Hi friends
These are origional Williams Rollers from the year 2001.
I hope you enjoy them.
Once upon a time I was walking with my friend and acting like a Doomer-Gloomer. Of all the many wonderful things that I’ve been given that I could have been rejoicing about, I was letting one little thing bring me down. Just then (and by “just then” I mean with in 10 or 15 minutes) my clever and thoughtful friend said most eloquently, “Life is a lot easier if you hold your head up and smile at people.” And how did I respond to this delectable conversation- prompting statement? How did I respond? Yep, with some dweebish comment about how, “really it is easier to walk with your head down but it’s probably better to look up.” Whoosh, that’s a missed hit. But, hey I’m getting better and better and I’m thankful. So next time I’m being a Negative- Nelly help a fellow out will you? A well- guided projectile often works nicely. Can you believe the weather? I was at Wal-Mart, it’s kind of my second home, (not really) and I found an odd connection between Wal-Mart and the weather lately. It’s a bit far-fetched and dorky. The weather lately is comparable to the ideal consumer. The consumer says, “I want the blue one, no the red one, no I want both.” And the weather says, “I want summer, no winter, no both.” Never mind. When I was a kid I saw this cartoon. It was Duck Tales. I can’t remember what the rich uncle’s name was. There was this one episode where he had a room half full of gold coins with a diving board above it. Was his name Scrooge McDuck? Anyway he jumped off of the diving board and landed in the coins and swam around. There is no way that you could really do that. It would be cool if you could though. I once thought that cell phones were the plaque of society but now I think that it is the digital camera. This is why I think so: My brother recently had a baby boy. Don’t get me wrong, I think the little guy is great, with his tiny hands and feet, his little grin and so on and so forth. But my brother sent my parents a CD of pictures, taken digitally, of my nephew. THERE WERE FOUR HUNDRED AND EIGHT PICTURES. While flipping through them I slowly went from excitement, to happiness, to tiredness, to boredom, to sadness, to fear, to nausea. There were so many pictures. Wow… four hundred and eight. I’ll probably do the same if I ever have a kid. Do you remember when people used to say “not” after everything, like, “You’re cool, not”? Well thanks again. I hope you do well. Please strive to do great. In the words of Levar Burton, “I’ll see you next time.”
love braden williams
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Friday, June 20, 2008
short one
So I was reading my friend Leslie's blog, (it is a very good one) and she made this comment that I think is quite extraordinary. She said:
"I also think that if trees could talk... and you had a conversation with them and said something like, 'I don't think I believe in God' that the tree you were conversing with would laugh at you."
What a cool thought, thanks Leslie.
bye for now
love braden joshua macIntosh williams
"I also think that if trees could talk... and you had a conversation with them and said something like, 'I don't think I believe in God' that the tree you were conversing with would laugh at you."
What a cool thought, thanks Leslie.
bye for now
love braden joshua macIntosh williams
Friday, June 13, 2008
cookies?
Well I just tried to log into this page and I got this weird message that said my browser's cookie is misfunctioning or something like that. It gave me a re-routing thing to click on but psh, I didn't have a clue. I don't know much about cookies but I thought that they were bad, like a virus. Apparently they must have a good function too if I was having problems because one was misfunctioning.
Well anyway, I am auditing a class with my wife and it is amazing.
My friend was telling me that I don't speak much about my marriage to him. I was thinking about it and I don't talk much about being married, I think because, it is something very much beyond my ability to conceptualize. It is amazing, new and personal, in a way that I haven't learned how to communicate. It is so much different than any cultural notion of marriage (so much better, most of the time my response to the cultural representations of marriage is one of nausea and discouragement), so I can't use already developed language about it. It is something enormous, dynamic, and rich in ways that I am not sure how to make tangible, perhaps because I rarely see it around me. It makes me understand more of why God uses it as a metaphor of our relationship with him, why he calls us the bride of Christ.
Love
braden
Well anyway, I am auditing a class with my wife and it is amazing.
My friend was telling me that I don't speak much about my marriage to him. I was thinking about it and I don't talk much about being married, I think because, it is something very much beyond my ability to conceptualize. It is amazing, new and personal, in a way that I haven't learned how to communicate. It is so much different than any cultural notion of marriage (so much better, most of the time my response to the cultural representations of marriage is one of nausea and discouragement), so I can't use already developed language about it. It is something enormous, dynamic, and rich in ways that I am not sure how to make tangible, perhaps because I rarely see it around me. It makes me understand more of why God uses it as a metaphor of our relationship with him, why he calls us the bride of Christ.
