I can’t help myself, I did it again.
I started writing essay #2 yesterday, however, after the events of today (The world cup final), I needed to re-write the opener. The irony of events was too good to pass by unacknowledged. No one is saying it, and it wasn’t ironic or confusing at all.
“A man stood alone in the middle of a field today. He stood on a small pedestal, what he spoke were grand claims.
He gave a speech on a stage built only for himself. The declaration of the tournament. A speech to its grandeur, its participants, if not so bold. He stood in front of everyone and declared something. He named the moment. He named the people participating in it. Then in closing, Sunglasses in the left hand, and mic in the right, he paused, looked skyward, voice cracking, and declared that “this is unity, this is greatness.”
At the end of the game, a man of great notoriety, who wanted great again, sought more notoriety. He did this by trying to insert himself in a photo where he didn’t belong with a team he didn’t play for, for a pierce of history in the greatness of something that he wasn’t a part of. He was sent stage left, appearing confused with his own greatness.
What’s in a name? '“
That’s the opener for essay number 2, or two, it’s up to you. It’s all in the context. It needs discipline and some re-alignment. There’s a reason you cant be color blind and fly for a commercial airline. I’ll let you read it to judge for yourself. It does’’t matter what you call it. It takes time and consistency. I cover new ground, from a lot of different perspectives, some of them painful. Seeing red sometimes is.
Time to go to back to the auction board, to the drafting table, and then the slaughter house. Time to talk Lamb, and how you like it, or perhaps don’t.
But first, we need to mow the lawn. Its time for a football game. Speaking is fun when you can remember with it, speaking in front of everyone. Well, that’s quite the picture.
Have a good week everyone.
Thoughts on Friday that started on a Friday.
This week’s faf#8 submission is the story of the finest artwork imaginable. Its not my works, its not my thoughts. It’s thought on an identity brought together in one place. It’s what’s been occupying my mind lately, it’s the story that inspired it.
Its not exclusive, its for everyone.
This is an essay that tries to answer the questions, what is awareness, and what do we do with the wrong information?
It speaks to the boundaries and the barriers.
I talk about the beginning of life, awareness, and resurrection of it. Both Intended, and not.
It’s a long read, a coffee or tea in hand would be a good idea.
Have an enlightened weekend everyone.
-Nate.
The accidental Renaissance of thought,
starts with stopping and being selective on the focus.
Something important happened today. I asked the computer and existential question, and it told me to go sit alone in my car.
I was doing a voice recording and it was getting wordy, I needed space and quiet.
My condescending, contemplation needed proper audio recording for proper validation.
Quick.
Written, Edited, preformed,.. wordy. Blah.
The stillness it was supposed to inspire, lost in the process, and suddenly not palatable. I was losing the point and recording it in real time.
No wonder the computer thought the isolation of a car was a good solution for this.
But that’s where the renaissance of thought happens sometimes. Sitting with a really strong plan and executing a bad decision while sitting in a car that’s not moving. It’s the same as being told to sit in the corner.
To sit with the decision. Live with it.
What it lead to, was a different decision and course correction. I took out the eraser and started drawing in pen.
I saw a new blueprint, and I liked it better. I decided to start a new season again. Selective on where to begin. Choosing to put what is first, first, and what is second, negotiable.
Repeatable. Scalable.
A season of repeatable positive process. Endless creation, and the right vehicle to speak to it with. Life to life freely and travel, with.
Stopping along the way.
That’s mouthful, it just means that I figured out something that I was over complicating, and not learning the lesson before speaking about it. I needed to slow down and be quiet again.
Sometimes it’s best to leave to caution fence up until the work is done. Especially if it’s around yourself. That part isn’t accidental.
Last fall I wrote a post about the first leaf to rest and the mark that it spoke to me about the coming season. This week, nearly the same spot, different leaf, new art. New Friday,
I hope you have a pleasant thought that leads to a stop this weekend.
-Nate.
The power of knowing, and holding.
Nothing.
FAF #6.
Nothing but carbon chemicals ignited by the light and pressure applied to them. No grand thought this week. Just learning to see light suddenly again.
