The Touch of the Master's Hand...

This last weekend, I went to see the new exhibit at the BYU Museum of Art--'Carl Bloch: The Master's Hand.'  It opened this Friday, and has been hyped quite a bit through various church outlets.  I venture a guess that most people don't know who Carl Bloch is.  In a way, Carl Bloch represents the end of an era.  He painted Classical style religious paintings and large altarpieces in the later 1800s.  Bloch didn't get much recognition during his lifetime mainly because his style of painting was eclipsed by the growing modern art movements of the time.

During the mid-1900s, the LDS church started to use his paintings in just about everything from magazines to pamphlets and even movies.  I would venture to guess that every Mormon church house in the world has at least two of his paintings somewhere in the building.

 The Church has been in negotiations with various people for several years to put this exhibit together.  The main focus is five large altarpiece paintings created by Bloch.  One of these paintings is "Christ Healing the Sick at Bethesda," which the MOA acquired in 2001.  The other four altarpieces haven't moved from their churches in Europe since they were completed over 120 years ago.  No one has ever been able to see all of these paintings in one place before now.  So it's fair to say that this is a very special collection that BYU has here.

I have never been as impressed at the MOA as I was this last Friday.  I was genuinely moved as I viewed some real masterpieces.  Bloch had a special ability to tell a story through art, and to convey a broad range of emotions through his work.  I wanted to show you some of the highlights from the exhibit that really stuck out to me.

The first painting you view as you enter the exhibit depicts doubting Thomas as he meets the resurrected Christ.  The pictures I'm posting here really don't do this justice.  Each of the altarpiece paintings is more than ten feet tall, with most of the figures being larger than life size.  I love the way Thomas is depicted here--humbly kneeling and penitent.  He's overcome with emotion as he realizes that Christ has overcome death.  The colors and details here are wonderful (I particularly like how Bloch treated the worn and faded red in Thomas' robe).

This altarpiece shows Jesus in Gethsemane.  The Biblical account does not give us details about the angel that came to the Savior to strengthen him as he suffered in the garden.  Because of this, artists often struggle to depict this event.  Oftentimes, the angel is shown hovering over Christ, while the Savior seemingly takes no notice of them.  Other times, a simple beam of light is shown, while the source of the light in not visible.  Carl Bloch shows us a much more personal story in this painting.  You'll notice that Jesus' arms are clasped in prayer, yet they hang limply to the ground.  His expression is one of exhaustion and sadness.  The angel in this painting is just as central to the painting as Christ is.  The two of them are contrasted starkly against the dark background of the night.  I can't help but wonder what it is the angel might have said to Christ that night to strengthen him.  Or maybe there were no words, and the angel just provided a shoulder to cry on.

This painting--"Christ and Boy"--was one of the major highlights of the exhibit.  I love the relationship between Christ and the small boy.  Look at how protective Christ is.  The gesture with Christ's left hand suggests the verses of the scriptures that say we need to become like this Child.  What's barely visible in the painting is the tears in Jesus' eyes. 

This picture shows a crew installing "Christ with Boy" at the Museum of Art. It gives you a sense of scale of how large these paintings are.  Something to note: when looking at this painting in the gallery, who are you eye level with--Jesus, or the boy?

This is the last main altarpiece you see at the museum--"Come Unto Me."  This is probably my favorite painting of the exhibit.  Look at the slice of humanity we see here.  We have a man in chains who appears to be anxious about being this close to Jesus.  Over his shoulder you can see a man who appears to be skeptical of the divinity of Christ.  In front of the Savior there is a lame man, as well as a humble beggar.  There's also a mourning widow in black, and a blind man over her shoulder.  Finally, there's the child on the left side of the canvas.  Aside from Christ, this is the only character here who is looking at you.  A common theme in Bloch's paintings is a child that looks at the viewer; inviting them to be part of the painting.  Here, the girl almost seems to be saying "are you going join us?"  I really can't tell in you in writing how impressive and touching these paintings are.

