> I agree. It is dumb. But they're entitled to their own... weirdness... as long as it doesn't interfere with the church services. What irritates me is that they're passing this off as art. It used to be that art was, by nature, beautiful (which does depend on how you perceive it, but perception is still based on fundamental principles involving all sorts of math and things that I don't have a clue about--this was in the Reader's Digest--I'll get to the point now). Its very definition involved beauty. Now, it seems, nothing qualifies as art unless it "makes a statement."

Well...I, personally, don't think that art needs to be beautiful at all. I was looking around Newcastle University last weekend (long haul from where I live, but that's another and very boring story) and I went into an art gallery while I was there. They had an exhibition on called "The Lost Collection of an Invisible Man", which was all modern art. Some of it was just odd (like the blue ventriloquist's dummy in a box that, now and again, blinked and twitched) but there were two pieces that I absolutely loved. The first was a mirror, on which was painted an artist in front of a canvas, looking at a skeleton. It was arranged so that, as you looked at it, your reflection was on the canvas, so it looked like the artist had painted the skeleton and it had come out as you. I thought that was incredibly clever, and I'd love to have it on my wall. Not beautiful, though.

The other piece was THE BEST. It was four gold-painted and red plush seated chairs, standing in a row against a wall. Nothing very special there, but they would periodically spring into life, with their front legs moving in synch to make the chairs dance the can-can. It was so unexpected, and I was laughing for ages. Great piece of work...but again, not beautiful. It made a statement...don't know what it was, but I liked it.

Si-"And I think that's art. Don't know about you though"-gi