When Faith & Art Collide

Bill Hendricks: 

Well, welcome to The Table Podcast, where we discuss issues of God and culture, in order to show the relevance of theology to everyday work. I'm Bill Hendricks, the Executive Director for Christian Leadership at the Hendricks Center. So back in 1943, a psychologist named Abraham Maslow created what came to be called a hierarchy of human needs. And you may have seen the pyramid where at the bottom of those needs is what he called, the physical. People need oxygen, they need food, they need water. 

And then on top of that is the need for security, shelter, health, and of course the employment, to be able to pay for those things. Above that is love and belonging, family, friendship, that sort of thing. And then comes self-esteem, which has to do with respect and dignity, and a sense of worth and being oneself, being unique. And at the very top of the pyramid is self-actualization, which has to do with living into one's potential and expressing one's values. And I thought about this pyramid when I came across a blogger who was writing about art. And the title of the blog post was, The World Probably Doesn't Need Your Art. 

And he said, "It's not that the world doesn't crave good art, but it absolutely doesn't need it to survive. Because while the purpose of art is to lift us up and enhance the quality of our lives, art itself never creates the inherent quality of life. It only expands on that quality itself." And then he closed with this arresting statement, "The world will survive without good art." And that leads of course to the question, so what do we need art for? Then a further question, why should Christ followers have any particular concern for the arts, and for artists for that matter? Does art, in any way, factor into our faith? Or is it just an add-on, or even just a luxury? Having opened this can of worms, I'm very delighted to have Marissa and Guy Delcambre with us today. They are supremely positioned to be able to speak into some of these issues. 

Marissa is the Executive Director for Art House Dallas, which is a Dallas-based nonprofit that serves and supports hundreds of local artists, people in the visual arts, musicians, writers, through artist formation and outreach opportunities. And prior to that, she worked with artists as a marketing rep for Sony Music. She has a degree in business administration, with an emphasis on the music industry, from Dallas Baptist University. And I understand she's an expert in arcade games, and in particular is regarded as something of a Jedi. And I'm going to let you give me the right pronunciation. But this was a game called, depending on your pronunciation, Galaga or Galaga, or Galega, or Gaiyiga. How do you pronounce it? 

Marissa Delcambre: 

Galaga. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Galaga. 

Marissa Delcambre: 

Yes. 

Bill Hendricks: 

All right. There you have it. You have it from the expert. And Guy is the Associate Pastor of Arts and Pastoral Care, at All Saints Dallas Anglican Church. And he's also the spiritual formation person at Art House Dallas. And he's also an artist in his own right. He's a storyteller, he's a poet, he's a writer. And he's written, in fact a book from his own life experience, on Earth in the sky, "A beautiful collision", as he puts it, of grace and grief. And in that book, he shares his own journey from happy husband to grieving widower, to single dad and victorious believer. And you can find that on guyDelcambre.com. The Delcambres have three daughters and one son, and a dog named Jack, the golden whom Guy claims is his best friend. I don't know what that says about you to have a dog as your best friend, Guy. 

Guy Delcambre: 

I don't either. He didn't feel like my best friend this morning. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Anyway, so let me just... I got all these questions that I raised, but before we get into those, I'd like to go back and find out how you even got into working with artists, A little bit about your backgrounds. Marissa, why don't you start, since you're the Executive Director at Art House Dallas? 

Marissa Delcambre: 

Yeah. So thanks for having us. 

Bill Hendricks: 

You're welcome. 

Marissa Delcambre: 

I'm excited to be here this morning. 

Bill Hendricks: 

I am too. 

Marissa Delcambre: 

So my background, I actually started performing and entertaining at the young age of four. So I was a childhood entertainer. I had thirty-minute sets and I would sing these country music... I'd have these country music performances, and I traveled all over the West Coast. So from the West Coast, I performed at fairs and festivals, and made my way into pageants and music theater, and did that whole kind of child performer space. 

Bill Hendricks: 

And you wanted to be what? An actress when you grew up? 

Marissa Delcambre: 

Country singer. Yeah, a country singer. And so I kept performing until I hit the ripe old age of 16. And at 16, I had decided I was done with performing and kind of just said, "That's it. I've had a good career, and I'm done." But what that did was it really infused this space of, how do I stay in music and how do I stay around the arts, but not be on a stage? And so that became a question that I really asked myself for many years, until I ended up finishing my degree here in Dallas, had just come from Seattle and finished my degree here in music business, started working for a record label. Was very immersed in just kind of music industry shows every night, working with record stores, going down to festivals in Austin, really all over the Texas market. And I saw my role as being in this hospitality space to really engage with the musician, and be in conversation about what their life looked like in that calling. 

Bill Hendricks: 

So you saw them not just as entertainers, but as persons in their own right. 