The exhibit is free, but you either need to register for tickets online, or grab standby tickets at the front desk.  You can register for tickets at carlbloch.byu.edu .  I personally had no problem getting in on standby tickets on opening day.  Also, you can checkout iPads for the exhibit that give you a neat guided tour.  Currently, the iPad checkout is free because only about 20% of the content for the exhibit has been loaded on them, but a museum worker informed me that the iPads should have all the content put on them in about a week.  At that point, iPad rentals will cost $3.

Writer's Block

I'm still dealing with some hardcore writer's block.  Or maybe it's a creativity block.  I really want to start a new painting, but I can't come up with any ideas right now (by the way, any thoughts would be appreciated).  So this post will probably be a bit disjointed.

I'm trying a new thing right now.  It's called "cooking my own food."  When I worked at Taco Bell, I got 50% off everything in the food court.  It made sense to eat there, like, everyday.  When I was on a mission, members of the various congregation usually fed us around 5-7 times a week.  Now, I'm starting to see the financial costs of eating out all the time, so I'm resolving to cook for myself more often.  The nice thing: thanks to the frozen food section, I can eat all the junk that I normally have at fast food places at home.  Hello cheddar peppers and chicken strips.  Also, I got a bunch of Hot Pockets for snacks.  I'm very aware that this means I'm white trash.




Yes, I eat absolute garbage.  But that's the nice thing about having the metabolism of a greased cheetah strapped to a rocket and set on fire while being chased by ninjas.

Thank you, MS Paint.

I also saw Toy Story 3 this last week.  I can't believe how the Pixar guys keep topping themselves.  Surely, they must hit movie nirvana sometime, and then eventually start making lower quality films, but that isn't anywhere in sight right now.  Anyway, it was truly beautiful and the ending was more emotional than any animated film I've ever seen.  If you haven't seen it yet, stop reading and go see it.  Now. 

There are rumors that Toy Story 3 could actually win Oscars outside of the 'Best Animated Picture' category.  That reminds me of this awesome trailer I saw the other day called [the movie's title].  Here, take a look.

What's funny is that the YouTube comment's section for this video reads just like the trailer.  And I quote:

"Incendiary comment demeaning women and ignoring the general theme, while focusing on a body part or function. Rampant misspelling and grammatical errors intertwined with offensive language, ensuring that readers are left with a sense that the general populous and especially modern youth are self-absorbed unscrupulous ignoramuses."

"@someotherattentionseekingpost­er, unproductive name calling based purely on difference in opinion; possibly some reference involving the Third Reich"

"@Jerkposter INCREDIBLY THOUGHTLESS ARGUMENT DESCRIBING THE WAYS YOU ARE WRONG AND THEREFORE HOMOSEXUAL, ALL IN CAPITALS AND MISSPELLED."

Gotta love the Internet.

A Talk I Recently Gave on Baptism

I've actually been meaning to write on here for a while, but have had a bit of a writer's block on what to actually write about.  

...Come to think about it, I've had a writer's block on everything I've been wanting to write about.  I couldn't even think of an appropriate Facebook status to report the other day  (you know things are boring when you can't even write a sentence about what's going on right now).

So I decided to share with you some thoughts that I recently shared at my BYU student ward a couple of weeks ago.  For those who are not members of the LDS faith; we don't have a regular paid clergy at our church, and the weekly sermons come from different members of the congregation week to week.  It helps each of us learn from each others' thoughts on various subjects, and if you don't like the current speaker, you can take comfort that he's only going to be talking to us for the next 15 minutes.  I'm grateful for every opportunity I have to speak to a congregation because I'm pretty sure that I actually learn a lot more from preparing a talk than the congregation does from listening to it.  Plus, I get to practice some public speaking skills that I may need for future world domination plans.

This last time, I was asked to speak about the broad topic of baptism.  As a missionary, I probably gave seven talks on this topic and taught countless lessons on it during my last two years.  But this time, I really struggled with something to say.  Most of the males in the congregation had been on missions as well, and also had lots of experience on the topic of baptism.  So I naturally wanted to say something that was new and a little bit unique.