-Taken this afternoon as repeating patterns found my eyes on the clock. The sun shone through my window at the precise moment an internal nudge became a competent thought. Pattens repeating. There with me again, the hand steady. Light, love, peace. Joy in the gift that I tried to bury.
My thoughts and my actions have found me with pen in hand this week.
I sat still. Very still. Holding my breath, still.
I haven’t written a thing. I haven’t picked up my camera. I haven’t been thinking about it. I haven’t even picked up a pencil.
I’ve been using a ballpoint pen that was a movie prop. A souvenir from the SetDec Dept. It’s proven to be a game changing tool.
I’ve been drawing with it. The ink flowed well, and before I knew it, it was. Is. Will be.
This is the result of more hrs than I care to admit. Many mornings. It’s not done. It’s not a visual of anything but my mind. That’s the inspiration, I just didn’t realize that until this morning. It isn’t finished, I haven’t abandoned it yet. I bought more ink.
Have a pleasent and peaceful weekend everyone.
-Nate.
# The surface tension of stones.
FAF #5
As I spun around on my heal, not 30 min ago, my phone lit up. It was resting face up on my bed. I hadn’t made it yet. This is a true story.
The reason I had changed direction is that my mind kicked in gear and the only way that I was going you properly organize my thoughts was by writing them. So I thought for a moment about this blog title that I wrote last Friday. The surface tension of stones. There was a concept there, I just hadn’t walked my thoughts out of it yet. My next question, I wondered what Bible verse would retain an accurate description of God and a stone? That’s the moment I turned around and my phone lit up. That exact moment. It was my Bible app. Verse of the day.
Today.
Isaiah 26:4
Trust in the Lord Forever. For the Lord God is an everlasting rock.
This prompted a quick flick of the phone/stone as if it was suddenly too hot. The timing was too fast, it was suddenly heavy. I stept back from my bed, the light from the flame now hidden by waves of fabric. I attempted to keep the air from escaping my lounges with my hand. What followed was a conversation. I’ll try to describe it to you.
This was but the smallest of reminders that I have been receiving from Gods voice to me in this last season. He is drawing me back to the artist, back to the freely given.
This isn’t about finding photos any more. This about finding the Creator. This is about the Artist Himself.
I should probably write today. Something is in the air.
You were made on purpose.
Fine art Friday w4.
I sat at my table this week, I sat on my couch. For at least 2 hrs everyday, I put pencil to paper.
I haven’t been writing anything. I’ve been drawing.
One afternoon as I sat sketching at my table, the much larger round table next to me filled up with High School students. Together, they opened textbooks, calculus calculators and got to work.
What I witnessed and overheard was remarkable. The students collaborated, explained, stayed on point, and diligently worked through math I will never understand. One student in particular was clearly the Math ring leader. She understood, she explained, she lead. Then quietly out of the discussion I heard a voice speak out late in the solution. This student didn’t get the concept yet. He was falling behind, and he knew it.
It occurred to me that during the last 5 minutes of shared problem solving of Math, He had probably spent nearly all of it privately trying to come up with a creative way of explaining to his peers that He didn’t get the concept in the first place.
It’s what I would have done.
I wasn’t involved in the discussion or the group, but I heard the desperate creativity in the voice. How to explain the unexplainable. One is an accountant, the other, the cook.
The collective students immediately turned their attention back to the concept and explained the solution differently to the one that didn’t get it. Homework successful. Good kids. Teamwork.
Left Brian Right Brain. Sometimes Both. Sometimes in Starbucks. This is a photograph that I took the next day. The ghost of shared learning. Unity.
Honestly this is such a massive subject that I feel like pausing. This has everything to do with purpose.
This is a word that we’ve forgotten.
The brains and the math have purpose, the usage and the implementation do too. All of it.
Structure, composition, pattern. To much to distill, to much thinking. Back to the drawing.
The spring before last, a gorgeous tiny magnolia tree bloomed in my back yard. The unique placement of the tree means that it really doesn’t get any sun until later in the season. It’s a late bloomer. I photographed it. I called series Steel Magnolias and I will make those photographs available soon. I returned to the tree this spring, but the magic just wasn’t the same. The original photographs were just fine. So, I picked one of the compositions and used it as a model for the first pencil work that I have put any effort into in a long time. Art is art, and I started with a pencil long before I picked up anything else.
