Chew on that and these other tasty questions raised by recent headlines.

This week: A roundup of news on art, creativity, and faith, including hateful art, a new type of art cave, an artist at any age, and art inspired by delusion.

Can you turn hate into art?
As authors go, Ben Klassen was fairly productive, having penned 13 books before swallowing a bottle of sleeping pills in 1993. Klassen was also a racist and white separatist: Titles in his prodigious catalogue include White Man's Bible and On the Brink of Bloody Racial War. So what to do with Klassen’s legacy? An ex-follower—the Montana Center for Human Rights—along with the Holter Museum seem to have found a great solution via art: Some 13,000 copies of Klassen’s works provided by said follower are being transformed into the “Speaking Volumes: Transforming Hate” art installation at the Holter.

The exhibit will include pieces that have pulped the books beyond recognition; mark-ups of the text; and a 10-by-10-foot house constructed of the volumes entitled Hate Begins at Home. Ultimately, 100 works were created for the exhibit, which seeks to answer a divisive question: Does hate have worth when it is transformed into a message of inclusiveness and diversity? "Speaking Volumes" seems to say yes, and that might just be the best epitaph for a writer like Klassen and his ilk.

Do artists who push the boundaries and seek controversy risk their personal safety?
And while we’re on the subject of the line between art and controversial political messages, we should probably mention that it’s not been such a happy new year for Kurt Westergaard—the Danish cartoonist who depicted Mohammed as a suicide bomber four years ago to the general vilification of Muslims worldwide. An axe-wielding Somali terrorist with alleged links to Al Qaida broke into the artist’s house late last Friday night, shouting for blood and revenge, but was unable to get to Westergaard, who locked himself into a fortified panic room and pressed an internal alarm button to summon authorities. The intrudor was shot in the hand and leg after he ran out of Westergaard’s house, smashed a police car window, and threw his axe at an officer.

The fact that Westergaard even has a panic room—and actually had to use it—is what gets me. Sure, for eons, artists have been imprisoned, tortured, even put to death for their art and their messages, but a panic room? And does the necessity of the panic room speak to the importance of Westergaard’s art and freedom of speech in the face of extremism? Or is its existence more about pushing the boundaries of controversy at the expense of believers of one of the world’s largest religions? Maybe art supply stores should start carrying bulletproof vests next to the acrylic paints.

Why is age seen as a barrior to creativity?
I’m digging this Philly.com article about Karl Zimmer, an 87-year-old retiree who is woodcarving a bust of 12th century church reformist St. Norbert using facial reconstruction techniques based on the skull measurements of Norbert, who has no known visage captured in sculpture or on canvas. Zimmer started woodcarving at age 67, and moved quickly from garden stakes to a bust of Beethoven as well as the Virgin Mary (he’s a devout Catholic). He’s even gone to Europe three times to study at a world-renowned wood carver’s studio in Ortisei, Italy.

In addition to wood carving, studying facial reconstruction technologies, and world travel, Zimmer is also a budding engineer: He created a vacuum system that sucks wood dust away from his studio space and sometimes wears a protective hood that is fed pressurized air. When’s the last time you used age—or anything else as arbitrary and lame—as an excuse for not starting on your dreams? If you’re under age 67, go check Zimmer out and get a shot of self-motivation.

Does the inspiration behind art have to make sense?
Even the most die-hard atheist can’t dismiss the power of religion and spirituality on humanity, particular when it comes to inspiring some of the world’s greatest works of art and music. Using religion as a motivator to create art is so easy a cave man can do it—and many of them did. Now, psychologists with a healthy amount of disdain for religion and the mental and social strife it can catalyze are beginning to realize the artistic and self-affirming side of spiritual belief.

“[Religion] is undeniably a blueprint for some of the finest music and visual art ever created,” allows Psychology Today’s Hank Davis. “It doesn’t cease to be great art or great music because its underlying belief system is grounded in the most lamentable kind of cognitive or perceptual distortions known to our species.” But does the inspiration for art matter to the viewer of it? Perhaps. Not to push the tautology limits, but that makes me wonder if art that is inspired by spirituality also gives birth to a greater cognitive recognition of that spirituality. That is, if religion is crap, does awesome art based on that religion somehow (dare I say) make it less crappy?