Justice in Art: Passion 2010 - Amelia Todd
February 02, 2010
Our God is a creative God. He “created the heavens and the earth, and placed the stars in the expanse of the sky (Genesis 1)” for us to enjoy His beauty and glimpse His glory. Therefore, as humans created in His image and likeness, we are creative beings as well. We see that Jesus’s miracles were never two alike in the way He executed them, but they always stemmed from a response to His Father’s heart and what the Holy Spirit was telling Him.
The same is true with all areas of art and creativity; they should be natural responses to the Father’s heart and unique with what the Holy Spirit is saying in the current season: personally, to a ministry, or to the church as a whole. Some of the most inspiring and powerful pieces of art are the ones that break out of the box of the usual, the expected, and the required. The artists who take risks, bare their hearts, and go beyond what is called for, are the ones who make the most powerful statements through their work.
Recently, I was able to see this type of art displayed through ordinary workers putting their hearts into portraying what their ministries were about. At the Passion conference this year in Atlanta, Georgia, twelve different ministries were asked to be a part of a “Do Something Now” campaign. The campaign was based on the expectation that when 22,000 Christian young adults come together to glorify the name of the Lord, there will be massive effects in the Kingdom.
A huge warehouse, the center hub of the conference, was transformed into a village of displays for all of the ministries. However, giving time and money to these causes was not the focus of the conference, and was not pushed by the speakers, leaders, or media in that time. Instead, over the span of the four-day conference, supporting these social justice causes became a natural response to the love of Christ revealed during that time. The people at each station were not there to “sell” their ministries and would not bombard you with facts and statistics as soon as you approached the general area; they were only there to answer any questions you might have had. They were there because they genuinely believed in their ministries, they had poured their lives out for them because God had called them to particular places, and they wanted to be able to share their hearts for their specific regions with anyone the Lord was speaking to about the same thing.
All the stations were visually connected by a found art theme, meaning that they found every piece on the side of the road or in an old warehouse and recycled it by putting it together to create these displays. Each ministry’s display reflected the specific area that was being affected by the money or time given at Passion, for some of the ministries were quite large and international.
For example, E3 Partners wanted the men to rise up and sponsor underground seminary training for 100 male Middle Eastern believers. To meet this goal, they needed 300 male students to give $100 each, so they put it into visual terms for every person who passed by. They stood wood cutouts of 100 men with light bulbs above each head. Whenever one man was sponsored to go to seminary, they lit the bulb above the head of a wooden man. Each time a bulb lit up, it was a symbol of hope for the message of grace in the Muslim world.
Another ministry, Operation Mobilization, was building an education center for the Dalit people of India, the “untouchables,” to start instilling in younger generations a knowledge of their identity in Christ to break the curse and the lies they have lived under for hundreds of years because of the oppressive Indian religions. At their station, they had hundreds of clay pots that were given to each person who donated to help build this center.
They explained that in the Dalit culture, they used similar pots every day for basic necessities of living. After a pot is used by a Dalit, it has to be destroyed, because it is now “unclean,” having been touched by an untouchable. The upper castes cannot risk touching an object that was used by beings considered lower than the dust they walk on. Therefore, when you donated to build this center, you took a pot and threw it onto a rock, destroying the pot and symbolically breaking the curse over these precious people.
Eventually, when a pot was about to be thrown, a crowd would gather, counting down, and lifting up prayers and shouts of praise to the Living God who has given a hope and a future to the Dalit people of India.
These are just a couple of examples of the incredibly creative displays that filled the conference with hope as we saw real examples of justice and love being shown in Atlanta and all over the globe. Since a picture says way more than I could, here are just a few:
Touching Atlanta: each conference attendee brought a towel and a package of socks to flood the homeless shelters of the city.
Five gallon water containers were carried around an 1/8 mile path in the warehouse. Most women in 3rd world countries carry this amount or more 4 to 5 miles twice a day.
A normal home in Jakarta, Indonesia before and after help is given to a single mother and her family.
Cardboard and stamps.
Layered planks to show each ministry’s goal for the weekend.
Typical American family’s food consumption for a week…
…and from Chad, Africa.
Not for sale: sex trafficking statistics written on red plastic, referring to the red light districts in every city.
Rags strung up, to keep with the red theme. Also, rags are a huge physical part of many households and individual’s lives on the street.
Verses in many languages printed on the concrete floor to show the power of translating the Bible into every language of the world.
When a verse was sponsored, it would be written on a banner hung from the ceiling. Each side of the 30 ft banner was completely full.
Plywood with kitchen spoons to count the number of volunteers.