Love
braden
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
ideas about honor
Honor
Is honor something that one can poses, or is it a pattern of living? I think when one says to have honor it is this person making honorable choices, it could be that person having honorable desire. We find that one can honor one’s parents by taking care of them. We see where the Pharisees were not honoring their parents in Mark 7: 10-13.
One can honor God with one’s talents by being good stewards of them.
I think that often honor has been displayed as not giving in or backing down on what is believed. I think that standing for beliefs at all is an example of honor but this is an example of exceptional honor. The movie the Last Samurai is based on this sort of notion of honor. The characters will die for honor, and even kill themselves as a way to die honorably. I think that this is a miss understanding of what honor is, but a right understanding of how to hold on to honor.
It seems to me that honoring is paired with concern or a desire of righteousness, or love. Perhaps action is a fulfillment of one’s concern. Perhaps action helps create concern.
I think that an important way to keep one’s self sensitive to what is honorable is to think about what one does before one does it, to judge what is best. Many people do things because they always have, or because everyone else does or because that is what their parents/family did, or even because it is what they think they are supposed to do. In all of these times what is done is not necessarily what is best.
Here is a verse to think about.
Proverbs 15:33 the fear of the Lord is the instruction of wisdom, And before honor is humility.
This is interesting because I have been thinking of honor as more of a worldview. (I will consider people and actions with a “what is best” lens and act accordingly to my best judgment.) This proverbs passage relates it to humility, which seems to me to be more of a state of being. (I will live in humility, I will have my existence be in keeping with whom I am, e.g. human, servant, beloved etc) In any case honor seems to be a very dynamic thing.
Is honor something that one can poses, or is it a pattern of living? I think when one says to have honor it is this person making honorable choices, it could be that person having honorable desire. We find that one can honor one’s parents by taking care of them. We see where the Pharisees were not honoring their parents in Mark 7: 10-13.
One can honor God with one’s talents by being good stewards of them.
I think that often honor has been displayed as not giving in or backing down on what is believed. I think that standing for beliefs at all is an example of honor but this is an example of exceptional honor. The movie the Last Samurai is based on this sort of notion of honor. The characters will die for honor, and even kill themselves as a way to die honorably. I think that this is a miss understanding of what honor is, but a right understanding of how to hold on to honor.
It seems to me that honoring is paired with concern or a desire of righteousness, or love. Perhaps action is a fulfillment of one’s concern. Perhaps action helps create concern.
I think that an important way to keep one’s self sensitive to what is honorable is to think about what one does before one does it, to judge what is best. Many people do things because they always have, or because everyone else does or because that is what their parents/family did, or even because it is what they think they are supposed to do. In all of these times what is done is not necessarily what is best.
Here is a verse to think about.
Proverbs 15:33 the fear of the Lord is the instruction of wisdom, And before honor is humility.
This is interesting because I have been thinking of honor as more of a worldview. (I will consider people and actions with a “what is best” lens and act accordingly to my best judgment.) This proverbs passage relates it to humility, which seems to me to be more of a state of being. (I will live in humility, I will have my existence be in keeping with whom I am, e.g. human, servant, beloved etc) In any case honor seems to be a very dynamic thing.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
My marriage is great
My marriage is great. I haven’t been married a year. We were poor-ish like many people are. We would check movies out from the library and they would skip on our dvd player. We used our gift card to buy a cheap lacrosse set which we played with for hours. We made up games and hoped we were getting good exercise.
One movie we watched was about a man who loved grizzlies. Was his name Timothy Treadwell? I collected black walnuts to make ink, not knowing how potent they were until my hands were a nice warm brown for two weeks. I was trying to jump over geese while Stacy took pictures when I got the idea to jump over a bush.
Well this is a good story so let me take a step back for a moment. First I was doing three sixty jumps while Stacy took pictures. I jumped off of a little step, over gaps, that kind of thing. I took a few pictures of Stacy doing the same thing. That is when we saw the geese and some how it came to us for me to try a three sixty over a goose. I ran and ran. Geese were squawking, and Stacy was shooting. It didn’t happen. Then I saw a little ledge that I wanted to jump up on to. I did that for a while and it was fun well there was this one ledge that was behind a bush, I tried the jump and fell into the bush.
“Are you alright?” Stacy asked. “Nope,” as I started running for our apartment. Stacy sure was freaked. I knew that soon the blood would be flowing and I didn’t want the little soccer kids and their moms who were near by to see it.
