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Complicated Beauty

Deer and water tower. Photo by Jennifer Steensma Hoag

Paintings depicting beautiful landscapes have been gracing the walls of homes and stately buildings since the sixteenth century. They are meant to give the viewer a vicarious pleasure in a place they may never visit personally but can appreciate from afar. But Jennifer Steensma Hoag, a professor in the Department of Art & Art History at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, is interested in how beautiful landscapes are compromised and complicated by modern culture. An exhibition last year at the University of Michigan included photos of men in marigold-colored Hazmat suits cleaning up a beach. This photo, showing two graceful deer resting peacefully in front of a large municipal water tower that resembles a space satellite, makes you wonder if it's the deer or the tower that is out of place.

Hoag writes: "We depend upon the earth for our physical health, but we also rely upon the earth for our well being. We risk losing the natural places that provide humanity a sense of awe and renewal. Our world is increasingly customizable, and society prioritizes individual needs and desires over the collective good."

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Radical Joy Revealed.

Radical Joy for Hard Times is a global community of people dedicated to finding and making beauty in wounded places. Reconnecting with these places, sharing our stories of loss, and making acts of beauty there, we transform the land, reconnect people and the places that nourish them, and empower ourselves to make a difference in the way we live on Earth.

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