Notice the world map pieced together in the background
Drill for clean water wells in Guatemala
Every child needing a life-changing surgery for cleft lip or palate is represented by a string with their picture hanging on it. When sponsored, a red prayer is attached and a red ball put against the wall lining the display.
Chandeliers added a fresh touch to the 3rd day of main sessions in the arena.
Smart boards supplied a constant source of fresh art, dreams, prayers, and desires from the students’ hearts, while the canvases were painted to fill the homeless shelters of Atlanta with the Lord’s hope and joy.
When walking through the “Do Something Now” center, it was normal to hear shouts being raised as the Dalit people were lifted up in prayers of freedom; to bump into someone carrying gallons of water around, trying to experience only a 1/32 of what most women in the world travel twice a day; and to watch the pile of World Vision caretaker medical kits rise as students offered to pack them with notes and prayers of encouragement.
Everywhere you turned, the Lord’s name was being lifted up as He was given all the glory. All the art, found as it was, spoke to the raw-ness of the love of Christ, and the beauty and power that exudes from it.
My hope is that every cause, non-profit, conference, event, etc. that desires to have excellent displays and media, strives to do so by seeking the face and heart of our creative God first and foremost, for “strength and beauty are in His sanctuary (Psalm 96:6).”
The same is true with all areas of art and creativity; they should be natural responses to the Father’s heart and unique with what the Holy Spirit is saying in the current season: personally, to a ministry, or to the church as a whole. Some of the most inspiring and powerful pieces of art are the ones that break out of the box of the usual, the expected, and the required. The artists who take risks, bare their hearts, and go beyond what is called for, are the ones who make the most powerful statements through their work.
Recently, I was able to see this type of art displayed through ordinary workers putting their hearts into portraying what their ministries were about. At the Passion conference this year in Atlanta, Georgia, twelve different ministries were asked to be a part of a “Do Something Now” campaign. The campaign was based on the expectation that when 22,000 Christian young adults come together to glorify the name of the Lord, there will be massive effects in the Kingdom.
A huge warehouse, the center hub of the conference, was transformed into a village of displays for all of the ministries. However, giving time and money to these causes was not the focus of the conference, and was not pushed by the speakers, leaders, or media in that time. Instead, over the span of the four-day conference, supporting these social justice causes became a natural response to the love of Christ revealed during that time. The people at each station were not there to “sell” their ministries and would not bombard you with facts and statistics as soon as you approached the general area; they were only there to answer any questions you might have had. They were there because they genuinely believed in their ministries, they had poured their lives out for them because God had called them to particular places, and they wanted to be able to share their hearts for their specific regions with anyone the Lord was speaking to about the same thing.
All the stations were visually connected by a found art theme, meaning that they found every piece on the side of the road or in an old warehouse and recycled it by putting it together to create these displays. Each ministry’s display reflected the specific area that was being affected by the money or time given at Passion, for some of the ministries were quite large and international.
For example, E3 Partners wanted the men to rise up and sponsor underground seminary training for 100 male Middle Eastern believers. To meet this goal, they needed 300 male students to give $100 each, so they put it into visual terms for every person who passed by. They stood wood cutouts of 100 men with light bulbs above each head. Whenever one man was sponsored to go to seminary, they lit the bulb above the head of a wooden man. Each time a bulb lit up, it was a symbol of hope for the message of grace in the Muslim world.
Another ministry, Operation Mobilization, was building an education center for the Dalit people of India, the “untouchables,” to start instilling in younger generations a knowledge of their identity in Christ to break the curse and the lies they have lived under for hundreds of years because of the oppressive Indian religions. At their station, they had hundreds of clay pots that were given to each person who donated to help build this center.
They explained that in the Dalit culture, they used similar pots every day for basic necessities of living. After a pot is used by a Dalit, it has to be destroyed, because it is now “unclean,” having been touched by an untouchable. The upper castes cannot risk touching an object that was used by beings considered lower than the dust they walk on. Therefore, when you donated to build this center, you took a pot and threw it onto a rock, destroying the pot and symbolically breaking the curse over these precious people.
Eventually, when a pot was about to be thrown, a crowd would gather, counting down, and lifting up prayers and shouts of praise to the Living God who has given a hope and a future to the Dalit people of India.
These are just a couple of examples of the incredibly creative displays that filled the conference with hope as we saw real examples of justice and love being shown in Atlanta and all over the globe. Since a picture says way more than I could, here are just a few:
Touching Atlanta: each conference attendee brought a towel and a package of socks to flood the homeless shelters of the city.
Five gallon water containers were carried around an 1/8 mile path in the warehouse. Most women in 3rd world countries carry this amount or more 4 to 5 miles twice a day.