This was the result of a week spent not thinking and plenty of concentrating. Fine lines, blurry details, and sometimes not touching the paper at all.
Have wonderful weekend everyone.
-Nate
Be still and know nothing.
Fine art Friday. w3.
This felt like an appropriate shot for the week. It is a single photograph taken in the middle of the day. It was taken with a filter that allows me to take a very long exposure even in broad daylight. (really powerful sunglasses for my lens).
The key to the photo is the absolute stillness of the camera. 55 seconds is a long time to steady the tripod at rush hr. During that time, anything in motion disappears from view.
If you look closely, you can see the lights of cars traversing across the bridge. Busy, but in the stillness, you just don’t see them anymore. Light as feathers in the wind. Quiet.
It was cause for contemplation. But not too much.
We’ve really built a world that equates stillness with laziness, and quiet as problem to be solved.
There isn’t any room to simply “be”, anymore. Sitting still isn’t always an option in a busy life. Real presence and authentic critical thinking have been erased from the priorities list.
We are constantly told to be someone, somewhere else. It’s a race against time. Don’t think.. Do.
Then I stopped. I questioned.
I thought this was a race against something, but its actually a sit with something.
The truth is this, the clearest thinking, creativity, deductive reasoning, and grounded decisions are always best to be made with less noise and more stillness.
Presence is found there.
I sat with the quiet and my sketchpad this week. Each afternoon has been a lesson. I will confess that I have been lazy with this gift. The truth is that drawing takes me back to a very core part of who I am.
The first afternoon, I decided to draw a feather. It’s seemed to best represent the feeling at the time. I saw my hand holding one for observation. Another drawing perhaps.
Being still and knowing something seemed important. I was still trying to resolve issues that were not mine to solve. I knew better, but it persisted.
So I sat with it. Intentional paralysis by analysis, pencil in hand.
Then I realized it didn’t matter, and it didn’t matter what I thought or did. The weight was out of my hands, it wasn’t mine to carry. The lead and wood replaced it.
So, I sketched.
Drawing something real from nothing was easier than drawing from nothing at all. Then I recalled the theme for the week.
Be still and know.
I am learning to trust, and I feel like I just opened the textbook.
Psalm 46:10 - Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among nations, I will be exalted in the earth!
That’s a good verse for the current situation. It says to sit still and watch.
Have a wonderfully still weekend everyone.
-Nate
Throwback Thursdays.
It’s a good day to recognize the road traveled, and steps taken.
I learned photography when a good friend of mine insisted that I buy the “vintage” camera from the pawn shop.
I reluctantly abandoned my latest and greatest camera choice, and paid the $25. A Yashica 50mm 1.8. Film. Money well spent. That fall, during a month long road-trip to North Carolina, I learned, frame by frame how to use that camera.
This is the first image that I took with intention. It’s the first time that I considered the moment and the creative direction. I remember how free it felt to create art with the camera that way.
Life is journey.
Tomorrow, lets stay still.
Weddings on a Wednesday.
I’ve been sitting on a lot of past work. DVDs stored of weddings shot yrs ago.
This engagement shoot was one of my favourites. For this couple, it was love at first sight, and they have grown a beautiful family since. We started the shoot on a beautiful afternoon in downtown Chicago. Finding hidden gems along the way is the best part of revisiting a session like this. Rachel and Dan were fearless, and had fun. Genuinely in love. Both were willing to roll with an idea that came to mind as I strolled to meet them in the park. The cab ride home would be wet, they didn’t care. So fun.
If you have a wedding date in 26/27, please reach out as availability is limited.
Tuesdays are for thinking. Reflecting.
I pick things up, and I put things down. I considered it.
Also known as a debate. I debated myself.
I love the repetition of quiet. It’s consistent.
Sometimes I’m quiet. This is by choice. I’m choosing to turn the volume down on the noise. I need space to think. The interesting part is that the voices in my life become clearer.
I deleted the fb, instagram feels like a marketing tool, this is it, nothing more, yet. Honesty is the best policy. This is my voice at the moment. Silent, but the loudest in the room.
What I speak here becomes the purest form of one sided communication.
