it,” Holmes said, “and I’m sticking my neck out.”
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The Queen City News is published every Wednesday in Helena, MT, by Mossback Media, LLC.
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