the unlikely orange

"day 4" paper and found objects collage on cardboard panel gregory a. milinovich so, here we are, over halfway through the week and the series. since i have only had two commentors on the subject, i am assuming most of you are bored by the topic, so i apologize. maybe you'd rather talk about the incredible joy of eating swedish fish. i mean, how is it that sweden can make gummy candy so much better than the rest of the world? what do they have there in sweden, besides abba and meatballs and ikea? man, those fish are good. i found a discarded bag of swedish fish, all of them eaten, left to float to its final resting place, buried amidst some fast food napkins and soda bottles. i plucked it from its dishonorable position, and glued it to a peice of cardboard, along with some other bits of refuse i found that day. i could have been watching tv or planning a sermon or raising money to help those who are without or getting some much needed rest. but i wasn't. i ...

today is our dog's birthday. actually, we're not sure how old he is, but however many years it is, it is even more in dog years (7 times more, to be exact). however many years its been, they have been rich and fun years. we love our dog so much. we adopted him several years ago, and he has been such a pleasant companion. in so many ways, he was and is our first child, something that got us prepared for childhood in a way that we weren't. now he is like an older brother to jack. actually, its been really fun the last few weeks because jack has taken a new interest in max and wants to play with him and pet him all the time. he follows him around just saying his name over and over. max would rather just sleep than be chased around the house by a toddler armed with a snotty nose, several toy dinosaurs that make distorted roaring noises, and the desire to try to ride the dog. but he patiently puts up with it. he is a very easy going bulldog, our max. i love him so m...

"day 3" paper and found objects collage on cardboard panel gregory a. milinovich so i remember walking through an art museum in washington d.c. when i was 16. i was impressed with the romanticism of some the art, and even more impressed by the realism of other art. i was drawn to those paintings and sculptures that closely imitated the world as i saw it. but i also remember seeing some other, i assume more modern, peices that looked like someone spilled paint on a big canvas (a la jackson pollack). i was unimpressed. i mean, at 16 i considered myself void of any creative or artistic ability and i thought to myself, "even i could spill paint on a canvas. how is this art?" a few years later, while in college, i read an article by derek webb in which he wrote of this very same experience happening to him. he was looking at some modern art with a friend and he said, " anyone could have painted this." his friend's response really made him t...

"day 2" paper and found objects on cardboard panel gregory a. milinovich so here is day two of my 'trash' collection. joel had some interesting things to say in his comments yesterday, about the purpose of art communicating something, and facilitating communion and relationship. as an artist, that seems like such a fearsome call for me, because i'm just so unsure of how to create art that will do that. in fact, i identify more with his earlier statement that postmodern art is often akin to the old testament prophets. when i make a collage, i feel much more like a prophet than a pastor. i feel more like challenging myself and others than anything else. and that leads me back to the idea of garbage/rubbage/trash as art. the prophets used objects around them to make a point. i wonder if this isn't very much the same thing. could our commercialism, our materialism, our consumerism be put on trial by art that juxtapositions its wares in such a way as to show the i...

'day 1" collage on cardboard panel gregory a. milinovich i have always marveled at the beauty of the simple things, especially the beauty of the things we take for granted. i could talk at length, for example, about the colors of the dunkin' donuts logo. anyway, this has led me to some serious questions about trash or waste and art. can something that is essentially garbage be considered art when juxtaposed in a different way, or even on its own? what would make it so or not? further, in a world where garbage threatens to overwhelm us (computers, cars, nuclear waste, etc.), what does it mean to look at our waste in a different way? i guess i don't have the answers to these questions, but my own journey is to examine them. in this context, a few years ago i had the idea to watch for garbage and collect it. so each day for a week i kept my eyes open for garbage wherever i was. i collected it and at the end of the day made a little collage from it. and so i h...

"sleeping president" by Fernando Botero i've had an intense week. our offices moved this week, so i spent the latter part of it, including all of it today so far, lugging things up the stairs and unpacking boxes and putting together a desk and so on and so on. i am exhausted. i haven't even checked my emails. i just checked my emails and i had 67 emails. you've got to be kidding me. so, its a saturday afternoon and...i'm...just...going....to slee......zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

"ash wednesday" collage on cardboard panel by gregory a. milinovich ash. it's grey and dark. it's charred and chalky. it's got a certain gritty, grainy texture. i know. i've been helping to lead ash wednesday services for several years now. i love this day, this day of ashes, this somber first day of lent. it's a day when we gather together as communities to recognize our brokenness and our mortality. and as a symbol we are marked with ash. in a symbolic way, we are covered in dust and dirt. grey grit sits on our skin on this day, the same dusty dirt we breath every day, the same skin we all share and settle in. every day. but on this day, this ash-day, this first day, we recognize right from the beginning what we normally try to ignore: that we are ashes to ashes, dust to dust. when i recognize my own brokenness; when i admit my own weakness, when i come to be at peace with my own powerlessness, then God's power is awakened in me in powe...

i made some collages this weekend, and scanned in a bunch of others that i've made over the last few months. i thought i would share a few of them with you this president's day. this one here is called "and the greatest of these." it's different for me to use pinks and pastels, but i was inspired by the analogous colors chart. i loved the lines on the chart, so i used them to guide the collage. sometimes my collages are "about" or "inspired by" or a reaction to an issue or event or emotion, but sometimes they are simply visual. this is one of those. it is just a visual and spacial peice. at least it started off that way. by the end of it, i realized that i am a bit of a romanticist, at least in that i just want to find the beauty in everything. i don't think i have my head buried in the sand or anything. i understand there is evil in this world and in my own world, and i want to deal with that, too. but i just believe that there...