Marissa Delcambre: 

That's right. That's right. And so that really became the question of, how do you support the musician? Not for the bottom line, not for the record sales, not for the best song or album. And the accolades and the awards are amazing, and they're affirming, but how do you really support the whole person? And so that question kind of led me to Art House. And we can get into that in a little bit, but really my space started in the music industry. 

Bill Hendricks: 

That's great. 

Guy Delcambre: 

I'll just say there was a little in-between there that she left out. After she retired at the ripe old age of 16, there was a pretty hard shift into dyeing her hair black, wearing a white belt, and getting into more aggressive music. So it was kind of her move away from that. And that kind of baptized her into- 

Bill Hendricks: 

The pendulum swing. 

Marissa Delcambre: 

That's right. Leave it to your husband to bring up that little space there. But yeah, there was definitely a heavy metal phase that then landed into a more balanced appetite for various genres. 

Bill Hendricks: 

I take it you're very glad that at that time, the internet isn't what it's become now. 

Marissa Delcambre: 

Isn't that right? Yeah. 

Bill Hendricks: 

And we have all this evidence online to go back and blackmail you with. 

Marissa Delcambre: 

That is right. And the amount of times people have asked me, "Hey, how do I see some of those performances from the olden days?" I happily say, "They're locked away in a vault somewhere. So good luck. Good luck." 

Bill Hendricks: 

So Guy, how about you? How did you get into this whole thing that you were doing? 

Guy Delcambre: 

My background is pastoral ministry, and when I started working on the book that you had mentioned, I had a friend who introduced me to Art House Dallas. So I had no idea what I was doing. I'd always been a writer, but I'd never embarked on a project quite that ambitious for myself. I came from Denton, and drove down to Lakewood, and it was one of their first gatherings. And Jenny White at the time, now Jenny Green, she was the Executive Director and Marissa was new in the organization. The organization was new. 

And that was my movement into creative community, discovering what that was. For me, it was always important because in pastoral ministry, small group ministry was a lot of what my past was. So knowing that I needed to be in community, to find an identity as an artist and not just as a pastor, was very important. I was still involved a little bit in pastoral ministry when I first started, and then full throttle into writing the project. About a year after my involvement in Art House, just as a volunteer, leading a small group of artists in Denton where I still live, they sponsored me to go to an artist weekend over, and I'll pronounce this really well, Laity Lodge. Sometimes when you say it, you're like, "Lady Lodge." And people are like, "That's really strange. What's Lady Lodge?" 

Bill Hendricks: 

Lady Lodge? Doesn't have a good connotation to it. 

Guy Delcambre: 

The church, Laity. So Laity Lodge down all the way by nowhere, Leaky, Texas, and it was from there- 

Bill Hendricks: 

The Hill country. 

Guy Delcambre: 

The Hill country. So from there, I was pushed even deeper, submerged if you will, baptized if you will, into the identity of artists, and continued, finished out the project. Marissa was there. We took a little... So if you know anything about Laity, it is on the spring head of the Frio River, where it comes out of the ground. So I just asked, I was like, "Hey, do you want to go kayaking?" And we took a little kayak trip and maybe saw some sparks. I was about two years beyond as a single person at that point. And a month later, we had dinner in Dallas back here, and a year later, we got married. I inherited sort of my involvement with Art House Dallas and got married at the same time. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Pretty good deal. 

Guy Delcambre: 

Not a bad deal. It's a very giving community to me. 

Bill Hendricks: 

I have one follow up question. You mentioned from as long as you can remember in a way, you've been drawn toward pastoral ministry. Where did that come from for you? 

Guy Delcambre: 

Honestly, I don't know. I mean, I always had this disposition in life of helping, just a really raw, primal, just how I was going to always be involved myself or find myself involved in people's lives, friends' lives, whatever. Classmates. And my maternal grandmother, a deeply devout Catholic woman, very quiet, very ordinary, and there was no bifurcation of who she was. It was always just this whole person. And it's not like she stood on that platform, like I'm a wholly integrated person. It just, everything came out of her and- 

Bill Hendricks: 

It was authentic. 

Guy Delcambre: 

It was very authentic. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Very integrated. 

Guy Delcambre: 

It was always very grounding for me. And I think those two things would end up becoming sort of the little sparks that would drive me toward... I thought it was going to be counseling at first, and the Lord, through friends, clearly revealed or unveiled, no, it is the vocation of pastor, the way you're oriented in the world. 

Bill Hendricks: 

That's great. 

Guy Delcambre: 

Yeah. 

Bill Hendricks: 

So you said you would come back to a question that I was going to ask. Art House Dallas, where did it come from? How did it get going? And I kind of read the mission statement as it were, but what is Art House Dallas in your mind? 

Marissa Delcambre: 

So Art House, I had come across it in college. My philosophy professor, many people, especially in Dallas, are familiar with him. Davey Noggel. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Oh man, a legend. 

