FBC Student Ministry T-Shirt Design
This is a t-shirt design I created in response to the tremendous teaching we recieved as part of the Fall Retreat for the FBC Student Ministry, in which I'm an 8th grade small group leader. JD Mangrum, pastor of Origins Church in Greenville, KY, was the guest speaker at the retreat and coined the phrase that appears on the shirt, "I am a burning bush." JD did an amzing job teaching and presented a lot of great ideas that really energized the students, and the idea for shirts was to help the kids carry that excitement into their schools and help motivate them to share their faith.
Some of JD's key points were that if God is in you and if you are a follower of Jesus, then you are a burning bush, and as such should let our light shine so that others may see us and praise our Father in Heaven. We must remember that everyone is either a burning bush themselves (believers), or are made in the image of God (nonbelievers), and this should challenge us at all times to treat everyone like they matter. When we remember this, and when we really accept the fact that God wants to make himself known through us, then we realize that everywhere we go can and should be a holy moment and a holy place. Every moment can be used by God to reveal Himself through us.
My hope for this shirt is that students would wear them to school and in public and that people would ask them about what it means. And as soon as someone inquires about the shirt, the students have the perfect opening to share their belief and faith in Chirst. I pray the shirts would create a opporunities for the students to go out and live the great commission and live as if they were burning bushes.
For information about purchasing a shirt, contact Nick Strobel at Fellowhip Bible Church
Some of JD's key points were that if God is in you and if you are a follower of Jesus, then you are a burning bush, and as such should let our light shine so that others may see us and praise our Father in Heaven. We must remember that everyone is either a burning bush themselves (believers), or are made in the image of God (nonbelievers), and this should challenge us at all times to treat everyone like they matter. When we remember this, and when we really accept the fact that God wants to make himself known through us, then we realize that everywhere we go can and should be a holy moment and a holy place. Every moment can be used by God to reveal Himself through us.
My hope for this shirt is that students would wear them to school and in public and that people would ask them about what it means. And as soon as someone inquires about the shirt, the students have the perfect opening to share their belief and faith in Chirst. I pray the shirts would create a opporunities for the students to go out and live the great commission and live as if they were burning bushes.
For information about purchasing a shirt, contact Nick Strobel at Fellowhip Bible Church
Live Painting @ Advent Overflow
After the evening was over at the Trash Mountain Benefit (see below), I was approached by Bill Horn, the worship pastor at FBC, about the possibility of doing a painting at the Overflow event they were planning for December. Overflow is an extended period of worship outside of normal services that is produced through a joint effort of Fellowship Bible Church and Topeka Bible Church. It is an amazing production of music and video and is a powerful medium for corporate worship. I was very excited to get to be a part of the event and lend my gifts as another form of worship and praise to our Heavenly Father. The theme of the event centered around the idea that Jesus was born to die. That from the moment he arrived his entire life was a series of events that fulfilled prophesy and ultimately led to his atoning death on the cross and subsequent resurrection. All these events were part of God's plan for the redemption of the world. So I envisioned these three incidents taking place within a single landscape, which makes sense given that they all occurred within about 6.5 miles of each other. On the left of the canvas, nestled in a cave on the outskirts of Bethlehem, is a small nativity scene. The crosses on Calvary are placed in the middle, reinforcing the idea that Jesus' death is the central theme of the story. An on the right is the empty tomb beneath a sky with a rising sun. To read more on this project, visit Works in Progress.
Trash Mountain Project : Live Painting
The day after we completed the stop motion mustard seed video (see below) I was contacted again by the guys at the Trash Mountain Project and asked if I'd like to participate personally in their benefit at Fellowship Bible Church. They wanted to add a "live art" element to the evening and were interested in having me complete a painting during the course of the benefit. I loved the idea and was thrilled to be able to contribute again to such a fantastic organization. I decided a tree would be an ideal image to paint as it represents the culminating point of the Mustard Seed Parable, which was also the theme of the benefit. The tree I painted is loosely based on a human figure in a praise posture with arms raised towards the sky. The big chunky roots symbolic of a strong faith, being well rooted in the word and promises of Jesus. There is also a three-in-one element to the tree, three roots lead into the trunk which in turn, leads into three main branches. This suggests the same three-in-one nature of our triune God: Father, Son, Spirit. In many of my paintings the luminous moon is always an allusion to the presence of God, and here the tree is bathed in His light as it stands steadfast in praise.
This was another new experience for me, painting a canvas in a public venue with a time challenge added in for good measure. I continue to be amazed that I actually got as far as I did in the two and a half hours that I was there painting. The Holy Spirit was undoubtedly guiding my hand that night as this is perhaps the first painting I've done where there were no real problems along the way. I believe any artist can attest to the fact that struggles and mistakes are very much a part of the artistic process, but on this particular night it was smooth sailing through the entire canvas which made it a real delight to create. I did take the canvas home to "tinker" on it some more and get it in a frame. It will be donated to the Trash Mountain Project where they have plans to use it as an incentive to help get a generator for a school they are building in Honduras.