Well, during my mission and through a couple of other study sessions, I found some interesting little facts here and there.   Most people who are familiar with the Bible know of story of Jesus' baptism:

 "The cometh Jesus from Galilee to Jordan unto John, to be baptized of him...And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water: and, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him: and lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."--Matt 3: 13, 16-17.

So that's pretty familiar stuff to most of Christianity.  Now, a while ago I was browsing the Bible Dictionary, which is found at the back of the LDS edition of the Bible.  The Bible Dictionary is exactly what its name implies--a dictionary for Biblical terms.  I find reading it fascinating (side note:  the unsaid suffix to any usage of the word 'fascinating' are the two words 'to me').  Anyway, there's a little entry in there titled 'Gospels, Harmony of.'  In this entry, you'll find something that looks like this:

In the left-hand column, you'll find a chronological listing of the events in Jesus' life, followed by their location, and then a scriptural reference where you can find this event in the four main Gospels.  As you can (barely) see from the above photo, some events occur in multiple Gospels, others occur in only one.

Now, at the end of the Gospel of John, we read: "And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written."  So if we take that statement at face value, that means that the stuff we read in the Bible is really only scratching the surface of the ministry of Jesus.  So we're going to assume that because an event has been written by one of the four Gospel writers, it must be an event that was somewhat more important to that writer than some of the other events in the life of Christ.

In the Harmony of the Gospels table, we'll see 315 events in the life of Jesus listed (yeah, I actually did count that number up--like I said earlier; my life is not that exciting).  Of those events, only 29 were deemed important enough to be written of in all four Gospels.  Some of these events include feeding the five thousand, the triumphal entry, and the betrayal of Judas. 

Now, in this table, we'll find one last column that I haven't mentioned yet: Latter-Day Revelation.  This column lists spots that these various events are mentioned in scripture unique to Latter-Day Saints (i.e.: The Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, etc.).  Of the 29 above events, only three are found in all four Gospels and in Latter-Day Revelation--according to this table.  Those events are: John the Baptist's Prophetic Ministry, The baptism of Jesus, and The crucifixion.  The reason the resurrection of Jesus isn't one of the three is because it is actually listed as a couple dozen individual events, but it is covered in all four Gospels plus Latter-Day Revelation (it's a similar story with all the events leading up to Jesus' death, including his suffering in Gethsemane).

So if we were to go off the Harmony of the Gospels' table, it would be fairly safe to say that the three most written about events in the life of Jesus Christ would be:
1.) His baptism and the ministry of John the Baptist.
2.) His death and the events surrounding it.
3.) His resurrection.
(side note 2: Yes, I did count all these things up myself.  No, I do not have a social life.)

Why is it that Jesus' baptism is important enough that every source we've talked about found time to write about it?  I personally believe (and this is just my musings)  that the key rests in the word 'covenant.'  When any of us is baptized, we make a covenant to God that we will keep His commandments and take the name of Jesus Christ upon us.  Jesus has always been the perfect example to each of us, and his example would not be complete without showing us that we need to follow him and be baptized as well.  By being baptized, Christ is essentially telling each of us that there is a path to follow, and that being baptized if one of the very first steps.

I took this covenant upon myself over thirteen years ago.  And I'm sorry to report that sometimes I kind of trample on it or forget about it.  As I was doing this research, I realized that this was pretty important stuff.  It's almost as if the scriptures are saying "these things are important.  I keep repeating them so you don't forget them!"  May we all continue to remember the promises that we have made, and keep them.

Anyway, that's all an outline of some of the things that I spoke about  a couple of weeks ago.  You know, for someone with writer's block, I sure did ramble for a while there.  My congratulations to you if you're still reading this. I know it's kind of a long post, but I found it fascinating [to me].  Please, feel free to comment and share some of your thoughts, I would love to hear from you!

Top 5 Halloween Videos

This post combines two of my favorite things in the world:  Halloween and YouTube.  Halloween was THE holiday I looked forward to as a kid.  I would often start thinking about what my Halloween Costume would be right around November 1st or 2nd.  Maybe it's a bad thing to be into the whole monsters and demons stuff, but I just get a kick out of the costumes, the makeup and the decorations.