here is one of the ones i made this weekend. it is called "article." i am a huge fan of browns and earthy tones, and if you haven't figured it out by now, combining words and images. that is part of the excitement and exhiliration for me as an artist: combining color and image and word in ways that surprise me or humor me or shock me or scare me or cause me to ask some questions. i think those kinds of reactions are why i continue to make these things.

this is a collage i made back in september. it was, for me, just a commentary on the insanity of some photographers, particularly those lovely sort that shoot pictures of celebrities. it is called "shot."

so this is a picture of shannon's closet. i only dare post such a picture because she happens to currently be on her best behavior. in fact, she is on such good behavior, that you probably didn't even need me to tell you that it is a picture of a closet. this is not "normal" in our house. normally, if you were to venture into that part of our bedroom that gets loosely named "closet," you would think you were in a war-torn land, ravaged by bombs and evil violence. there would be women's garments and children's toys and old towels and random shoes strewn about the place. you would leave that place immediately, afraid either that a weapon of mess destruction (so clever) was about to be discovered, or that you would be swallowed up in a quicksand of clothing and hangers. either way, you would not call it a closet. minefield, maybe. but not closet. but now you can call it a closet. you see, we are having a baby, so greg is losing his closet so that we ca...

as a fan of music, i remember catching some of the hype surrounding an ep put out by this band from new orleans a few years ago. the band was called mutemath and the ep was called "reset." i bought it, and it surprised me because it wasn't what i expected, but i really liked it. a few years later, i had heard that they had released their first full length cd, but that it was independent and you could only get it on their website. laziness won the day and i never ordered it. then, around christmas, i heard that a major label had picked it up and you could buy it other places. so i wisely added it to my christmas list. i say wisely because my parents saw it on my list and bought it for me, even though the only reason i can imagine that my dad picked this cd from the list of 40 is that it had the word "math" in it. whatever the reason, i unwrapped it on christmas day, and i have been taken with it ever since. now, i realize that any review of music is extrem...

happy valentine's day from us and our little cupid. and now, as marvin gaye so beautifully put it, "let's get it on..." a lover, greg.

what to name a baby human? it is an incredible responsibility, and one i don't take lightly. so, as the baby is still (supposedly) 10 weeks away, this is our list of possible names: harper tobiah tobias theoden theodore theron spencer samuel denton ambrose isaac harrison denison charles brennan winston winton wilson griffin so what do you think? any favorites? hudson oliver tatum taton

shannon is away this weekend with her college girlfriends, enjoying a well-deserved mini-vacation. that means that jack (and max the dog) and i are having a boys' weekend. she left yesterday afternoon, and so far so good. he's been really good and having a great time. he took my hat off earlier today and put it on his head, so i told him i would take a picture. he then proceeded to pose for said picture. last night i was playing my guitar and singing and jack was playing with blocks and dinosaurs. but as i was singing my heart out, i began to hear some accompaniment on the keys. i looked over and jack had climbed up on the piano bench and began to play. i thought this was pretty cool, so i stopped playing so i could say something to him about it, but before i could speak i realized he was singing. so i listened. he was pounding away on those ivories, but his voice was as perfect as could be, as he sang out, "jeeee-sus, jeeeee-sus, jeeeee-sus." it is these ...

as a christian in america in 2007, i find myself often on the edges a bit. i mean, it's not like i am being persecuted or fed to the lions or anything, but, more often, i feel like my marginilization comes from the center of the faith itself. that is, i often feel like i don't fit in with the world, exactly, but i also don't fit in with christianity in america. i just don't usually feel at home with the sort of chubby-in-the-middle faith that modern american evangelicalism has come to represent. i grew up in the christian ghetto (christian t-shirts, christian music, bible-belt worldview, actual bible belt [i still wear it!]), so i have a certain sentimental connection to all of that. i still have this deep relationship with the Christian music industry. and i love the Church, of course. i am, after all, mainline in denomination. and yet, despite all that, i often don't feel at home here. i often feel like i might fit in better with the bonos of the world. the nouwen...

it's good to be back. i spent the early part of this week in southern california, about 25 minutes north of san diego. the weather was incredible. it was in the high 70's and low 80's during the day, and in the mid to high 50's at night. the scenery was absolutely incredible. just seeing palm trees and birds of paradise at this time of the year was wonderful. it was my first time to put my fingers in the waters of the pacific. it was my first time to california. it was my first time to fly a red-eye (and hopefully my last). i had a really nice trip. i was in san diego (carlsbad, really, as pictured above) for a conference on churches that worship in multiple sites. our church here in clinton, nj, worships in two different sites, and has had some trouble making this work, so we thought it would be good to attend this conference to see how other churches have done it successfully (and otherwise). the conference was really led by three different churches (huge...

hey all - i just wanted to let you know that i'll be out for a few days. i've been on a retreat this weekend, and i'm headed to san diego later today for a conference. i won't be back until sometime on wednesday, so i wouldn't expect to post until probably thursday. i'll see you then! greg.

i'm reading a book by rob bell called 'velvet elvis.' in this book, he talks a bit about how we need to understand Jesus in his jewish context. one of the ways he does this is to talk about the process by which young boys became rabbis or teachers, as jesus was often called. after years of schooling and memorizing both scripture and midrash, a young boy would then go through a process of finding a rabbi and trying to earn that rabbi's favor, that he might become a student/disciple/apprentice of that rabbi. but you had to be good enough . you had to prove yourself. and if you were lucky enough to really impress a rabbi, to prove that you were good enough to be like that rabbi, then he would choose you to follow him. in that context, remember the story of luke 5:1-11, in which simon peter becomes a student/disciple/apprentice of Jesus. when confronted with Jesus, peter, that great apostle of the Christian faith, said, quite literally, "woe is me. get away fro...