Time to start a new adventure. I've been gradually drifting towards creating art for churches for a while now. I have lots of ideas buzzing around my head and some lovely supportive people around me who are excited to see where this goes. I've decided to start this blog as a place to collect inspiration, to explore ideas and hopefully inspire others too.
Our church is going into a new phase as we have temporarily moved out of our church building and into a school for the next year as our building undergoes a
transformation, including a new hall. It's a very exciting time and it is leading us to think of things new. I am particularly thoughtful about the opportunity this may lead to creating new artwork, and specifically banners. We have some talented artists in our church and the church has an art group which meets regularly. I am enthusiastic about making church art as a group effort, where creating it is an act of worship as well as inspiring worship with the finished pieces. I have ideas for working with lots of different groups within the church - more of that later.
I have worked producing church art before when I organised a group of fellow teenagers to paint large banners for our youth group and also coordinated a kids Sunday school group to make a large collaborative banner too. I work as a freelance artist, writing magazine articles, doing product demonstrations and teaching craft workshops. I'm also a keen follower of online craft classes as I love learning new art skills.
I have been very inspired by my friend Peter Jenkins. He started a creative programme in his church in the U.S. called "Create as you are Created". I love this idea of artwork being about relating to God as our Creator.
I am excited to see these ideas grow into something interesting and new. I'm not going to make this blog about making pretty pictures, but about an artistic process to inspire worship.
Well, that's my first few thoughts anyway.
This is a banner by Linda Albrecht which was featured on the Maya Road Design Team blog recently. I love all the little details on this. You can see it in more detail here.
On Sunday a lady in our church leaned forward and tapped me on the shoulder. She handed me a little booklet with this picture on the front and said she felt like she was meant to give it to me. She told me her mother had a picture of it, so she always thinks of mothers with this image and saw me with my three children running around and thought I would like it. I do like it and I found it so inspiring reading about it in the booklet. This lady didn't know about my exploration of church art and so I thanked her and later explained how inspiring it had been for me.
I am really looking forward to March now, but in the meantime I will have time to catch up with the last canvas class I signed up for with Christy, called "She Art". I have plans for a series of canvases based on Psalm 139. So hopefully, more on that later!