Marissa Delcambre: 

Yeah. So Davey was my first entrance into this world of Art House. And it was kind of intro to philosophy, so we were going through Os Guinness's, The Call, and started bringing up this conversation of, what is vocation? And Art House Dallas was barely even a thought at this point. So Davey was invited to this kind of introductory party and he couldn't go. And so he came to me as a student and said, "Hey, I want you to take my place. I know you work in the music industry. I think you would really find inspiration here and encouragement here." 

Bill Hendricks: 

You're there to stand in for Davey Noggel. 

Marissa Delcambre: 

Right. And so I ended up going, learned about the mission and vision. And how it started in Dallas was very unique, in that it was a Dallas entrepreneur who is not a practicing artist himself, but he sees his life most impacted by the arts. So great films, would read lyrics to his children instead of books at bedtime, great albums and bands. And so, his life had been so impacted by the arts that he wanted to create a structure or a system in Dallas, a community where artists don't feel like they have to go to LA and New York, and Nashville, where they feel like they have the support and the resourcing they need here. That Dallas based entrepreneur, Brad, he was friends with Charlie and Andy. They're our founders. 

So Charlie Peacock and Andy Ashworth. So decades ago, in 1991, they were living in Nashville, pretty new to the area, and came across this turn-of-the-century, old Methodist church that had been built in the early-nineteen-hundreds. Decided... They call it following the breadcrumbs. And had decided that this may be the venture, there is something that is drawing them into this space. So long story short, they were able to purchase this old church that had been functioning as a home. And over the years, ended up starting with a Bible study that became an artist's retreat, that became theologians and songwriters, and really culture makers coming into the space to speak on what does it mean to live faithfully into your vocation. 

Bill Hendricks: 

So it grew into a colony in a way. 

Marissa Delcambre: 

Yeah, a strong community. And some of these questions that were being asked, we would call them conversations of consequence. They were artists and creatives that maybe at one time, your only real option was to go work in a church. And they were asking questions like, well, what if I want to go tour? And what if I want to write music that is language that the whole world can hear, not just the Sunday service? And so they were asking these questions and the Art House became this place where they could just have an open dialogue and feel that comfort in that community. So Charlie and Andy did that for about 30 years in Nashville. Dallas launched about 14 years ago. And then we have one other location in St. Paul, Minnesota, run by a recording artist named Sarah Groves. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Okay. 

Marissa Delcambre: 

Yeah. 

Bill Hendricks: 

I've heard of Sarah. So just to make a distinction there, I'd love to hear what y'all have to say. Art House Nashville, and now Art House Dallas, in St. Paul, you're working with people who... Not all of them, but many of them, they're artists who happen to be Christians, but they don't style themselves as Christian artists. Is that... 

Marissa Delcambre: 

That's right. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Would that be a fair statement? 

Marissa Delcambre: 

Yeah, I do think that's a fair statement. I think that some artists might identify as Christian artists, and there is a theological work that goes into how they would name themselves, but largely, we are working with the creative space or the creative person who says, "I want to just be faithful to where I feel I'm called." And vocationally, that is within the arts. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Gotcha. Because the term Christian gets used so much in so many different ways, you would know with a marketing background, it's become a marketing term. It's become a demographic term. It's now a political category term, and not always in a positive way. And of course, whenever we get into this conversation, I always just point out, well, the word Christian started out as a noun. And then somewhere along the way, it became an adjective. In my judgment, we need to get it back to a noun. We need to talk about people who follow Christ. That's what it originally referred to, not just, oh, I'm in this particular industry, or I put these particular words in, or I have these particular motivations for what I do, so that makes me a Christian lawyer or a Christian doctor, or Christian artist, or whatever. 

Guy Delcambre: 

Yeah, yeah. It's quite unfortunate that it becomes a descriptor. And at Art House, I think all the way from the beginning, there was an intentional parsing out or an intentional distinction, to say Christian artists would connotate something that would be, in people's minds, may be contrived, too resolved immediately. It doesn't leave room for mystery, ambiguity or the inexplicable things. I mean the things that we couldn't possibly know about God. And maybe more importantly, we literally just wanted art to be good art, to be good and honest, like your transcendentals, your truth, your goodness, and your beauty. We wanted art to embody that first, and not to have to filter itself through a value. Because there's so many... Like you alluded to, I mean, who knows what people mean when they say Christian now. I mean, it's just kind of all over the road. So the idea at Art House that we invite people in, and I mean it's reflected in how the organization organizes itself. 

It is very focused on community formation and outreach, and the community is bringing artists together. So it's just wide open. It's a pub gathering. I mean, it's bringing artists in a very safe feeling place to come and meet other artists. From there, there are discipline-specific tracks. Marissa can speak much clearer than I can about it. But there are discipline-specific tracks that are focused on artist formation or craft development. The development of them as artists, songwriters, poets, filmmakers or whatnot. 