I can’t speak for anyone but myself, and the void returns the favour.
So where do I start ?
(First with recognizing that I have to be careful with what I say, because it means that it will be entirely beyond my control who reads it or try’s to understand it.)
So, let’s start with why I had the debate.
Be quiet Nathan, focus. What’s important?
Posture before position, attraction before presentation.
It all center’s around visibility. On the one hand, the wisdom of silence is grounded in the stoicism of our forefathers. Silence is golden, but these are the truths about truth.
Truth has an unbelievable way of rising to the surface. It doesn’t need to force, coerce, or manipulate. It simply is.
When a truth starts to become undeniably visible, it becomes impossible to ignore. You can’t unsee it anymore. It’s there.
It’s why I laughed at the news reel the other Monday.
Truth being truth, is still true on a Tuesday.
So, after the debate within my mind over the balance of sharing my thoughts, and acting with discernment, I arrive here. Who made me?
Why? Why live and relentlessly desire to do so freely and with expressive joy? Why doesn’t that feel natural when it should?
What does Christ have to do with it? This isn’t a sermon or a debate. I’m just in a constant state of walking myself out of a corner. My corner.
God is revealing Himself to me, I in turn am revealing myself to Him. It’s not revelation of something new that needs to be discovered. It’s the abandonment of the fear that contained it. It’s the abandoning that God wants to see. It’s in the letting go.
You can use the Universe as a more comfortable wording choice, but it’s the same thing.
Let the wrong voices be. Listen to the One who spoke first.
If my identity in Christ is first, then my alignment with that identity comes before the creating part.
The beauty of this is that it’s a process.
The most exquisite samurai swords are not pulled directly out of the ground, yet they are.
They are mined, broken, refined, purified, destroyed again, reduced, shaped. The material was always present. The refinement and alignment of that tool only exist in the hands of the artist aligning and sanctifying for a purpose. The identity of the sword remains regardless of the sheath. Sheaths protect the sword, not the other way round.
The hands that posses it with purpose must go through the same refinement process.
Neither becomes the other without it.
We are in a constant state of refinement for that purpose.
Who am I then?
This is perhaps the root question and deepest recognition that simultaneously happened the first time that I opened my mouth to the pain of need.
I think the first truth that I need to fully understand and know deeply is this,
Life is a gift, thought is a gift. The gifts were never mine to begin with.
It means that ultimately I don’t deserve anything.
This means the posture of relentless reverence must take over the posture of pride. One is humble, the other is defiant. The rebellion part is mine. So is the surrender.
I’ve walked my own path to get here.
I’m talking about all of the steps that happened after the gift of the first cry for it. All of the attention to those steps had already been planned before I learned to walk them. Even the wrong ones.
I want, but it’s not always what I need. Born to resist is the same as born to live.
Reflecting correctly and purposefully only works if you are looking at the right mirror.
For far too long in my life, I was looking at the wrong one.
Once the corrected reflection is found, purpose and the occupation is understood. Dedication to the refinement must follow.
There is a great quote at the beginning of the documentary, Jiro dreams of Sushi.
“Once you decide on your occupation…you must immerse yourself in your work. You must fall in love with your work. Never complain about your job. You must dedicate your life to mastering your skill. That is the secret of success…and is the key to be regarded honorably” -Jiro
This is coming from a master sushi chef who considers 15 yrs to be the adequate training time to understand rice preparation. I’m pretty sure that any samurai with a sword would understand the concept.
The refinement is the realignment. It brings the gifts back to the surface. It’s the delicate hands of the creator slowly molding us into the proper vessel to hold the thing. It might be rice, it might be a samurai sword.
Sharing the gifts and the corrected voice is the most natural byproduct of becoming whole. I am who Christ says I am. The truth in that voice and the obedience to those gifts is where purpose becomes clear.
I share because I must. The passion within me becomes rooted in expressions of the creator.
The development of my life is not my own. The stewardship of that life absolutely is.
It’s hard work. I’ve fallen down enough to know that I haven’t fully stood up yet.
It’s not just the learning, it’s the dedication and the willingness to correct course when you feel the drift pull you off it. Photography has endless opportunity to start and stop, drumming has endless opportunity to correct course along the way.
