Desperate for help ..i need some INSPIRATION! easy 10 :)?

Question

There is an art contest I know of and the top 20 pieces will be chosen and auctioned off. The theme is "Consumerisum in Your World". and I need to include consumerism and faith in my work of art as well as the title.

I need some creative ideas that relate to consumerism & faith to help me start drawing.

ANY SUGGESTIONS?

Answer 1

When someone says 'easy 10 points' why is the question never easy?

Anyway, I don't know how you'd paint this but the modern 'faith' is that you absolutely have to have certain products.

For example, you have to wash your toddler's hair with shampoo, you have to use deodorant or you have bad hygiene, you have to have a feed your dog a commercially made dog food. These examples are all from Yahoo Answers.

Can people not see that these are all myths created by the manufacturers of these products?

Answer 2

Draw something that makes you happy and relates to faith...hmm..

paint a playgorund with "garbage cans" with labels such as

faith, recycle, trash, youth, and poverty

title"you can renew almost anything" or "not everthing can be thrown out".......

does this help?

I'm just brainstorming here....

-Krystina

Answer 3

Show how corporate (fast food?) logos and religious symbols are different but similar.

Answer 4

This a bit subversive, and maybe a little too literal - but have you ever noticed what your church spends money on?  Equipment, supplies, hymnals, printing, sound systems, video systems, the list goes on and on.  Of course many of these things are necessary to conduct Worship and operate the church - but many are just so much bling sold to churches by businesses because other churches have them, or you have to 'modernize', or it's cool.

Check out the marketing materials of business that sell church supplies and systems,  Sometimes they are over the top - rampant consumerism.  When something new comes along its hard sell and every church has to have one.  I bet there is a store room full of unused stuff somebody at church was sure you could not live without.

"Faith in the Next Best Thing"

Answer 5

Show symbols of the major religions, (don't forget the Eastern ones), perhaps a collage of services provided; then "It's all a matter of Faith--Give."

Answer 6

You're the artist, they want to see YOUR creativity.

Best of luck :)

Answer 7

well- i'm not sure if I could be of any help.

But consumerism, which means equating of personal happiness, right? So to me, the rain makes me happy -

so i'm guessing your artwork will be abstract- and i could see like a young girl running through the rain- Music also makes me happy, so maybe music notes in the wind - or an ipod fading into the background- umm... faith- well, i believe in god - so maybe you could have a dove or a rainbow *b/c a rainbow was a sign from god promising never to send a flood* - or you could have a piece of paper torn from the bible -

but that's just me- i'm not sure if any of this will be any help- I'm not really an artist- I like looking at art-work and coming up w/ ideas

-  I just believe "in the moments". - and I love when art reflects on something - a piece of work that really doesn't tell you what it is talking about - you just have to look inside of it - and relate to it and then you understand.

hope this helps tho and good luck! :)

Answer 8

AMERICANS SPENT MORE THAN 700 BILLION DOLLARS ON ENTERTAINMENT LAST YEAR, WHILE AN ESTIMATED 15 MILLION PEOPLE (MOSTLY CHILDREN)STARVED TO DEATH THROUGH OUT THE WORLD.

ALSO WHILE PEOPLE STARVE TO DEATH AMERICANS SPENT 30 BILLION ON WEIGHT LOSS AIDS, AND 13 BILLION DOLLARS ON PERFUME. THE PET SUPPLIES INDUSTRY IN AMERICA IS A 40 BILLION DOLLAR BUISNESS.

AN ARTICLE I READ:

House Minority Leader Boehner, a Republican congressman from Ohio, celebrated the recent passage of the economic stimulus package by saying, "The sooner we get this relief in the hands of the American people, the sooner they can begin to do their job of being good consumers." Your title: "consumer;" your mission: "buy stuff." Echoes of the president's call, amid the crisis of 9/11, to get out and "shop."

The distance between "citizen" and "consumer" is the distance we have traveled. Where "citizen" has a certain dignity, even gravitas, carrying with it notions of responsibility and capacity for decision, "consumer" conjures something far more passive, lacking either dignity or responsibility, save responsibility to one's self and for getting the best deal.

Yet "consumer" has steadily infiltrated our language and become our self-designation and default definition of what it means to be a person. Group Health Cooperative, of which I am a member, does not speak of us as either patients or members, but as consumers. We are health care consumers. Higher education mutes talk of the educated person in favor of consumers of educational services and getting the best value for your education dollar. Churches gear up for "church shoppers," religious consumers.

The subtext of cultural change in the past 30 years has been the way the market has seeped into every sector of life and come to define how we think of who we are and what we do. We are consumers, feeding the great insatiable maw of the consumer economy.

Is it too much to suggest that consumerism has become a kind of alternative faith, a religion of sorts? Religions are characterized by some vision of a good life, by their rituals and by a particular language. Consumerism seems to be developing all three apace.

Consumerism's vision of the good life is the gaining of goods and experiences. Consumerism also has its own rituals that form and promote consumer character. The acquisition of credit cards and debit cards by the young becomes some sort of rite of passage. The Friday after Thanksgiving is consumerism's high holy day, the No. 1 shopping day of the year. How much we shop during the Christmas season is an indicator of our national health. Television offers the liturgy of consumerism 24/7, and wonder of wonders, we consent to having it piped into our homes!

One might even do a compare- and-contrast between religion's historic and characteristic virtues and consumerism's virtues or qualities of character. For faith and religion, the crowning virtue is love, a capacity for other regard. For consumerism, self-regard would lead the list. No. 2 in a listing of religious virtues would be joy with the associated notion of contentment.

Yet for consumerism, discontent is essential. One must be in a constant state of anxiety about keeping up, having the newest and the latest. Virtue No. 3 of the spiritual life is peace and harmony with others. But for consumerism, envy is to be preferred.

The list goes on: The quality of patience is met with consumerism's virtue of instant gratification; generosity with maximization of profit and pleasure; gentleness with the hard sell and hype; faithfulness with planned obsolescence. Finally, religion has understood self-control, imagine that, as a virtue. The good consumer learns the virtue of impulse buying.

How we name ourselves is important. Democracy names us as "citizens." Religion names us as "persons made in the image of God." Each has a dignity, even a nobility, that "consumer" lacks.

So now, because mortgage and finance companies succeeded in gaining more consumers with loans they could neither afford nor sustain, creating the subprime crisis, we have a stimulus package, a kind of consumer Viagra, to get us up and buying again. Is something wrong with this picture?

Lent, the Christian season of penitence and self-examination, began this week. The sins to be repented are still with us: greed, envy, sloth, covetousness. Only they are no longer sins. They are the virtues of "the good consumer."

Anthony B. Robinson's column appears Saturdays. He is a speaker, consultant and writer. His recent books include "Common Grace: How To Be a Person and Other Spiritual Matters," and "Leadership for Vital Congregations." Want to suggest ideas for future columns? He can be reached at [e-mail].