And then there's outreach where we're wanting to send those artists, give them the opportunity to go in underserved parts of the city and integrate in other nonprofits. And then we will help them build art workshops to where they're working with kids mostly, who don't have access. And then we do spiritual formation. And that part is explicitly of a Christian theological value. And if a person... I mean, I've been in writing groups of people that are atheists, that are agnostic, Jewish, I mean just like secular Jews, just all sorts of things. And we've done collaborative projects together, and they embody good values. And that's good art. I mean, it's good communication, good expression. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Well, that's just a great segue into the question I sort of began with, that this guy's blog post kind of raised. It's an age-old question, what is art? And then another age-old question right with that is, what's the purpose of art? 

Guy Delcambre: 

I mean, art is... Saying it's the language of beauty I think is really good. It's an engagement of the imagination, which is probably a good starting point for considering what art is. Because there certainly is bad art. I mean, not everything that is creatively done is considered good. Like a poem, for example. You take a poem, and a poem that is so obscure and so esoteric, and so disconnected, I wouldn't consider that good art at all. I mean, it's just like a word salad, if you will. It's just really fancy words perhaps. But a good poem is like a good story. It's got characters. It's communicating something very clearly, and perhaps it's making you squint into the small pinhole of a fence to see a whole other world. But it's certainly bringing you into a world like a story does, right? It's got a purposefulness to it. It's got some definition around it. It doesn't need to be a clean sonnet or anything like that. 

But you can tell good art by, I think the communicative value of that, even if that's a painting or... I mean, we hold onto good songs because of what they do to us, how they move us, and what they communicate into us. But I would say the purpose of art is really just to allow people to continue to engage with the imagination. And especially in modernity, postmodernity and post-postmodernity even, you would get reason and logic as king. Well, you can't have reason without the imagination. 

I mean, the imagination certainly informs reason, and then reason informs the will. And you look at those as either a linear movement or a triadic relationship, but all of those are dependent upon one another. So you can't just completely suck out the imagination and live in some sort of mechanical world of reason and logic, because then you begin to suck out the humanity of it. Art brings us back into the place that reminds us we're actually sacred humans. We're part of a larger cosmos. It causes us to wonder, it causes us to look outside of ourselves. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Well, when I hear those... Very eloquent Guy. When I hear those assertions, art starts to take on this almost religious feel, or conceptually, it takes on kind of a religious tone, if you will, ethos. And so, then I look back through history and I go, "Huh, that's interesting, because in some places, art and religion, art and faith anyway, they live together." I mean, you take the Renaissance, some of these sculptures, some of these paintings, some of the works, the cathedrals. I mean, it's like, "Wow. Art, faith, it's co-mingled." And then of course at the other extreme, you have periods in certainly church history, and if we went back to Jewish history in the Old Testament, places where, thou shall make no graven image. And so like, oh boy, I guess we can't have any painting that depicts God in some way, if that's what that means. And of course churches, at different points in time, have not been exactly friendly toward artists. 

Guy Delcambre: 

Yeah, that's right. 

Bill Hendricks: 

And so, what accounts for this sort of uneasy, fragile relationship? 

Guy Delcambre: 

I'm not going to be as ambitious to try to tackle all of history, but I will point out, what you see in history as it relates to the church... Like icons, for example. So icons would be viewed as windows to see through into the transcendent world, to see God. A person in the ancient world would not worship the icon. They were just looking at God through something. But then you had the iconoclasts, who needed to do that away for the very reason, the commandment that you quoted. 

And there's always been this tenuous relationship, but there is a sacramental value to art that allows us to see outside of our own predicament, our own circumstance, and causes us to wonder. Beauty does the exact same thing. I mean, if you have sat on the side of a hill and looked at a mountainside, I mean, you can't help but be raptured out of the mundaneness or the ordinariness of your life, and consider something much larger. You see majesty, you see something majestic in front of you. I think there's been dark periods of art and faith, to where obviously it has devolved into propaganda, and it had been used in those manipulative type ways. But I think the relationship is one that makes a lot of sense, in that art has the ability to pull us out and bring us into a point of awe and wonder, and worship. And in that way, it serves as windows into the divine. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Yeah. You used earlier the beautiful image of looking through the pinhole to see a broader sort of dimension. And no matter what kind of theological guardrails you put in place to say, "Art? No." Art just pops back up somewhere. Maybe not inside of a house of worship, but it's like ping pong balls, trying to hold them under the water. They keep popping up. And art just keeps... If I can't do it in a community of faith, I'll do it somewhere. 

Guy Delcambre: 

Yeah, I mean, you're right. I mean, even with our young, twenty-month-old child, I mean, we use music, we use pictures, we use things to help him engage in the world now. I mean, he's got a little index of words that he's using. He's certainly not thinking rationally, but he's able to engage with pictures and sounds, and songs, and those things are beginning to help develop his imagination, and develop his way in the world. For the same reason, a song can speak to us and rescue us out of our moment, bring us back to a point of strength in our lives, or lift our eyes and see outside of our own selves. 

