What's in a Name?

I really don't know where to start with my posts, I have years worth of journalling to translate into this project...so I will go at it piecemeal and eventually all will come out. My mum likes to quote a proverb about how the only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time...I've never known where on earth she got it, but it applies here.

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I will start by explaining the name. Project Pulchra. Why?

The short answer is that I really didn't know which direction this would take (I still don't!), and so I wanted a name which placed the fewest possible limits on what we're doing, while still giving some indication as to what we were about. So, it's a project, a venture, a putting out into the deep not knowing how it's going to turn out.

So, Project. Project....what? Beauty? Art? Catholic Art? Christian Art? It was tricky finding a catchy, unique name relevant to what we're doing that didn't already exist somewhere on the internet. All that and it had to be something appealing too.

I almost didn't want to use the word "art" in the name because people tend to put limiting factors on the word in their minds...it can call forth a lot of stereotypes. To some people "art" can call to mind an elitest, often irrelevant thing inaccessible to the average person, like the stereotypical abstract painting everyone pretends to understand (I'm not knocking abstract art, btw). To other people, art is a school subject they dropped as soon as they could...or, worse, took for easy marks. Some people consider art to be something which other people are talented in but which they themselves are not, and so they cannot partake in it. I'm not saying there is no definitive definition of the arts, but I don't know what it is. That's something we can explore here. One thing I do know is that the arts are about Goodness, Truth and Beauty.

So, beauty. Project Beauty? I wasn't content using the English word "beauty," because I felt that the term had been hijacked and smeared around by things like the so-called "beauty industry." Don't believe me? A quick Google search for "Project Beauty" brings up ProjectBeauty.com, "brought to you by the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery" (The second "Project Beauty" hit is a nobler endeavor by two teenage girls with the goal of healing the emotional damage done by a culture where the first hit for "beauty" is plastic surgery).

To rehabilitate the word "beauty," we'd have to approach it from another angle. Maybe putting beauty into another language would loosen it from more cosmetic, sometimes utilitarian connotations. I remembered from back in my Treble chorus days this piece of music (I don't know the ensemble in the link, but it was the nicest recording I could find on youtube). Pulchra. Latin for beauty (nearly all of my limited knowledge of Latin comes from choir).

Project Pulchra.

It has been pointed out to me (by someone who will remain nameless) that it's an ugly name for a word that means beauty. But I like it. It's kind of earthy... and it challenges one's conception of beauty....like how stones and dirt and bumblebees and those terrible ocean-bottom-dwelling creatures with flashbulbs on their heads are beautiful same as diamonds and sunsets and waterfalls. Like how people are always beautiful, which is sometimes obvious but sometimes really isn't. It's unconventional, and all-encompassing. Besides all that, using the Latin links this project to the Church in a deeper and more subtle way than calling it something like "The Really Awesome Catholic Art Project."

To top it all off, it's even alliterative. I almost always adore alliteration.