James McAnally

James McAnallyResponsibilities
To teach both the Church and artists to view the creation of art as offering, the practice of art as worship, and the display of art as witness to the beauty of our Creator.

As the Church, we also know that artists have much to learn from us. The hope for art's transformative power always rings hollow when separated from the Gospel. We believe God has more for this world than what is already here. We believe that it is in the process of being remade in us. We are given the unique, difficult task of beautifying the world. It is, in a sense, our great commission to bring beauty where none is found and to bring truth where there is only beauty.
-From the Artist Community Vision Statement

Family
Two parents, Earl and Marilyn, who have never met a person they did not love like their own child; one brother, Jason, who endowed me with bloody noses and epic guitar skills; Brea, my beautiful fiance-the clearest articulation of God I have found.

What The Journey Has Meant To You
A place in which I am encouraged to worship in spirit and truth.

Quote Or Advice
"You must aim the imagination also at yourself, point-blank". Saul Bellow

"Free creativeness is the creature's call to the great call of its creator". Nicholai Berdyaev

What I Enjoy
Tape hiss, stories that will never sell, American Slang, British spelling, writing anything but memos, reading anything but textbooks, collecting musical instruments, gas station cappuccino, electric blankets, wearing my house shoes in public, perceiving all things beautiful.

Where I Grew Up and What I Did as a Kid
M eye crooked letter crooked letter eye crooked letter crooked letter eye humpback humpback eye (Mississippi; Tupelo to be exact). I played war with my cousin before I discovered books music. Then I played guitar to OK Computer over and over.

Favorite Reads or Films
Books -
Underworld by Don DeLillo, All Things by Thomas Pynchon, Works of Love by Soren Kierkegaard, Meister Eckhart, the newspaper if I can bear to read it, The Dream of the Unified Field by Jorie Graham

Films -
On the Waterfront, Fellini, Spike Jonze Music Videos

Hope For the Journey
To be the kind of people that only the Church can be.