I stopped and together we went home, washed up and decided that I need stitches. At the emergency care, we watched my muscle slide next to my bone while the doc had me move my foot. “I’m worried that you might have hit a tendon,” he said. “I am going to send you to the ER to see the orthopedic surgeon.”
It was 10 pm when we got to the ER, 11 pm when we got to our curtained room. The P. A. saw us at 12am when our lovely neighbor began telling her doc why she was there. “Vomiting, and vomiting and vomiting. Well I’m such and such kind of tax lawyer,” she said. “I had this case where there was a priest and he was in over his head. I told him he was going to pay a lot of money. “
“In the courtroom,” she continued, “this priest was on the stand and started projectile vomiting and vomiting and vomiting.”
“Oh,” said the doc.
“Then the judge started projectile vomiting and vomiting. And then I started projectile vomiting and we were all vomiting and vomiting and…”
“Oh”
“Vomiting and Vomiting…”
At this point the orthopedic surgeon had arrived. It turns out that there aren’t even any tendons that run alone the part of my leg that I had cut. They stitched me up, drugged me up and I went home. I am not sure if I’ve heard the word vomiting so much in one night. Maybe I missed the punch line.
Later that summer we picked and juiced cherries from her school campus, did the same with apples, and dressed up as a doughnut and coffee for Halloween.
On labor day we went with Stacy’s family to upper peninsula. It was a good time. We had a tent pitched next to her parent’s camper. We went to yard sales, tourist traps, and lived the life. One night talking in my sleep I said, “I got to go pee so bad, so bad.” After a little bit of time Stacy asked, “Bray do you have to go pee?” Now half awake I answered, “So bad.” “Why don’t you go.” And off I went puzzled as to how she knew I had to go pee. I asked here when I got back. You now know what I learned then.
One movie we watched was about a man who loved grizzlies. Was his name Timothy Treadwell? I collected black walnuts to make ink, not knowing how potent they were until my hands were a nice warm brown for two weeks. I was trying to jump over geese while Stacy took pictures when I got the idea to jump over a bush.
Well this is a good story so let me take a step back for a moment. First I was doing three sixty jumps while Stacy took pictures. I jumped off of a little step, over gaps, that kind of thing. I took a few pictures of Stacy doing the same thing. That is when we saw the geese and some how it came to us for me to try a three sixty over a goose. I ran and ran. Geese were squawking, and Stacy was shooting. It didn’t happen. Then I saw a little ledge that I wanted to jump up on to. I did that for a while and it was fun well there was this one ledge that was behind a bush, I tried the jump and fell into the bush.
“Are you alright?” Stacy asked. “Nope,” as I started running for our apartment. Stacy sure was freaked. I knew that soon the blood would be flowing and I didn’t want the little soccer kids and their moms who were near by to see it.
I stopped and together we went home, washed up and decided that I need stitches. At the emergency care, we watched my muscle slide next to my bone while the doc had me move my foot. “I’m worried that you might have hit a tendon,” he said. “I am going to send you to the ER to see the orthopedic surgeon.”
It was 10 pm when we got to the ER, 11 pm when we got to our curtained room. The P. A. saw us at 12am when our lovely neighbor began telling her doc why she was there. “Vomiting, and vomiting and vomiting. Well I’m such and such kind of tax lawyer,” she said. “I had this case where there was a priest and he was in over his head. I told him he was going to pay a lot of money. “
“In the courtroom,” she continued, “this priest was on the stand and started projectile vomiting and vomiting and vomiting.”
“Oh,” said the doc.
“Then the judge started projectile vomiting and vomiting. And then I started projectile vomiting and we were all vomiting and vomiting and…”
“Oh”
“Vomiting and Vomiting…”
At this point the orthopedic surgeon had arrived. It turns out that there aren’t even any tendons that run alone the part of my leg that I had cut. They stitched me up, drugged me up and I went home. I am not sure if I’ve heard the word vomiting so much in one night. Maybe I missed the punch line.
Later that summer we picked and juiced cherries from her school campus, did the same with apples, and dressed up as a doughnut and coffee for Halloween.
On labor day we went with Stacy’s family to upper peninsula. It was a good time. We had a tent pitched next to her parent’s camper. We went to yard sales, tourist traps, and lived the life. One night talking in my sleep I said, “I got to go pee so bad, so bad.” After a little bit of time Stacy asked, “Bray do you have to go pee?” Now half awake I answered, “So bad.” “Why don’t you go.” And off I went puzzled as to how she knew I had to go pee. I asked here when I got back. You now know what I learned then.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Artists statement No 2.
