I am convinced that the Gospel is for all of life and ought to fuel the soul as well as the imagination. To that end, I regularly try to set aside some time and space each Friday to encourage the pursuit of creativity. I try to do this in a couple of different ways. I regularly link to Joe Kennedy, Will Turner, Timmy Brister, Steve McCoy, Joe Thorn, who post photographs on Fridays, along with the Friday Flickr Group in which they participate. I also often highlight a poet (who may or may not be Christian, but who above all, uses words well) and I highlight a musical artist who makes at least one track available for free and legal download and recently, I’ve begun highlighting an artist along with at least one piece of their artwork.

Today’s featured poet is Nikki Giovanni (b.1943-). Giovanni is an American poet and is Giovanni is currently a Distinguished Professor of English at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Giovanni is a lung cancer survivor and eventually lost a lung as a result. She is a prolific writer and has since written more than two dozen books including volumes of poetry, illustrated children’s books, and three collections of essays. Much of her poetry has been inspired by and deals with the civil rights movement in America. Today’s featured poem is called “Balances.”

• Read Nikki Giovanni for yourself
• Read Wikipedia’s page dedicated to Giovanni

Today’s featured visual artist is Gustav Klimt (1862-1918). Klimt was an Austrian artist known for his paintings, murals and sketches, often dealing with the female form. Klimt’s Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (featured above) is the third most expensive painting on record, selling in 2006 for an estimated $135 million and now adusted at $137.6 million (view Wikipedia’s list of the most expensive paintings on record here). Though the Portrait has been identified as one of the most expensive paintings, it is perhaps Klimt’s painting The Kiss which is better known, being seen at poster shops in malls worldwide.

• Browse the works of Gustav Klimt for yourself
• Visit Wikipedia’s page dedicated to Klimt

Today’s featured musical artist is one of my favorite acts: Tortoise. Part of the fertile Chicago music scene and often labeled “Post-Rock,” Allmusic says that: “Tortoise revolutionized American indie rock in the mid-’90s by playing down tried-and-true punk and rock & roll influences, emphasizing instead the incorporation of a variety of left-field music genres from the past 20 years, including Krautrock, dub, avant-garde jazz, classical minimalism, ambient and space music, film music, and British electronica.”

Tortoise have indeed been one of the most influential bands to come out of Chicago, with members playing a wide variety of side projects and producing as well. Today instead of downloads, we’re featuring two videos. These are high quality live videos and appear to be from a foreign television special, though I don’t know the actual source. The first video is entitled “I Set My Face to the Hillside” and is a song from their 1998 release TNT.

This second video appears to be from the same performance and is a “medley” of sorts, featuring a combination of “Magnet Pulls Through” (from the 1994 self-titled release) and “Eden” (from 2001’s Standards).

• Visit the official Tortoise website
• Listen to Tortoise for yourself
• Download Tortoise from eMusic