¡Colores!; 407; Icons: Windows to the Soul; Robert Lentz Interview 3

rumors are those important work will be complete and humor or were at that also was a monday and now here so they are very supportive of that sort of thing yes there has

been caterpillars it is important to me to a very important and it was one that i poured my heart into my family's russian my family's cossack the cost six with the famous pogroms against jews in ukraine the problem comes from the way the polls had concentrated the jews into ghettos but the russians certainly didn't do anything to make it any better when they took over the western parts of eastern parts of poland and the awareness that in my own country skinheads and neo nazis are beginning to find the courage come out from under the rocks that scapegoating which has been so much a part of christian history is once again becoming permissible the realization of my own ancestors of probably slaughter jews and one of my great grandmother's was a true the meeting rick edwards who believes so strongly in some type of a

friendship between jews and christians so that the fabled well against one another can begin to dissolve it cited as russian as i possibly could that comes from an image of our lady of the sign which is famous in russia the jewels everything in that is perfectly the russian so that in a sense it's like forcing a dog and a cat to come together and learn how to live together you have jewish leaders russians and have the victim and bowles in one image so that the russians continue to talk about jews as if they were christ killers and everything else the political icon and realize that she whether it was himself a true that he only worship is a jew that the bible that they talk about includes the torah

which is falling that the barbed wire behind them is barb wire that would have surrounded the two that they generate so highly having lived in the nineteen forties a religion becomes something very taylor jones' suite with the passage of time the divine mystery is something frightening and it's performed at the divine mystery if were true to it brings a spike to dangerous memories decision if it's worth its weight in salt nice to remind us of the dangers memories at the root of what we believe god is not sweet and harmless got is a raging fire and also the

sense that we continue to do the evil that we have done until we named the evil that we have done that and the first step in stopping the evil is to name it and to look at it we christians did very little during world war two from the pope on down to help the jews when they were being slaughtered i wanted to express that in a catholic or christian image so we it's being appealed and so i was in vermont i didn't know how big it was going to be i didn't know anything about the idea of the cathedral for three years as a franciscan as a very young man and remembered the dead i owed an o to the old hispanic

people i had met in those days they taught me much about what it means to be a human being and i wanted to do something to say thank you to them i was the last person that they asked to pay the cathedral during the process of banning the cathedral so misinformed person started the letter writing campaign they own petition to get me out of there because it was not hispanic because it was not from santa fe no one realize that they have tried to find anyone they couldn't say it particularly hispanic people but the style the church in rome and ask called for a certain type of art i accepted the job gave for the most part the paintings to them and thus far as the market goes i give them eleven of the fourteen and again poured my heart into it they gave me so are apples and i tried to because the apple pie they gave me a sense of church from the top down based on giving

glory to the leaders and i tried to find some way that would include the people at the bottom us who have to go into the church and put up with the leaders something that would remind those who walked through the church on a daily basis people are going to pray that spirituality is not about death and spirituality is about life spirituality is about the life we live daily that includes birds and turtles and guitars and violins and children and bright colors as well as the religious authority figures and obedience let's talk about the power of the image as far as you can and savior tim walz is a very different than an american the power of image only for nearly two years

it hasn't so i should say that's part of the image it as a test case for the second largest one is the smell which we humans have used an armoured suits org the power of the images that its impact is immediate but it doesn't become an education that is extremely democratic form of communication the image impact says immediately we don't need to stop and think about it in order to be impacted and helps to stop and think about it after the impact wages what we wanted to be allies in the commercial world makes more than adequate use of those images to could convince us to do things we would not otherwise do the political world was the same thing most of us in the first world coming out of a home were too oriented culture

since the split from eastern orthodoxy value the word for more highly than we value of visual images or musical images therefore we discredit the power of the images become passive consumers of images would become the victims of images instead of surrounding ourselves with images it could do is good because whether we like it or not the images are there's an icon is like a window not to know their windows window doesn't stop it from being a window to be surrounded by by icons as a way of being surrounded by divine history whether we call the windows or not so hard thing doesn't want all of the planes armed your house is filled with iconic images from other cultures especially

americans aren't particularly moved by the images of icons of other cultures sea travel are primitive hand of windsor california christianity for me is like a chinese elm it comes out of a specific place in a specific time with all the limitations of that time and place and like the chinese on that has spread all over the world the chinese elm king live with bales of flats from russia a few seeds can cross and they are spread all across north america and look at the poor chinese film it doesn't know when the put its leaves out the springtime puts not assume the snow comes in a break slams he doesn't know when to let loose of its leaves early autumn still has its leaves the snow comes in its limbs break it grows like a weed grows very fast to get a shave were grateful for the shade but it's not a plant of this land and will probably never be a plant of this land may be millions of years from now will adapt itself to islam and

