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Announcing the Giants & Pilgrims’ New Art & Music Project: Bellwether

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So it’s time for announcements and proclamations.

For each Giants & Pilgrims’ project we choose a theme and explore that theme with art & music. Last year we released Becoming, about the constant process of growing up. The year before that was Almanac No. 1 and the art & music was centered in the realm of family and proven love.

Where are Betony and my hopes and dreams taking Giants & Pilgrims for 2016? What will fuel the works of art & music?

Here’s what we hope to explore this year, in depth:

Belief.

What do Betony and I believe as individuals? As a married couple? What do we really cling to? What do we want to pass on to our children? What do we hold as important and utmost in our lives? The thing behind the thing behind the thing? What are the values and vision and world views that truly shape where we head as a family? What are the words we put towards the big questions of God, metaphysics, doctrine, discovery, and experience?

And this is just a starting place of the questions!

We’re calling the project Bellwether. It’s actually an old shepherding term. A bellwether is a sheep that is a little more aggressive, a little more obnoxious and hungry. (It’s known to get out of pens for food).

And so a bell is placed on it. This not only helps the shepherd know where the sheep is, but it also helps the sheep. As the bell wether wanders for greener pastures, the rest of the sheep follow to new fields of grass.

Betony and I are looking for bells to follow. We’re asking questions. We are hungry and we hope to find great fields this 2016.

We’ll be creating towards an end project to be released this fall/winter, but we plan to share the process as well. Each month Betony and I are choosing a theme that will be our centering of exploration and practice. We will dig in to this Bellwether theme to as the year progresses. January’s Bellwether theme is “clearing” – see our full exploration of that theme here tomorrow.

Sketchbook Project “Spectrum” Collaboration

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This moleskin sketchbook was filled up in a color spectrum as a collaboration between Kelly Cook and me. She gave me the book as a Christmas present. We passed it back and forth between us, each adding bits and pieces. We gave each page a loose color theme. It was a fun venue to just experiment and play without worrying about the end result. The book was created to be part of The Sketchbook Project, a crowd-sourced library that features thousands of artists’ books contributed by creative people from all around the world. I am mailing it off tomorrow!

See more of Kelly’s art and process here.

Sketchbook-project

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Sketchbook Project “Spectrum” – Kelly Cook & Betony Coons Collaboration from Tim Coons on Vimeo.

 

Giants & Pilgrims’ New Project: “Becoming”

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(Above: a piece in process from Betony titled “On Becoming an Artist”)

I’ve been surprised by something recently- I’ve been surprised that I am still growing.

Now, in all physical ways I’ve actually stopped growing. In fact, my body has peaked and I am really in the process of dying. I am no longer a youth heading to adulthood.

But you understand what I mean. I’m still growing: as a human being. I feel like I’m in this deep process of “becoming” the person I’m longing to be. Is it strange to be surprised by that?

I had the understanding, since I was young, that one day I would grow up. That I would be a wise (and, of course, boring) adult. That was the arrival point- to become a static human with a family and a job and a spouse, contributing to the civilized world.

Here’s where I’m surprised, and delightfully so. None of us are static. We are SO dynamic. In my family, in my wisdom, in my work, in my soul, I am still growing and reaching and enriching and stretching.. and becoming. We are always growing IN to these things, not UP to a stopping place. I find such comfort in that: there is no arrival point for the soul. Even in the deepest heavens we will always be reaching “further up and further in”, as C.S. Lewis writes when closing his Narnia series.

This view of a dynamic soul has only been compounded since being surrounded by my children. I’m captivated watching them come into personhood in such powerful ways. Not just everyday- Every moment. They are fountains and explosions of rapidly growing soul. I believe this is one of the greatest parts of parenthood. It’s a rebirth of wonder from the place of joyous spectator.

So it is from this “surprise and delight” over continued growth where Betony and my new Giants & Pilgrims project starts.

I have the beginning of an album and she has the start of a painting series. We are, together, sharing our discoveries of “becoming”. Currently I’m capturing the first recordings of songs in the basement. The lyrics and acoustic-driven arrangements are saturated with children’s toy instruments. Betony has been organizing bits and pieces of collage elements (hundreds of bits and pieces!) and has started the process of creating with them.

We’re excited to share this project with you all soon. Be looking towards the fall of this year, but that’s a loose date. We just wanted to share what all we’ve been dreaming, while the process is still fresh and crackling with formation; while it’s still becoming.

Thanks for your support and love,

Tim & Betony
Giants & Pilgrims

“Branches” Online Art Show

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CREATE ART!

So, with the theme of “branches” and this exploration of how so many different things emulate the shape, how about we have an
online art show? (The writing I did that talks about why we’re doing the theme branches is here)

 

We will be taking submissions until the end of August. Betony and I will curate the pieces that are turned in under the theme of “BRANCHES” and will showcase the art online!

Would you like to submit a photograph? A painting? A mixed-media piece or even a sketched idea? If not you, do you know someone who’d love this idea? Invite them to get involved.

Post artwork submissions to the Giants & Pilgrims’ Facebook page or email directly to timthreshingfloor@hotmail.com.

Spread the word and look for the show online
(giantsandpilgrims.com) come the end of August.

 

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