Same thing applies to my Christianity, it’s not religious. It’s a practice.
It’s slight improvements overtime while we delicate our understanding of what was given to us to reflect in the first place.
Sometimes it’s time to put down the lie and sing a different melody.
Somewhere along the way, voices spoke into my life. Some spoke truths, others did not. The reflection of those voices is my song to the world. Sometimes it’s on the wrong playlist and I need to correct it. I need to realign the melody. It needs a different rhythm. I want my reflection to adequately express the right song.
As I wrote this, a small bird stopped outside my window. It stayed for a while. It sang to the void. Composition had everything to do with it.
Something heard it.
Maybe today is just the recognition of that song. Small rhythmic gifts given for the indescribable compulsion to create.
This is a just blog post. It’s a process.
This is the mirror that I am holding up to my life and seeing the cracks that need melting.
When the inner waters are still, clarity reflects like a mirror.
-Nate
Monochrome Monday.
I saw a late night Tv host share the news today, not something specific, just a nervous summary of the last 3 weeks. It made me laugh. Choosing to be still and sit at my desk.
Sounds like a case of the Mondays.
Storm. 48” x 19.2'“ .
images for reference only.
I think, therefore I am, not.
Fine Art Friday. Week #1
Yet, understanding and knowing through learned consequence.
First things first. Thinking in reverse.
I’m really good at starting and stopping. It’s the race that I run in the middle that doesn’t really get as much attention. Perhaps following through needs to more fully integrate with running the race. The journey set before me is walked by the genes that made me. This week I spent some time recalling the blueprint. Then I noticed some patterns. I walked through them.
Fortunately, life moves differently. The education we receive isn’t always the one we wanted or asked for. Ironically it ends up being the very thing we need to get us here. It wasn’t an accident. Your life in mine isn’t an accident, neither was the means by which we understood that.
Lessons never stop learning.
I’m so grateful for my education. I’m also grateful for my disdain for it. I’m grateful for my rebellion against it. It teaches me about my part of the equation.
Life is constantly teaching. The greatest life lessons are learned in rebellion to it.
This thought coming from a guy who once drunkenly fell over his own drum kit and nearly put a cymbal stand through his eye. I didn’t learn that lesson until I looked in the mirror the next day.
That kind of rebellion. The “not of sound mind” kind.
God is good. He provided me a way out of the conflict with my own education.
It starts with following through. That’s why I wanted to make it clear where the blueprint was from. It was also in my possession to follow through with.
I wanted to start this series with a bit of a foundation. I wanted to make light of the concept. When I think about grace for my learning, I need to start with the perfect source of it. This becomes the test and the fail-safe simultaneously. It becomes the textbook to the instrument.
This is grace to understand it again.
This grace is rooted in my faith. The one truth that I fall back on, again and again, is God’s mercy for me. Even when all I focus on is the shadow. His love never fails. Jesus identity in God is mine to witness, mimic and fail miserably at. He will remain the same.
Yet, I don’t fully understand it.
Romans 12: 1-2
John 15: 2
Understanding the renewal of my mind, mirrors the understanding of a unified soul. It is the very nature of individuation to recognize the God that formed the conscious thought to begin with. He follows through with the gift of present consciousness and grace, regardless of how we feel about it. We get to sit with it. Your thought and rebellion against it is a personal choice. Even consciously rejecting grace is a personal decision.
I’m not in control of the gift, I am in control of how worthy I feel I am of receiving it.
I am the one that wants to rebel against it.
I think brokenly, therefore I’m not yet,
Whole.
Not fully. I haven’t understood the power behind the creation. My thinking got in the way. My thought process is the accumulation of learning the hard way, the imperfect way.
Fear, pride, ego, broken history, pain, loss, depression, misguided patterns, etc. These influence the real-time experiment. It muddies the music. The mind is not a clean instrument. When I rely on my own thinking to define who I am, I am not arriving at truth. I am arriving at the broken history of it. The picture is wrong. The reflection needs correcting.
The journey toward wholeness requires confronting what is broken in myself. I didn’t start with potential and a perfect instrument, My identity isn’t what I think, It’s what I’m being called back to. The refining is what brings out the finished product. It’s a process.
