The big news lately is that I have been selected for an exhibition in St. Louis at the White Flag Gallery. There are 4 other artists in the show this year. It is designed to highlight several B.F.A. and M.F.A. graduates from the St. Louis area. The exhibition will be up from May 17 - June 21. I was unable to attend the opening because I am currently down south working, but several of my friends attended the opening and took some great pictures of the show. I have 7 32”x32” photographs hanging in the gallery. I encourage everyone who is in the St. Louis area to check out the work. I also was selected to have one of my photographs on the large banner outside the gallery. It is pretty crazy to see my image printed at 10 ft. by 25 ft. on the street! This is a great opportunity for me, and I am really excited about the opportunity to show my work, especially in the St. Louis area.

We had a nasty ice storm this week that managed to suspend public school all week. SIUC was only out of classes for a day and a half, but apparently it was the first time class had been canceled due to weather in over 20 years. This is the side of my house the night after the storm. It looks like snow on the ground, but is actually 3-4 inches of rock hard ice. It was fun to ride a makeshift snowboard/skateboard until the board flew out from under me and threw me flat on my back on the ice. My wrist is still very upset with myself for that. You can view a larger version of this and some other photos from that night here.

Emily and I went to St. Louis last Saturday and saw the Bodyworlds 3 exhibit at the St. Louis Science Center.  Bodyworlds is a traveling science exhibit that displays real bodies of dead humans.  It sounds grotesque, but the exhibit uses a scientific method called plastination, which preserves all of the body’s muscles, organs, and tissue after death.  The bodies look like fake plastic models, but they are actually real bodies that have been donated to the exhibit.  It is truly a remarkable experience to view the human body in this manner.  Imagine standing in front of your mirror without any skin on your body.  That is basically what the exhibit looks like, and it surprisingly not disgusting.  Emily has a fairly squeamish stomach and she had no problem viewing the exhibit.  Emily and I both came away from the exhibit with a greater appreciation of the human body and it’s staggering complexity.  It is impossible for me to believe that the human body was created exclusively from the evolutionary process.  The mark of God’s infinite wisdom and power are so clearly evident in his creation of man.  I encourage everyone within the St. Louis area to take a look at this exhibit, it is definitely worth the price.  The St. Louis exhibit is on display until March 2, 2008. 

I visited East St. Louis last Saturday and attempted to make some quality photographs and conversation.  It was a pretty rough day.  I managed to walk away with a roll of film exposed and very very little interaction with residents.  I delivered two portraits to people I had photographed on the last visit.  The first photograph was comprised of a family, and the second featured two young men and a young woman, all in their mid 20s.  It was a very depressing and discouraging day to say the least.  I left an hour before sunset, almost admitting my defeat for the day and retreating back to Carbondale for the evening.  The project continues to be extremely challenging on many levels.  It is creatively and artistically challenging to create photographs that are singularly different from each other because of the uniformness of the housing project.  Many of my backgrounds become overused and repeatable.  It is emotionally challenging to document a community of people that you can only visit once a week, and not share their experiences at all times.  I constantly ask myself why I am doing this project, but I somehow always find the resolve within to continue working no matter how discouraged I become.  I am planning on visiting again this Wednesday.

As usual, the New York Times has posted another hotly debated article about the existence of God and the problem of suffering on their website.  This offering comes from Stanley Fish, who is a law professor at FIU in Miami.  The article talks about two recently published books that debate the existence of God and how God can allow suffering to exist in the world.  The same argument has been made for centuries, and continues to be a paramount problem for many unbelievers.  I am not posting this to explain or argue for or against the article, but rather to point to the vast popularity of articles such as this and the commentary that always accompanies them.  I present this popularity as a very simple and basic rationale for at least contending that a) religion and God continues to be the most talked about and thought about issue in the history of the world and b) that this fact alone leads one to consider why this is so.  If God does not exist, and the issue of his existence is meaningless, then why does this one topic continue to pervade the modern discourse year after year?  I offer a simple explanation - Romans 1:20 - For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature,have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.Why is the issue of God so important within popular media and culture? Because the attributes of God are all around us, within nature, and we desire to know these questions because God has placed them within our hearts. This is why religion continues to dominate the mind of America and the world.

So Halloween 2007 has come and gone.  It brought with it an interesting party at my house and some great costumes. This is Chase and I dressed in our costumes. I am Chase’s stalker, complete with a mock-up board of his blog.  Chase is a depressed emo kid. There were about 25 or 30 people in my small house.  I was slightly afraid the foundation was going to crack and we were all going to fall through the floor.  Luckily, that didn’t happen, although I did manage to knock over a gravestone in a local cemetery.  My apologies to the deceased and their family.  It was an honest mistake.  

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