Trash to Masterpiece.

"Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.
Andre Gide"

Last night I watched an incredible documentary.  It was following a popular Brazilian artist who went home to Sao Paulo, Brazil to do a new art project.  The documentary was called "Waste-Land".  The artist, Vik Muiz, makes art out of ordinary and odd things.  He has made art from peanut butter, chocolate syrup, grass and lots of other things.  When he got to Brazil, he learned about a landfill that is one of the biggest landfills on the planet.  But really, the thing he got to learn about aside from this, was the individual people called "pickers" who live by it, and pick through garbage all day to find recyclables to sell to make money to live.  He wanted to get to talk to these people, find out about their lives, see why they had come to be "pickers" and learn about their lifestyle and then do a big art project over all of it.  He ended up loving these people. 

 They ended up helping him create masterpieces out of other people's trash.  He learned about their hardships, and how some of them had resorted to picking up garbage because they refused to give their lives up to prostitution, or drugs.  These people, seemed to be some of the happiest, yet poorest people on the planet.  It was amazing to see people of this situation, so happy and kind and high spirited and proud to be just who they were.  Garbage Pickers.  e took a picture of each of them and then transformed the picture into a giant projection on the floor of a huge warehouse.  After it was projected, they began to fill in the shading and lines with garbage to create some of the most astounding and beautiful works of art I have ever truly seen.  When Mr. Muniz did his installment of all this art, he made framed copies to give to all the pickers.  He also gave them all the proceeds to help better their lives.  The whole thing was so moving.

Sometimes our lives are trash.  It is piled up high all around us and we smell horrible in the midst if all of it.  God becomes the artists, who's eyes see something different.  He uses our hands to transform trash into something beautiful.  He creates a masterpiece that sometimes we don;t believe until we see.  God is an artist.  Don't believe me?  Watch this documentary.  You will understand.  Sometimes trash looks like trash up close, but when we step back, we see the colors, shapes and placement of our lives in perfect, artistic love, and re-birth.  

Our trash can end up being God's masterpiece.  That inspires me.