I think that's something within the Art House as a whole, that we're constantly inviting artists to come in and to explore is, what do you feel as though you want to communicate? Or who are you? We would start at an identity point first, who are you? And how does that expression... What does your voice sound like? Whether you're singing a song or your voice in a painting, and what does that begin to do? We look at that as communicating to the common good of the city we live in. And that being an inspirational element within our city, within the landscape of Dallas, to point people... People, not just Christians, just people, to the truth, goodness and beauty. 

And whether that helps you imagine being a better neighbor, imagine being a better citizen, imagine being maybe not so grumpy in traffic, whatever it looks like. But murals inspire us. Some buildings inspire us. Churches... 

Bill Hendricks: 

Can inspire us. 

Guy Delcambre: 

Can inspire us. 

Bill Hendricks: 

And have inspired us. 

Guy Delcambre: 

Yes, yes. 

Bill Hendricks: 

So I know the word support factors heavily into the work of Art House Dallas, and I guess it raises the question, what is it about artists that they need support? I mean, there's all kinds of occupations out there, and they have their associations and their clubs, and so forth, but it sounds like artists need something a little bit, either more or different. What is it about creating art that... 

Marissa Delcambre: 

Yeah. I mean, I think that whenever we approach, what does it look like to be a community, or serve the needs of maybe somebody that's more creatively bent, that first approach is hospitality. No matter where you fall on that spectrum of beginner to very professional, everybody is looking for that invitation in, and everybody is looking for that place to belong. And I think that is kind of how we set the tone for everything we're doing. So an example of that might be, Guy had mentioned community formation, and then we kind of this ideal streamlined space of community to formation, to outreach. And the community space is if maybe you're a beginner and it's your first time exploring what does it look like to maybe not call myself an artist yet, but I am interested in this space. We want to provide a welcoming, invitational, warm space for somebody to ask questions and to listen, and to be around other people that have maybe stayed the course a lot longer. 

And so it kind of starts with just that hospitality. I do think just at that core, we all have the desire to belong. So you talk about other professions and vocations, those associations are inviting people to belong, right? I mean, we're all desiring of that. So really that's kind of the starting point. And when you say support, man, that can take on so many different things. From there, I would say maybe you're more in the intermediate space and the support you're needing is business structure. Maybe you've never considered, what would it look like to develop a business out of what I'm making, what I'm putting into the world? 

So maybe you need someone to come alongside you and help you write a business plan, or to consider, could you make a financial living off of what this is, what this medium is? And then from there, patronage. Right? I mean, patronage has always followed the artist, historically speaking. And so the artist always needs patronage. So I think there are many ways that you could talk about support. And then kind of undergirding all the work that we do is what we would call spiritual formation, asking these two very direct questions. Being, who are you in the world? And how are you in the world? And everything we do is operating out of those two questions of, are you cohesive? What is your interior looking like? And how is that coming out of you? We try to provide opportunities to engage all along the way, from community to the more practical support, to the spiritual formation and support. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Well, man, there's a whole nest of things to look into deeper there. I want to go back though to that piece about working with the so-called beginner. Okay? I just want to say something to the listener. You yourself may feel like you've got some creative juices, creative talent, you play the piano once in a while, or your guitar, or you write poems like Guy does, and you're thinking, "Yeah. Well, I don't write them like Guy does, man. I just scratch things down. I don't know if it's good or not." And there's a lot of people, Marissa, that I think they're kind of scared to even let anybody know that they do this. It's like, they do it at home. They're almost embarrassed by it. But they find a sense of joy in doing it. And so they think, "Well, I guess this is just my little thing to do on my own. Nobody else is really going to take any interest in this." Do you find a lot of people like that? 

Marissa Delcambre: 

Absolutely. Yeah. So I would say the first thing is to recognize where you find joy. Right? 

Bill Hendricks: 

Oh, yes. 

Marissa Delcambre: 

And what brings... Where are you passionate? I would ask those two questions to start. The amount of people that come into Art House where it's their first time, they maybe aren't ready to call themselves an artist. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Because it sounds too pretentious for them. 

Marissa Delcambre: 

Pretentious or... I think there's a lot of ambiguity around that. What does it mean to be an artist? Because that looks so different given the discipline, given the culture we live in now. Artist is very... In our mind, we talk about artists as a very broad statement, from the performing artist to the writer, and everything in between, we're describing artists. So I think there's not just one slim definition for that. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Well, I'm guessing that both of you have this experience that I have all the time, because as you know, I do a lot of work in giftedness, which is getting down to that who are you piece. And I listen to all the stories the person says, which is really the evidence of what brings them joy. And they're struggling. And I'll just say, "Wait, wait, wait, wait. Don't you realize? You're an artist. You have the soul of an artist." And it's like a new thought that they've never really allowed themselves to have. I'm guessing you do that a lot, not even at Art House Dallas, but just in the community. You meet somebody, you talk with them, and you go, "You need to know about Art House Dallas because I think you'd find your tribe there." 