My favorite story of the evening, however, was when I was nearly done and an elderly gentleman approached me and said, "Hey artist, your tree is too perfect, it needs a knot or something. It's too smooth." I laughed and thanked him for his idea, and as I continued to work his suggestion bounced around in my head, particularly the word "perfect". If my tree is essentially a person, the word perfect simply didn't resonate with that analogy. We are anything but perfect, and that's why we so desperately need Jesus. It was then that I added the knot, a single prominent hole right about where the heart would be if this tree were, in fact, a person. That seemed to resolve the tree-person analogy and elaborate even more on the nature of how we are to present ourselves before God: praising Him for what He's done in spite of our own imperfections. I didn't catch his name, but I did get to go back and thank the man for his suggestion. It made my night!
Some friends of mine saw this painting and commented that it reminded them of a poem by Joyce Kilmer. You can read his poem here.
This was another new experience for me, painting a canvas in a public venue with a time challenge added in for good measure. I continue to be amazed that I actually got as far as I did in the two and a half hours that I was there painting. The Holy Spirit was undoubtedly guiding my hand that night as this is perhaps the first painting I've done where there were no real problems along the way. I believe any artist can attest to the fact that struggles and mistakes are very much a part of the artistic process, but on this particular night it was smooth sailing through the entire canvas which made it a real delight to create. I did take the canvas home to "tinker" on it some more and get it in a frame. It will be donated to the Trash Mountain Project where they have plans to use it as an incentive to help get a generator for a school they are building in Honduras.
My favorite story of the evening, however, was when I was nearly done and an elderly gentleman approached me and said, "Hey artist, your tree is too perfect, it needs a knot or something. It's too smooth." I laughed and thanked him for his idea, and as I continued to work his suggestion bounced around in my head, particularly the word "perfect". If my tree is essentially a person, the word perfect simply didn't resonate with that analogy. We are anything but perfect, and that's why we so desperately need Jesus. It was then that I added the knot, a single prominent hole right about where the heart would be if this tree were, in fact, a person. That seemed to resolve the tree-person analogy and elaborate even more on the nature of how we are to present ourselves before God: praising Him for what He's done in spite of our own imperfections. I didn't catch his name, but I did get to go back and thank the man for his suggestion. It made my night!
Some friends of mine saw this painting and commented that it reminded them of a poem by Joyce Kilmer. You can read his poem here.
Trash Mountain Project: Stop Motion Video
I received an email from Brett Durbin, director of Trash Mountain Project, asking if I might be interested in helping them create a stop motion video for a benefit they were planning. I had no experience with any kind of animation, but it sounded like a lot a lot of fun and I was willing to give it a try to help out. The idea was to create a video that showed a hand drawing a series of images that illustrate the story of the Parable of the Mustard Seed from Matthew 13:31-32. This parable was the planned theme of the evening and the animation was intended to draw a comparison between the mustard seed story and the explosive growth Trash Mountain Project has experienced in the two and half years since it began.
I had one week to prepare myself and spent those evenings filling my sketchbook with drawings of crows, hands, and trees. The practice was important, because in order for the animation to work properly, the drawings had to be completed as quickly as possible. To shoot the video we stretched a large roll of butcher paper across a table. Two six foot ladders were placed on either side of the table, and a pane of glass was placed on top of a pair of two by fours that were stretched between the ladders. A digital camera was placed on the glass so that it could shoot from directly above my hand as I was drawing. As I worked on the drawing, Jon Demeo of TMP, clicked pictures as quickly as possible. Periodically we had Brett pull the roll of paper to create the scrolling effect as the drawing progressed.
We shot the whole sequence twice, the first time taking about 1600 pictures in the span of 25 minutes. We paused numerous times during the drawing to discuss ideas and make suggestions. The second time only took about15 minutes to complete and we shot around 1100 photos. These images were then uploaded into a video editing software to create the actual animation. All in all it was a excellent experience and a great deal of fun. I hope very much to be able to work with the guys at TMP again on future projects.
I had one week to prepare myself and spent those evenings filling my sketchbook with drawings of crows, hands, and trees. The practice was important, because in order for the animation to work properly, the drawings had to be completed as quickly as possible. To shoot the video we stretched a large roll of butcher paper across a table. Two six foot ladders were placed on either side of the table, and a pane of glass was placed on top of a pair of two by fours that were stretched between the ladders. A digital camera was placed on the glass so that it could shoot from directly above my hand as I was drawing. As I worked on the drawing, Jon Demeo of TMP, clicked pictures as quickly as possible. Periodically we had Brett pull the roll of paper to create the scrolling effect as the drawing progressed.
We shot the whole sequence twice, the first time taking about 1600 pictures in the span of 25 minutes. We paused numerous times during the drawing to discuss ideas and make suggestions. The second time only took about15 minutes to complete and we shot around 1100 photos. These images were then uploaded into a video editing software to create the actual animation. All in all it was a excellent experience and a great deal of fun. I hope very much to be able to work with the guys at TMP again on future projects.
Post-It Note Mural
In 2008 I had the opportunity of working on a mural project with a rather unusual media: Post-It Notes. The worship arts pastor at Topeka Bible Church challenged me with this task after seeing Iowa artist Shay Hovell's Post-It Note Mona Lisa.