This isn’t a riddle. It’s just the conscious understanding that I fall short of perfection. Its why I take the next picture, It’s why I hit the drum again.
Repeat. Again. That’s the cool thing about failing again and again. you get better at it.
The growth is in the correction to the mistake that taught the lesson.
Sometimes that’s in front of people. Sometimes that’s a choice.
Like you, I’m human. We all know what it’s like to stand on a stage for the first time. We will all know the last. That’s the vulnerability part.
That’s where growth, surrender, and a willingness to accept our own humanity begins. It’s where life starts.
I am indeed here, and conscious of it. That means it was for a purpose to do something. That means I should be doing those things with purpose. That means...
Nathan Christopher Sawatzky was made to create, and then fail. Not work so that he can succeed at not being who he is. One is purpose, the other is position. One is calling, the other is a placeholder.
My posture needs to be to create.
This last week I spent so much time considering what it meant to go to work. Because last week I decided not to.
I felt like I needed to push myself into the deep end of the pool. I needed to follow through with actually being the artist. I say this all the time, I shoot when I feel, but don’t always share. I keep it to myself out of fear. It’s paralysis by analysis. “Its not ready, the store isn’t up, its not organized” etc. It’s the lie I tell myself. The gift I had been given had been hiding from the bridge to the provision. I just needed to start crossing it.
I made a choice this week to be a full-time artist, not just the critic of my process and product. I’m selling the work of my hands and mind to feed the human life that was created to share it. Once again, I don’t know why it took me so long to arrive at that conclusion. It’s probably because it’s personal to me. The images are my photographs, I worked for them. I sought them out. This work is not the result of a wedding I shot, or a family portrait session. The things that I’m selling are the things that I actually spent time creating with joy. They’re the result of me choosing to point my camera in a certain direction because I saw something. There was beauty to be witnessed. Something captivated me. Time needed to be stopped and looked at. For some reason, I wanted somebody else to see it too.
Joy begets joy.
The value of a creation is directly relational to the pride by which it was created. That’s why people give value to something, it’s because they are proud of it.
I am proud of myself. I’m proud of my work.
That means I’d better show results of my labour by the end of the week. Truth is, I’ve been holding back a lot.
I’ve been so busy manifesting the fear that was restraining the very blessing I had been given. I shouldn’t do that.
If Christ is first, then create second. Even if that means falling down and failing to fully explain why.
Art often does that.
This is the art of it on a Friday. It’s “fine”.
-Nate
*reference Images not sized to perfect proportions. Visual reference only. The actual print size is exactly 48'“x 23'“ inches.
$2100 for 48’ on the long edge. Pricing varies by the size of print. Prints up to 96’
These prints are produced on premium aluminum composite panels with a semi-gloss l finish that delivers incredible color depth, sharpness, and longevity. The metal surface gives the image a luminous, almost backlit quality that no canvas or paper print can match. Scratch resistant, moisture proof, and built to last decades without fading, this is archival grade wall art engineered to the same standard as the photography itself. At 48 inches, the structural rigidity of the aluminum means it hangs flush and flat, no warping, ever. This is not a poster. This is a lifetime piece. Shipping is world wide.
-Nate.
Custom sizing:
*Disclaimer -store in the building phase. If you have any questions or for custom sizing, don’t hesitate to fill out the form and we will begin working together to find a solution that’s best for you. I will get back to you promptly. Please include the image size requested.
Switching gears, and picking up sticks,
I turn to a different instrument each week to spend time away from the camera and the computer. My other outlet. The drums have always been the other instrument where I process, express, and learn. There is no composition to frame but the song that I feel. There is no light to wait for, but the inspiration driven by it. Just time, rhythm, and the decision to play something that hasn't been played before. It’s the song of my soul. The solo of the week is exactly that. One take. One song. Whatever needed to come out, came out. It is the drumming version of pointing the camera at my rhythmic shadow and pressing the shutter. I felt compelled.
Here is a solos posted this week to Bandcamp. Complex compositions that require both feel and the artist or they don’t exist at all.
Sounds human enough for any given Friday.
As, always, thank you for turning your time and precious senses toward me. That is validation enough for any artist.
-Nate.