Marissa Delcambre: 

Yeah. Yeah. I mean the amount of people that come in with reservation, because they're not sure how to name that or identify that. But I think that's also why we start with that place of hospitality. 

Bill Hendricks: 

You got to feel safe and welcome. 

Marissa Delcambre: 

You have to feel safe. And it is a vulnerable space. Anytime we're identifying something that is very close to who we are, and that really taps into the interior, it is going to be- 

Bill Hendricks: 

You're putting yourself out there. 

Marissa Delcambre: 

It's very daunting. Yeah. And so, I think when people come in and they're invited, and they feel like they have a place to belong, they realize- 

Bill Hendricks: 

And I'm not the only one. 

Marissa Delcambre: 

They realize they're not alone. And I think whether it's at a song critique or a writing workshop, so many artists, even the most professional artists will come in with nerves, and sometimes feeling like they have doubts or insecurities. That journey, it's not just marked on one person. It's a shared experience. And so, the amount of times we meet that person is very common. I mean, Guy can speak to this because long before Guy and I were married, he mentioned this artist retreat we went to. And I remember sitting down at lunch, at one of the lunches during this artist retreat, and I overheard Guy, it was us. I don't even remember who we were talking to, but I remember Guy saying, "Oh yeah, I'm in sales." When they had asked what he did for a living. 

Guy Delcambre: 

Yeah, it was ridiculous. I mean, you're in this enchanted place like Laity Lodge, and it's an artist retreat. And this artist organization sponsored me as an artist to go to it. And I had not published anything yet. It's daunting to call yourself a writer. I certainly would never have identified as an artist at that point. And we're sitting there, and people had written songs, people had carved wood, whatever, just a whole gang of artists of different disciplines. And Marissa heard me, and this is where you get the strength that she's always brought in the organization. So I'm there, and they're like, "What do you do?" And I'm like, "Literally, I'm in sales right now. I was a pastor. I was a church planner, and now I'm just doing a job." And everybody kind of turned like, "Oh, that's interesting and super weird." And just kind of kept talking. 

Bill Hendricks: 

What's he doing here? 

Guy Delcambre: 

Yeah. Like, why are you here? Or they're probably thinking like, "Wow, maybe he's a patron." So Marissa leans over after a while and she's like, "Hey, just to remind you, we sponsored you to come here as an artist. You're a writer. We really believe in you." And I'm like, "Okay." I mean, it didn't really sink into the bones yet. And that's the thing, it's almost like that message at Art House just kept, like a tide, just kept washing over me, just continued to wash over me. And I'm like, "Yeah, okay. I think I am a writer." And everybody around me are like, "Well, no joke. You've been writing." 

Bill Hendricks: 

It's okay to say that about yourself. 

Guy Delcambre: 

Yeah, you just write. I mean, you're not claiming to be anything else. That's what you're doing. And I can't tell you how many times, when I first help started the writing programming at Art House, so many people were coming out of the woodworks and they were like, "I mean, I'm not really a writer." I was like, "You literally just brought a chapter out of a book that you're working on. That's a writer." "Well, I haven't published anything." "Well, here's the thing. Nobody affirms you. The industry doesn't affirm you as an artist." You had mentioned this before, it's an intrinsic giftedness that is inside of you, and you need to fan that flame. 

Marissa Delcambre: 

Yeah. And I also do think it takes somebody outside of maybe your spouse or your kids, or your parents, to name that in you as well. 

Guy Delcambre: 

Definitely. 

Marissa Delcambre: 

And I think the naming of that, right? God names creation. 

Bill Hendricks: 

It affirms the- 

Marissa Delcambre: 

Absolutely. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Existence of that thing. 

Marissa Delcambre: 

And I think when somebody can recognize that in you, and call it out of you and name that, it just gives a different platform, a different identity space, a different recognition of what that is. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Well, and of course, part of the problem, much of the problem here is, in our culture, we take these occupational titles and mix up our identities with them. Lawyers, doctors, teachers, salesmen, homemakers, et cetera. And that's not who we are. Those are occupations, those are roles. And who we are, our being, our personhood, is a different matter. And when you use a word like artist, it can kind of be both. But not all artists are paid artists, probably the majority aren't. 

Marissa Delcambre: 

Right. 

Guy Delcambre: 

We have a word for that. And sometimes people will more easily identify with being a creative. Okay. So you're a creative. Literally, it's how you are in the world. You could be an accountant who's writing stories. That's a creative. Because not all accountants just sit there and write stories. So you have creative, you have an artist, a true artist, maybe they're getting paid or maybe that's all they're doing, devoting themselves into, and they're fully living into that. And then you have obviously the patron sort of in that ecosystem, that allows especially the artists to rise. And that's a lot of the good work that Art House does, brings patrons, creatives, and artists into the same rooms together, to experience things, to share of local art that's being made, to expose that. And there are patrons that fund projects. There are patrons that come up and fund programs that Art House is doing because they really believe in it. Like the Art of Business Program, people come and like, "I really believe in that." I mean, most artists have no plan of business. I mean, most artists would be like- 

Bill Hendricks: 

Don't think in those terms. 

