Post-Christian Art

My friend and neighbor Jim Knowles, a brilliant sculptor, says he is practicing a “post-Christian” art. We can permit him an occasional pronunciamento, for he has his baccalaureate from Yale (’66) and his Master’s Degree in Fine Arts from the University of Pennsylvania, took master-classes in guitar with Andrés Segovia, almost became a professional golfer, paints furiously, and makes poetry out of bronze and stone. But—post-Christian? Really?

Jim takes another swig of ale. Not beer, but ale: something hearty for this dominant six-foot-plus man in his midthirties, with piercing eyes and a black beard straight out of the seventeenth century, as he reclines before his hearth, wearing plus-fours that once belonged to his grandfather, the great Ellis Knowles, the finest senior golfer who ever lived, one of my boyhood heroes. Not beer, but ale. Your sculptors are not the mincing wizards you must be careful not to tread upon, like roaches, as you stroll through the French Poetry section of the library. No, your sculptors are handcrafting in steel, ordering sand by the ton, pouring red metal, sucking zinc oxide and going daffy for a day or two on account of it, dealing with chain hoists, welding torches, granite, tree trunks, hardware.

WR

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William F. Rickenbacker

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My friend and neighbor Jim Knowles, a brilliant sculptor, says he is practicing a “post-Christian” art. We can permit him an occasional pronunciamento, for he has his baccalaureate from Yale (’66) and his Master’s Degree in Fine Arts from the University of Pennsylvania, took master-classes in guitar with Andrés Segovia, almost became a professional golfer, paints furiously, and makes poetry out of bronze and stone. But—post-Christian? Really?

Jim takes another swig of ale. Not beer, but ale: something hearty for this dominant six-foot-plus man in his midthirties, with piercing eyes and a black beard straight out of the seventeenth century, as he reclines before his hearth, wearing plus-fours that once belonged to his grandfather, the great Ellis Knowles, the finest senior golfer who ever lived, one of my boyhood heroes. Not beer, but ale. Your sculptors are not the mincing wizards you must be careful not to tread upon, like roaches, as you stroll through the French Poetry section of the library. No, your sculptors are handcrafting in steel, ordering sand by the ton, pouring red metal, sucking zinc oxide and going daffy for a day or two on account of it, dealing with chain hoists, welding torches, granite, tree trunks, hardware.