Bernard Aparicio of Dappled Things writes:

The Easter 2011 edition of Dappled Things was just released, and it’s got a couple of articles that I think readers of “Catholic and Enjoying It” would really appreciate. The first is an interview by Matthew Alderman of sculptor Andrew Wilson Smith. He does amazing work (just visit the site to see some of his sculptures) and is very insightful. If you link to it, you are welcome to grab some images of his work from the DT site to post on your blog, as his stuff is really worth seeing. (You’re readers probably don’t care to read suggestions on how to adorn your blog, so feel free to edit out whatever parts of this email you see fit, or add your own comments as you wish.) Anyway, here’s a quote from the interview:

In my mind the idea of tradition incorporates the concept of a contract in which our ancestors, ourselves, and our descendants are obliged to keep one another’s interests in mind as we manipulate our surroundings.

A good example of this contract is found in a stonemasons’ tradition, in which the current generation of masons starts the process of preparing lime-mortar for their sons’ use twenty years in the future, and at the same time make use of the mortar prepared by their own fathers. This understanding of tradition can be applied to all aspects of life, but I can think of at least a few examples of its application in my own life and career as a sculptor. I have had several opportunities over the years to learn artistic technique from masters who gained very little for their pains. The artists who did this for me had received similar gifts in their youth, and I am thus obliged to pass along what I have learned and thereby continue the chain into the future.

Another example will help us distinguish this kind of approach to tradition from the ideas current in the world of contemporary art and design. Modern art movements are disdainful of monuments, and especially a monument to the achievements of an individual. Three things breed this repulsion: the individual being represented is old, dead, and it’s not me!

The other piece of interest is an essay titled “My Beef With Holden Caulfield,” written on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of The Catcher in the Rye, in which Fr. Damian Ference looks at Salinger’s famous character with an O’Connoresque critical eye, and discovers that

“Flannery O’Connor’s critique of Holden Caulfield was ultimately a critique of me . . . . I wanted to be the good shepherd protecting his sheep, and the cool guy making sure that no kids fell over the edge of the cliff, while forgetting that I was one of the sheep, that I was one of the kids.”

Hope you like them!

In Christ,

Bernardo

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