Guy Delcambre: 

"I'm not going to want to think like that, because don't cramp my style type thing." And it's like, "Yeah, yeah. But you want to be doing this in five years, and 20 years. So you need some stability." 

Bill Hendricks: 

You need a plan for that. 

Guy Delcambre: 

Yeah. You need a plan toward that. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Well, I never really thought about it, Guy, until you talked about it, but patrons are expressing a form of generosity to artists. 

Guy Delcambre: 

Yes. 

Bill Hendricks: 

And not just money generosity, but the generosity of their interest, of their vote of confidence, of their affirmation of the art, of their critique. I mean, it could come in many ways. But we're back to community. It's not only a community of artists that you're trying to pull in, it's... The patrons may not come to Art House Dallas functions and stuff, but they may come to some, but they still are part of that ecosystem you're trying to have. 

Marissa Delcambre: 

Yeah. And it's an exchange. I mean, when we are thinking about how to platform something or introduce something to the public, we're considering the audience, the patrons' experience with the storyteller, whoever that is. Right? And everybody is a storyteller, the painter, the writer, the songwriter, the actor, they're all telling a story through their work. So we're always trying to consider, and help the artist consider, what story, what am I sharing with my audience? And how do I make this a mutual exchange that's beneficial? Because both are supporting one another in this ecosystem. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Yeah. Well, let me ask a question about one particular group of people that could be patrons. And just real quick, just churches. Aside from churches in Dallas going to artists, "Oh, you should check out Art House Dallas", what could churches do to help artists that they encounter, both in their congregation and in the community? 

Guy Delcambre: 

Yeah. So I can tell you what we do at All Saints. So Art House and All Saints have hopefully the blessing of both of us being involved on both. So they get double-ended on both sides. But how we think about it locally as a church is, it's very important for the church to affirm the artists who are members of that church. There's one thing, you don't want to outsource that to an organization, a para-organization of any kind. We probably have 30 artists within the All Saints congregation. And so, part of my role is to develop community in the locality of that membership, to affirm that, to create a gallery and allow them to present work. I mean, as a clergyman, it's very important that the aesthetic value of beauty and art is rising to a theological value insulator, if you will. To where what we're learning intellectually with our minds, what we're experiencing through prayer and through community, it's also being echoed back and insulated by the art within the space. 

I mean, that's not going to happen with an external agency of any kind. But we're also not going to create a bunch of programs. So that's when we refer out artists to belong to the Art House community. I mean, because this is what Art House is doing. But most churches don't have an arts pastor or something like that. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Very few would. 

Guy Delcambre: 

Very few. Right? So the easiest thing would be, first of all, just get to know your people. Affirm the artists that are there. I mean, recognize that most of the scripture you're pulling from, all of it has a literary form. Most of it in the Old Testament is actually poetry. So just recognize these things, and then refer them out to Art House Dallas. Art House has two programs that can be completely white labeled for any local church. One is Origin, the Spiritual Formation Program. 

There's literally a series reader that comes with it every year. So we have two gatherings. An opening session this year will be Malcolm Ghite, and the closing session will be David Taylor. Those are huge, heavy hitters in this part of thinking of art and theology. And then in the in-between, there are discussion groups. A church can literally take those and partner with us, maybe fund part of the program, buy the booklets for themselves, and then organize their artists into discussion groups. The other one would be the outreach program, Deploy. We do that actually with a local church around the Bachman Lake area. And they really want to work with issues right around Bachman Lake. So we help them mobilize artists from their locality, and give them art workshops that we've done in the past. And we kind of function as consulting voices for them. And we're just empowering them to do that on their own. 

Bill Hendricks: 

That's fantastic. 

Guy Delcambre: 

So it's very, very easy programs that the team has created. 

Marissa Delcambre: 

Yeah. I mean, I would say, with that in mind, knowing that most churches don't have that arts pastor, and likely most churches are not going to start some type of ministry around that. But I do think it's very approachable in what Guy's saying of, recognize who your congregation is, and then from there, what locally do you have available to you? And with that in mind, we have created so many things to be evergreen and to be a resource for the church. 

Bill Hendricks: 

That's great. 

Marissa Delcambre: 

So you find what that is. Maybe it's not Art House, maybe it's another arts organization, but they're out there and they're doing it. 

Guy Delcambre: 

It should be Art House. 