Post-It Notes were included in all of the bulletins passed out at the three regular Sunday worship services, and the congregation was asked to write the names of three people in their life that needed prayer, especially if they were nonbelievers. To add a nice element of intrigue, everyone was not told what we had planned to do with all the notes, just that we had something special in mind. All the notes were collected, counted, and photo copied. And then the notes were given to me in order to start the mural, which in essence, became a sort of prayer wall. The final mural ended up being just over 3 feet tall by 5 feet wide and incorporated approximately 670 Post-It Notes. My best estimate is that I put in about 25 hours of labor producing the work. But the most impressive stat about the work is the fact that over 1,200 names were generated for prayer from church members!
I was really excited about the potential impact of this work as it became essentially a large aesthetic object to focus and direct the attention of the congregation as we made the communal effort to pray for all the people listed on the notes. In fact, as I worked on the piece, I tried to remember to take the time a say a quick prayer for each of the names as I placed them on the masonite board. while I certainly didn't get to everyone, as my right brain kept getting distracted in my efforts, it certainly made the process much more personal.
In terms of producing the work, it was an interesting challenge right from the beginning. While I did get to select the colors of the notes to be distributed, there was no way of knowing how many of each color would be returned. True to form though, God made sure I had exactly the right number of notes to get the mural finished.
I took a few cues from Chuck Close and Henri Matisse during production as well. Henri Matisse's cut paper compositions were a great source of inspiration as I cut up clean notes and scattered them about to try and create some texture and directional force in the foreground. And Chuck Close's use of optical blending in his paintings also danced around in my head as I tried to break up the large square "pixels" of the individual notes. The wise men on the camels are actually negative space cut out of the notes, thus revealing the masonite beneath.
Post-It Notes were included in all of the bulletins passed out at the three regular Sunday worship services, and the congregation was asked to write the names of three people in their life that needed prayer, especially if they were nonbelievers. To add a nice element of intrigue, everyone was not told what we had planned to do with all the notes, just that we had something special in mind. All the notes were collected, counted, and photo copied. And then the notes were given to me in order to start the mural, which in essence, became a sort of prayer wall. The final mural ended up being just over 3 feet tall by 5 feet wide and incorporated approximately 670 Post-It Notes. My best estimate is that I put in about 25 hours of labor producing the work. But the most impressive stat about the work is the fact that over 1,200 names were generated for prayer from church members!
I was really excited about the potential impact of this work as it became essentially a large aesthetic object to focus and direct the attention of the congregation as we made the communal effort to pray for all the people listed on the notes. In fact, as I worked on the piece, I tried to remember to take the time a say a quick prayer for each of the names as I placed them on the masonite board. while I certainly didn't get to everyone, as my right brain kept getting distracted in my efforts, it certainly made the process much more personal.
In terms of producing the work, it was an interesting challenge right from the beginning. While I did get to select the colors of the notes to be distributed, there was no way of knowing how many of each color would be returned. True to form though, God made sure I had exactly the right number of notes to get the mural finished.
I took a few cues from Chuck Close and Henri Matisse during production as well. Henri Matisse's cut paper compositions were a great source of inspiration as I cut up clean notes and scattered them about to try and create some texture and directional force in the foreground. And Chuck Close's use of optical blending in his paintings also danced around in my head as I tried to break up the large square "pixels" of the individual notes. The wise men on the camels are actually negative space cut out of the notes, thus revealing the masonite beneath.
Communion Table Project
The summer of 2006 I was blessed with the opportunity to participate in a fundraiser for the Mulvane Museum of Art in which local artists were invited to create artworks from donated tables. The invitation to participate arrived while I was in the process of working on my Trinity painting. I decided I would just treat the table as the next painting in the Joyflow series to allow me to continue down this new path. It was also terribly exciting because this would be the most visibility any of my work had ever received. I knew almost immediately "Communion" would be my theme. It just seemed obvious, since I was planning on painting Christian themes on a table. Initially I was envisioning finding a nicely aged and rustic table and simply treating the top like a canvas. However, when I arrived at the storeroom with the donated tables and saw this rectangular block, I knew that was my table. So now, instead of having one "canvas" to paint, I had five! It took about a week to complete all the preliminary drawing on the five sides, and they for the most part looked much like the Trinity canvas. On the night I had planned to begin painting, I felt an undeniable conviction. If I was going to really take advantage of this opportunity, the drawing had to be redone. If that many people were going to see it, and if I was really serious about wanting to "talk" about God in these paintings, I had to be more obvious. Painting the table became a fascinating act of faith in itself. Since it was a fundraiser, the table would be auctioned off and I, of course, would see none of the proceeds. And I was pouring so much of myself into the paintings, that I was becoming really attached to the work. But soon someone would come and buy it and I had no way of knowing if I would ever see it again. I simply had to trust that God had a plan for this table and that my part of that plan was to simply paint it and give it up. So that's what I did. The sides were actually designed to be sequential. So if it's of interest to anyone the order is as follows: Creation, Sin, Redemption, Resurrection, Communion. It would be my pleasure to answer any questions anyone might have about the work.