I believe strongly in the importance of the artist’s intuition. My belief is that an artist working naturalistically has an infinite amount of resource from his or her everyday encounters with life. An artist’s intuition will tell him or her if things “look right.” The trick is one’s ability to listen or hear the voice of one’s intuition. In my studies of structurally based drawing, I have worked extensively with the cube. Using this regular and simple form I have sought to hone my intuition by drawing from memory, drawing and redrawing cubes in multiple positions, and using my peripheral vision as an aid to tapping my intuition.
This emphasis on intuition by drawing structurally creates a wellspring of awareness and understanding of the subject matter. Through a well-developed understanding of simple forms such as the cube, I find a more keen and potent relationship to my subject matter. I try to take this context and allow it to free me up creatively. I try to express this through the subtle use of color, such as juxtaposing cool and warm temperatures.
I attempt to use my structural drawing exercises to help build a strong illusion of depth and space. It is my desire and intent to charge this space with a mood or atmosphere. I have started with simple spaces in which I attempt, using color temperature relationships, to give a setting for a simple clay or wax figure.
I select my subject matter with the intent of creating a specific meaning that is somewhat obscured or not completely clear to the viewer. I try to draw the viewer into the subject matter with room for the viewer to create his or her own narrative.
This emphasis on intuition by drawing structurally creates a wellspring of awareness and understanding of the subject matter. Through a well-developed understanding of simple forms such as the cube, I find a more keen and potent relationship to my subject matter. I try to take this context and allow it to free me up creatively. I try to express this through the subtle use of color, such as juxtaposing cool and warm temperatures.
I attempt to use my structural drawing exercises to help build a strong illusion of depth and space. It is my desire and intent to charge this space with a mood or atmosphere. I have started with simple spaces in which I attempt, using color temperature relationships, to give a setting for a simple clay or wax figure.
I select my subject matter with the intent of creating a specific meaning that is somewhat obscured or not completely clear to the viewer. I try to draw the viewer into the subject matter with room for the viewer to create his or her own narrative.
Artist statement No.1
In the account of Creation after the Lord had created something Scripture says, “And God saw that it was good.” This is a profound example of creating. God created and the very existence of the created is good. This high standard of making, for its existence to be good, warrants an artist’s best efforts.
I believe that the most valuable art is made in response to the Creator. It is my personal desire to make art that mirrors or speaks of life. I see life and vitality in Creation that can even become a catalyst to worship. As a student in Florence, Italy, I had substantial exposure to the art of Michelangelo Buonarroti. In particular, his marble sculptures carried something of a concentrated allusion to life that was captivating to say the least. As an artist who is attentively aware of the distortion of sin and the persistence of death, I take pleasure to work at finding life in even the most common, trite, and dispensable things.
I believe that Creation can be well used and utilized as a pattern for beauty.
The fact that God saw Creation and said that it was good is a compelling event. Beautiful trees, mountains, and wild life are spectacular examples of what God saw when he spoke. One of the often forgotten members of Creation is air. I particularly find awe and intrigue especially in the space between and the volume of the Created. I try to reflect this by making my paintings and drawings show depth and presence. I try to boil things down and un-clutter my paintings to emphasis the air and space.
As an artist I want to glorify God with my talents; I want to encourage people to seek after God, and I want to communicate something of God’s beauty.
I believe that the most valuable art is made in response to the Creator. It is my personal desire to make art that mirrors or speaks of life. I see life and vitality in Creation that can even become a catalyst to worship. As a student in Florence, Italy, I had substantial exposure to the art of Michelangelo Buonarroti. In particular, his marble sculptures carried something of a concentrated allusion to life that was captivating to say the least. As an artist who is attentively aware of the distortion of sin and the persistence of death, I take pleasure to work at finding life in even the most common, trite, and dispensable things.
I believe that Creation can be well used and utilized as a pattern for beauty.
The fact that God saw Creation and said that it was good is a compelling event. Beautiful trees, mountains, and wild life are spectacular examples of what God saw when he spoke. One of the often forgotten members of Creation is air. I particularly find awe and intrigue especially in the space between and the volume of the Created. I try to reflect this by making my paintings and drawings show depth and presence. I try to boil things down and un-clutter my paintings to emphasis the air and space.
As an artist I want to glorify God with my talents; I want to encourage people to seek after God, and I want to communicate something of God’s beauty.
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