William Kentridge

While I was still living in Dallas, I got a chance to visit the Modern Art Mseum of Fort Worth. If you are not familiar with this place, you must be. It is a classic Tadoa Ando display, a rare find in the United States. While in the Arts District of Fort Worth, it may be even more important to cross the street and visit the Kimball Art Museum, a Louis Kahn masterpiece. I had seen many pictures of the Kimball before visiting and the thing that caught my attention the most was the proportions Kahn uses. They are expertly executed and imbue the space with pre-existing knowledge. The art seemed to be happy to be there and respectful of such a vibrant interior.


Anyway, at the Modern Art Musuem of Forth Worth, a South African artist William Kentridge displayed an extensive exhibit of many of his experimental short films. Kentridge does stop motion animation with drawings. He works on the same sheet of paper and continues to add and subtract medium by drawing and erasing. This act gives his art a life span. The remnants of the erased pencil last on the page and continue to build layer upon layer of depth. Kentridge's art is completely unique and worth a view.

Toil Theory

To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,' "Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. Genesis 3:17

I became interested in this verse many years ago one Sunday morning as some pastor, somewhere was of course, blabbing about this fateful occurrence in Genesis. I began to wonder how this verse applied to modern life, as not all of us do manual labor to make a living. I always imagined Adam hunched over in a field digging ditches and sweating somewhere in Iraq, really hot, not too psyched about the prospect of another couple hundred years of doing the same.

There came a point, even very early on in history when not necessarily everyone had to work like this for their food. Solomon for instance pretty much didn't do anything hard in his life. He just chilled on some drank and got crunk with his homies and was real smart. I then began to ponder, how does this toil apply to someone like Solomon, or even myself.

A lot of people like to say, "everything happens for a reason." In the past I had never really agreed with this statement. There are plenty of things that happen in ones daily life that apparently have no purpose, and this is where I believe this toil comes into play. It can strike anyone anytime.

I began to define this toil as: anything that happens that is generally annoying and frustrating, yet has no real deeper consequence. Examples of this include: tripping, locking your keys in your car, the cable going out, mosquitos, no air conditioning, clothing stains etc.

So if we go back to everything happens for a reason, this must explain why these instances occur. Because it is toil, and we must endure.

Steve Nashtown

It's cold outside.