Way Ahead Threads: blogging

March 7, 2009

Reincarnated

It's been over a year since I last posted on Way Ahead Threads, but I'm here to stay now. I wandered off to do a blog called Hot Flash Fan, celebrating a landmark piece of fiber art created in the 1980s by a collaborative led by Anne Stewart Anderson and facilitated by Judy Chicago. That blog slowly expanded to include feminist artists I located on flickr and through web searches. Meanwhile, I started doing a mail art project called It's Only a Book, where I post daily small works of art. And all the while my original blog was trucking along.

I suppose you've already seen the likely difficulty here: too many things to keep up with smoothly. And now enough time has elapsed with each blog that I can make some sensible groupings. Sometimes you've got work through the chaos in order to discover what wants to exist.

Today I imported all of the posts from Hot Flash Fan to this location. This blog, then, now, will include fiber art, feminist art, and my art except for the daily mail art, which I'll continue to post on It's Only a Book. Leave a comment and let me know how you like the new system.

Also, if I can sort through how to move just a few posts at a time, I'll be importing additional posts that show my embroidery. That seemed a bit more complicated, so it may take a bit longer.

Meanwhile, thanks for stopping by!

Artist Statement

In 2005, a ruling of the Judicial Council of the United Methodist Church upheld a local pastor in his decision to refuse church membership to a person because that person was/is gay. Learning of the Council's decision, I, as a matter of conscience, cut all ties* with the United Methodist Church, including the bonds of ordination.

In 2008, I started deconstructing (literally) a copy of my 2003 memoir Grace and making it into mail art. I've recently realized that tearing my book to shreds was in part an act of frustration brought on by the Judicial Council ruling, which made the book historical nonfiction rather than contemporary reality.

Everything I said in the book about love remains true. However, the things I said about the United Methodist Church's theology and polity -- how, for instance, we believe in prevenient grace and that God, rather than any individual pastor, leads and allows people into membership -- are now false.

This blog and my art are a call to the UMC to remember its heritage, mission, and ministry; to renounce its apostasy from its theological heritage; and to return to being a church rather than a country club for the supposed elite.

This blog and my art are also a shout of welcome to friends and a space of comfort and joy for the dechurched, the nonchurched, and the churched of all shapes and sizes and sexes and textures.

*except the ties of friendship with people who as a matter of conscience remain within the UMC and there work toward reformation

Way Ahead Threads

March 7, 2009

Reincarnated

Resources

Fabulous Feminist Links, some of which are explicit