A normal home in Jakarta, Indonesia before and after help is given to a single mother and her family.
Cardboard and stamps.
Layered planks to show each ministry’s goal for the weekend.
Typical American family’s food consumption for a week…
…and from Chad, Africa.
Not for sale: sex trafficking statistics written on red plastic, referring to the red light districts in every city.
Rags strung up, to keep with the red theme. Also, rags are a huge physical part of many households and individual’s lives on the street.
Verses in many languages printed on the concrete floor to show the power of translating the Bible into every language of the world.
When a verse was sponsored, it would be written on a banner hung from the ceiling. Each side of the 30 ft banner was completely full.
Plywood with kitchen spoons to count the number of volunteers.
Notice the world map pieced together in the background
Drill for clean water wells in Guatemala
Every child needing a life-changing surgery for cleft lip or palate is represented by a string with their picture hanging on it. When sponsored, a red prayer is attached and a red ball put against the wall lining the display.
Chandeliers added a fresh touch to the 3rd day of main sessions in the arena.
Smart boards supplied a constant source of fresh art, dreams, prayers, and desires from the students’ hearts, while the canvases were painted to fill the homeless shelters of Atlanta with the Lord’s hope and joy.
When walking through the “Do Something Now” center, it was normal to hear shouts being raised as the Dalit people were lifted up in prayers of freedom; to bump into someone carrying gallons of water around, trying to experience only a 1/32 of what most women in the world travel twice a day; and to watch the pile of World Vision caretaker medical kits rise as students offered to pack them with notes and prayers of encouragement.
Everywhere you turned, the Lord’s name was being lifted up as He was given all the glory. All the art, found as it was, spoke to the raw-ness of the love of Christ, and the beauty and power that exudes from it.
My hope is that every cause, non-profit, conference, event, etc. that desires to have excellent displays and media, strives to do so by seeking the face and heart of our creative God first and foremost, for “strength and beauty are in His sanctuary (Psalm 96:6).”
Seeing - Art in the Church - Courtney J Garrett
January 02, 2010
The term seeing is loosely described as merely an activity of the eyes. But I believe a true artist sees with something more -- seeing beyond the simple imagery of an object or a moment to grab hold of the heart and the true agenda of something. When I paint, I paint on the idea that a moment is passing and that I must capture for everyone the feeling in that space because it must be experienced.
So often do viewers and patrons of my work say that they really understand a painting and its representation or “they’ve been there before,” when in theory I am just presenting an abstraction of something that I know and feel -- the emotion of that moment recreated through the rolling dented manipulations of oil paint. And strikingly, in my intentional abstraction, as if it were an exact photograph, people seem to respond very authentically to intimate understanding of the imagery at hand. Success as an artist is found in these moments. We must present more than a still life. In our selfless abstractions of form and line, we must present a moment of recognizable truth to the viewer that goes deeper than a mere carbon copy. In a recording of his methods in the book Oil Painting Secrets from a Master by Linda Cateura, David Leffel describes seeing:
When I use the term “seeing”, I don’t mean merely using your eyes. When you see with your eyes only, you see a limited reality. Like the blind man in his effort to see, you touch only one part of reality at a time because when you focus on one thing, you automatically block out everything else. This kind of seeing is called “selective focus.” You can choose to see either the dirt on the windshield or fifty yards down the road. But you can’t see both simultaneously. The information is all there; what you see depends on how you shift your focus. It’s the same in panting; you must keep the right things in focus, you must “see” what you are painting. That’s why if you just copy the model, bit by bit as you look, it will look wrong on the canvas. Just matching your canvas to the model doesn’t involve real seeing because it doesn’t involve understanding.
To the painter who is a follower of Christ, painting under the covering of the Holy Spirit should be the same. We should see as the spirit sees with great understanding. We as artists should cultivate a culture that beckons viewers to a deeper understanding of the heart of God. We are in a time when the artist will illustrate, write, sing, paint, dance and make music in such a way that people of all walks will willingly respond to the tender callings of the Father. As artists, we must see in such a way that will awaken in people, both believers and non-believers, to a deeper or first time understanding of God.
John Piper says it best:
God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him and, we could say, more moved by Him, most awe struck by Him. And therefore, we need to find worship ways, and writing ways, and other kinds of artistic ways to awaken in people, by truth well said or well portrayed, the affections that will glorify God. This is a God centered, God-glorifying issue of whether we awaken all of the human heart that should be God’s.
John Piper, “What is the value of art in the church?”