And YouTube is my pastime.  I think it's pretty much my go to source of entertainment when I'm bored, and sharing stupid YouTube videos with my roommates and friends is one of my favorite activities.

And so, without further ado, I give you my top five favorite Halloween YouTube videos:

5.  Human Transformer:  Halloween just wouldn't be Halloween without costumes.  People pay big bucks to get the best costumes and win contests at parties (if you're still looking for ideas, see CostumesDiscounters.com--be warned, their 'Humorous' costumes are kind of dirty-- or BuyCostumes.com).   There are a few different videos like this out on the Internet, but this one wins for clever engineering, good transformation, and the little jig the guy does towards the end.

4. Never Scare a Black Guy:  This one really needs no introduction.  It's short and sweet.



3.  Sorority Girls From Hell:  A very animated girl tries to explain to her date the 50's b-movie she saw the other night; Sorority Girls From Hell!  The theme songs got stuck in my head for a week after I saw this.



2.  Halloween Pumpkin Massacre:  Common horror film ingredients: sharp objects, screaming victims, and lots of gore.  Now combine that with talking pumpkins.   Natural connection, right?



1. Scare Tactics:  Gary the Babysitter:  Scare Tactics is a hidden camera show on cable that gets its laughs by scaring the pants off of its victims.  Oftentimes they go overboard with some extreme pranks, but they've also had some real gems.  Some of my favorite vids on YouTube include 'Bigfoot,' 'Alien Abduction,' and 'Rat Monster;'  but this one takes the number one spot mainly because of Gary's reaction.   There's just something endlessly entertaining about feminine guys screaming.

Have a wonderful Halloween!!

Ode to Taco Bell

So yesterday I was sitting in the BYU Cougareat enjoying my new favorite food ever: The XXL Chalupa (with Chicken) from Taco Bell.

Look at that thing.... This contains a double helping of meat (only a couple other items at Taco Bell contain a double serving of meat; one of them is the 700+ calorie Grilled Stuff Burrito).  On top of the meat you got nacho cheese, red strips, sour cream, three cheese blend, lettuce, and some fiesta salsa, all in between an extra large deep fried flatbread shell.  This basically contains all the stuff you get in two chalupas inside of one giant, deep fried shell.  That's significant, because my regular Taco Bell lunch consists of two Baja Chicken Chalupas (no drink, I go with just plain water) for the price of about $6.50.  Now I can get basically the same thing for the price of about $4.50! Bwaahaaha.

Now, you're probably asking why I know so much about Taco Bell and why I seem to have a very unhealthy relationship with it.  Allow me to elaborate.

When I first got to BYU as a freshmen in 07', one of the first things I did was seek out a job.  I went and applied at the BYU Cougareat--the cafeteria in the Student Center on campus.  I was kind of hoping that I'd get to work in the Subway, but it wasn't meant to be.  The Taco Bell was really busy and needed some help, so I got put to work there right on the spot.  I was put on cashier duty, having never eaten at a Taco Bell in my life up to this point in time.  Needless to say, that first day was pretty rough  ("Gordita?  Enchurito?  Mexican Pizza?  I'm pretty sure y'all are making up names now.").

This is a painting of me working at Taco Bell.  I created it myself.

But I soon came to love the job and the food there.  One of the best perks about working at the Cougareat is that you get a card that allows you to get half off of anything there up to $6.  That means I saved $90 a month on food!  And I probably ate the Chalupas at Taco Bell three times a week.  Everyone that worked there knew that I had a thing for the deep fried goodness that is the Chalupa.  When it finally came time for me to quit my job and go on a mission, the manager of TB gave me a going away present--A Giant Freakin' Chalupa!  This thing was seriously the size of a pizza.  It was so exciting.



This is a photograph of me with my giant chalupa. 

Now whenever I eat a XXL Chalupa, I think back on that wonderful day that I was presented the giant, pizza-sized gift that I ate all by myself. Yeah, I have a TB addiction.