christianity is like that christianity was brought by well intentioned missionaries without any sense for the sacredness of this place christianity is very much concerned and socialism with the sacredness of time in history but there is very little about the sacredness of place you have the holy land yes one place it's called holy but we're nowhere else in the world is wholly the rest of the world as one as a place to escape from its volunteers the reality is that there are spirits everywhere and that the people of lived in a land noble spirits far better than anyone would just comes a johnny come lately in our ancestors who have been there for a hundred to three hundred years perhaps nowhere near long enough to know the spirits and if we have the native americans who have been here a form for tens of thousands of years who knows exactly how long they have been there people who know intimately the spirits of the slide to come in with our gabriel's and michaels and reveals another angels that our ancestors or perhaps jewish people have learned about another place and think that those of the only spear it stars foolishness my interest

only images that other on the esoteric they teach me the spirit of this land the land that i live in the land that i choose to live in the land that i hope to draw it in i know what's in the holy book the bible i studied that for eighteen years and beginning to learn about the holy mountains here and the rivers the spirits and inhabit these places that are also holy i need to be like a little child like an outlaw child like an apache child living with these images on a daily basis so that just as they learn by looking touching i can be humble enough to learn by looking and touching you're only we had talked earlier about how or you make some discoveries about your own ethnic background pre christian of a background is that somehow dc in a relationship with an american i never wanted to be a wannabe

the one of the apache to one of the global i think realizing the richness of my own pagan past gave me permission to accept the richness of the of the of the pupils here without being a wannabe michael to kansas as my slavic and sisters both well krohn was so similar to the apaches and knows more than the pueblo's that they would've been able to get along very well if they were fighting over a piece of what they would've understood one another very well spiritually but the spirits that they knew in the celtic lands of the slavic lanza not the spirits of the slide what good does it do need to investigate the ferry for gopher british isles where the spirits of the slavic words when i don't live there anymore when i never will if there were snow in the mountains spirits the kitchen a sea of this land it

impacts my life on a daily basis some abstract quality in their art and in boulder colo primitive art that's not present in the byzantine icons are in general western civilization i suppose they found more than the byzantine art and there isn't posts of romanesque western art a sense of the abstract there are things you can only say by moving into the abstract things about history but you can only see about moving into the abstract when you become a couple of history you become uncomfortable with the abstract you process the fascination with western europe in the last four five hundred years with the absolutely literal visual image that western europeans became more more uncomfortable with

mystery and therefore more more uncomfortable with the abstract there is more of the abstract present and byzantine art styles asians the wade clothing is represented things like that handle same things like western europeans and cope with icons icons are also called primitive another used to have a book of art history the icons of america in the twentieth century or the first century are somehow group back with the medieval art and yet there has been a constant progression within iconography and style not in content in style and the rebel who's changing content but i have plenty of examples in the past of how style has changed and the more eastern europeans became enamored with the culture of western europe more realistic there are constantly so that you reach a point where as i cannot refer to go completely spiral abstract like some of the ancient icons aren't probably not communicate with anybody in the first world i desire is

somehow to communicate to create ridges basically for caucasians and if and when they do that it will have to compromise some of the abstract of that so that you can actually communicating i could speak russian hearing from the camera and probably very few people would understand what i was singing it at me saying something what good would do it's forbidden to speak english on the liberation theology and there liberation theology was one of those things in monasteries it had been taught to be afraid of touch by communism scary radical out in left field what liberty up for liberation theology was uncovering human suffering and san francisco in my own life and the lives of other people the refugees from central america from south america and knowing them intimately even when i was russian orthodox going to chile to one of the orphanage is trying to work there for awhile

in being arrested by the secret police discovering the brutal face of injustice it's one thing to take the holy book and talk about it in platitudes of often romer somewhere it's another thing to be in the streets are filled with mud where people are living and dying there's a story of st nicholas that you know he came down to earth with another say tucson is so obscure that was john cash and they found president try to push a cart out of the mud in the middle of the russian talk about the woods and johnny cash and girlfriends high horse and started talking to the present about the value of suffering and nicolas gordin to the mud without usable noise knowing the holdup is bishop robes and started pushing the car got sagal and as a result nicholas has four five pieces of the russian calendar and john cash and has this feast on the twentieth of february which means she gets one every four years who has gotten in saying this is what's right and this is what's wrong all the fancy words mean

nothing unless you're going to do some what that says to me this whole story the mythology behind it is unless you're willing to get into the mud your soldiers and doing nothing when you're in the mud in the life you know like intimately and you have a right to speak about the problems of life whether they be abortion divorce remarry tj homosexuality doesn't matter don't pontificate about any of these things until you've walked while in the mud and into life so we're going to play your vision of religion i would say that religion as for the liberals my life anymore i interact with religion because i have religious customers spirituality is my life my living room is a place where i pray my life but it's about religion but justice for with religion as a

chemist is that it doesn't have a lot to do with life and so you know if you want me my legacy will be that a few people through my art will find the strength to walk out of the four walls and begin to experience god for themselves and that their lives will influence a few others will be like a stone thrown into a pond that as the ripples got farther and farther people with white skin recover that was people with brown and black skin of known for millennia their own experiences the truce where we have festival the purpose of icons in the church and the us tour of saint luc says he says about the legend of st louis seeking to be such an integral it's

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