Marissa Delcambre: 

Yeah. I mean, it should. Come to Art House. Yeah, we have all the programming and resourcing. But whatever that is locally, I think there are so many opportunities to partner together, to work together, and to increase impact, and to recognize that so many artists feel alone in that space, and feel isolated in that space. And without that community, they're not going to be able to keep growing in whatever maybe that joy is, or the thing they're doing at home. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Well, if the church should be interested in ministering to anybody, it's the isolated and lonely. I mean, that's kind of what we're called to. 

Guy Delcambre: 

That's right. 

Bill Hendricks: 

I got two final questions real quick, but they're tough questions. I started with this quote from the blogger, "The world will survive without good art." Do you think that's true? 

Marissa Delcambre: 

I would say no. I've often asked friends and people in the community to imagine a world without the things that inspire us, that bring us joy in every day, that wake us up in the morning, that we're excited about the following day. The songs we listen to, the books we read, the films we watch. Can you imagine a world without those things? 

Bill Hendricks: 

I don't know if I want to imagine that. 

Marissa Delcambre: 

That's right. That's right. And I think when we start to actually consider what that looks like, it's a very lonely, dark place. Because the beauty that we see every day is because people have been bold and have put that work into the world. So no, I can't imagine surviving in that world. 

Bill Hendricks: 

I mean, the world will survive without good art. I guess it gets down to what do you mean by survive? 

Marissa Delcambre: 

Yeah, what type of survival? 

Bill Hendricks: 

There's different kinds of death. 

Guy Delcambre: 

There's no chance humanity survives without art. Not a chance in the world. Because this is just general revelation knowledge. I mean, a person would understand, okay, so there's something bigger than what's created now. So there's a creator. And from that creator, you have this value of creativity, of making. Right? Tolkien had coined the phrase, sub-creators. So we're all sub-creators, the artists in this world. Molding the material that had been created already. But I mean, there's no chance, because we're not machines, there's no chance the human soul, the human psyche, survives without stories that helps it understand and grapple with the terror of this life sometimes, with the inexplicable things, with the darkness that's around us. Not a chance in the world. If we were machines, that might be another world. Right? Machines could survive without it- 

Bill Hendricks: 

Scary. 

Guy Delcambre: 

But humans can't. 

Bill Hendricks: 

All right. One last question, and it flows out of this. Artists can't survive without what? Artists can't survive without what? 

Marissa Delcambre: 

Yeah. I mean, I think what I had mentioned earlier. I mean, they can't survive without support, without community, without a place to belong. I mean, they can continue creating, but without that spurring on and without that refining of the work, and without knowing they're not alone, they typically will not continue. There will be kind of a burnout place or a stopping place without that. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Or they go crazy. 

Marissa Delcambre: 

Or they go crazy, which we've seen over and over again. 

Guy Delcambre: 

Yeah, I would definitely agree with that. A sense of belonging. I mean, artists will never survive. Because an artist will never know themselves without belonging. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Humans are social creatures. 

Guy Delcambre: 

Yeah. You learn yourself through other people. And I'll just say, artists will also not survive without money. I'm just going to plug that real quick. Artists need- 

Bill Hendricks: 

Wait a minute. She's supposed to be- 

Marissa Delcambre: 

I know. 

Guy Delcambre: 

Artists need to be supported. Sometimes that happens through a patron commissioning a project, but then also patrons supporting an organization like Art House. And I said it in jest earlier, there are numerous other organizations that are working in local arts here in Dallas, that are superb. And even if it's buying a ticket to go watch a show, just support the local arts on whatever way you can. And I think that provides a good ecosystem, if you will, for an artist to be able to thrive in. Because people are recognizing, oh, I appreciate going to the ballet or going to watch a concert, or going to watch a show. Here's a local artist, I want to support them as well. It's very, very important. Very important to the local soul of where you live. 

Bill Hendricks: 

The soul of the community. 

Guy Delcambre: 

Definitely. 

Marissa Delcambre: 

Well, right. And it doesn't keep growing and thriving- 

Bill Hendricks: 

If you don't have- 

Marissa Delcambre: 

Without the patronage. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Exactly. 

Marissa Delcambre: 

So like I mentioned, buy the ticket to the show. Go see the art show. 

Bill Hendricks: 

It's an investment. 

Marissa Delcambre: 

Go to the gallery. Without that, we don't have the thriving, robust art scene that we all want in our city. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Well, our time has past gone, but I just want to thank y'all so much for being a part of the table today. Thank you very much. 

Marissa Delcambre: 

Yeah, thank you. 

Guy Delcambre: 

Glad to be here. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Yeah, we'll have to have you back. And I want to thank you, listener, for listening to The Table Podcast. And if you've enjoyed this conversation today, then head on over to Apple Podcast or whatever your favorite outlet is, your app, and subscribe, so that you'll never miss an episode. And frankly, we'd be thrilled if you'd leave a rating or review, on Apple Podcasts, especially five stars. That actually helps us find more people who can be exposed to The Table Podcast, where we discuss issues of God and culture, in order to show the relevance of theology to everyday life. Thanks for being with us. We'll see you next time on The Table.