As a church, we should go after these things with an understanding that the arts have a place in the life of the body. Under the Lordship of Christ we are free to express ourselves within the covering of the Holy Spirit and Scripture. In the words of Francis Schaeffer, from Art and the Bible:
But once we understand that Christianity is true to what is there, true to the ultimate environment— the infinite, personal God who is really there— then our minds are freed. We can pursue any question and can be sure that we will not fall off the end of the earth. Such an attitude will give our Christianity a strength that it often does not seem to have at the present time. But there is another side to the Lordship of Christ, and it involves the total culture— including the area of creativity. Again, evangelical or biblical Christianity has been weak at this point. About all that we have produced is very romantic Sunday School art. We do not seem to understand that the arts too are supposed to be under the Lordship of Christ… The arts and sciences too have a place in the Christian life— they are not peripheral. For a Christian, redeemed by the work of Christ and living within the norms of Scripture and under the leadership of the Holy Spirit, the Lordship of Christ should include an interest in these arts to the glory of God, not just as tracts, mind you, but as things of beauty to the praise of God. An art work can be a doxology in itself.
-Francis A. Schaeffer, Art and the Bible, p.17-18.
As we approach this idea with a heightened sense of the excellence, my personal prayer is that the church, filled with authentic Followers of Christ, will be at the forefront of the current cultural curve, harnessing if you will, the very affections of God.
So often do viewers and patrons of my work say that they really understand a painting and its representation or “they’ve been there before,” when in theory I am just presenting an abstraction of something that I know and feel -- the emotion of that moment recreated through the rolling dented manipulations of oil paint. And strikingly, in my intentional abstraction, as if it were an exact photograph, people seem to respond very authentically to intimate understanding of the imagery at hand. Success as an artist is found in these moments. We must present more than a still life. In our selfless abstractions of form and line, we must present a moment of recognizable truth to the viewer that goes deeper than a mere carbon copy. In a recording of his methods in the book Oil Painting Secrets from a Master by Linda Cateura, David Leffel describes seeing:
When I use the term “seeing”, I don’t mean merely using your eyes. When you see with your eyes only, you see a limited reality. Like the blind man in his effort to see, you touch only one part of reality at a time because when you focus on one thing, you automatically block out everything else. This kind of seeing is called “selective focus.” You can choose to see either the dirt on the windshield or fifty yards down the road. But you can’t see both simultaneously. The information is all there; what you see depends on how you shift your focus. It’s the same in panting; you must keep the right things in focus, you must “see” what you are painting. That’s why if you just copy the model, bit by bit as you look, it will look wrong on the canvas. Just matching your canvas to the model doesn’t involve real seeing because it doesn’t involve understanding.
To the painter who is a follower of Christ, painting under the covering of the Holy Spirit should be the same. We should see as the spirit sees with great understanding. We as artists should cultivate a culture that beckons viewers to a deeper understanding of the heart of God. We are in a time when the artist will illustrate, write, sing, paint, dance and make music in such a way that people of all walks will willingly respond to the tender callings of the Father. As artists, we must see in such a way that will awaken in people, both believers and non-believers, to a deeper or first time understanding of God.
John Piper says it best:
God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him and, we could say, more moved by Him, most awe struck by Him. And therefore, we need to find worship ways, and writing ways, and other kinds of artistic ways to awaken in people, by truth well said or well portrayed, the affections that will glorify God. This is a God centered, God-glorifying issue of whether we awaken all of the human heart that should be God’s.
John Piper, “What is the value of art in the church?”
As a church, we should go after these things with an understanding that the arts have a place in the life of the body. Under the Lordship of Christ we are free to express ourselves within the covering of the Holy Spirit and Scripture. In the words of Francis Schaeffer, from Art and the Bible:
But once we understand that Christianity is true to what is there, true to the ultimate environment— the infinite, personal God who is really there— then our minds are freed. We can pursue any question and can be sure that we will not fall off the end of the earth. Such an attitude will give our Christianity a strength that it often does not seem to have at the present time. But there is another side to the Lordship of Christ, and it involves the total culture— including the area of creativity. Again, evangelical or biblical Christianity has been weak at this point. About all that we have produced is very romantic Sunday School art. We do not seem to understand that the arts too are supposed to be under the Lordship of Christ… The arts and sciences too have a place in the Christian life— they are not peripheral. For a Christian, redeemed by the work of Christ and living within the norms of Scripture and under the leadership of the Holy Spirit, the Lordship of Christ should include an interest in these arts to the glory of God, not just as tracts, mind you, but as things of beauty to the praise of God. An art work can be a doxology in itself.
-Francis A. Schaeffer, Art and the Bible, p.17-18.
As we approach this idea with a heightened sense of the excellence, my personal prayer is that the church, filled with authentic Followers of Christ, will be at the forefront of the current cultural curve, harnessing if you will, the very affections of God.
