Creating Art Together

It was an honor to work with talented artists through the Worship and the Arts class.

Ellen Cavendish Phillips and Lisle Gwynn Garrity both used visual art with our class that was freeing and devotional.

Ellen read a Psalm once, asked us to bring in a material from home, and provided us with extra supplies and a canvas. She then turned on soothing music and let us go. I brought flowers that were from an Our House Gala. The yellows and whites of the flowers that I pulled apart and then glued onto the matte board flowed into something I created with purpose. I then began to paint in blues hearing water sounds. It then looked like the flower had burst from the blue. I added texture to the blues with sculpty clay and sand. I realized when I was finished that I turn it one way and it is water turn it around and it is sky.

This exercise was incredibly freeing and relaxing. There were many of us working side by side but I was entrenched in divine beauty that was between me and the Creator. I was not thinking, not judging, but just doing. Using my hands to create instead of my thoughts.

Later in the week, Lisle lead the group in a painting exercise where we gathered around a canvas, heard the scripture 3 times and then were invited to paint a portion of the canvas. After a time we were told to stop, move 3 spaces and add to someone else's art, then again to another, and finally go back to our own or if it is finished find a blank space. The goal was simply to fill the whole canvas.

This brought about beautiful art and a communal devotion practice. There was one person that had in her mind that the exercise was not multiple people thinking about the passage and painting whatever but that one person would start something and many images would come about. Some of this happening organically. We painted what we felt and heard. I picked one phrase that stuck out, a river. I created a river and even wrote YHWH (name of God) in the water. I ended up moving to other river pieces and connected them to flow throughout like I heard in the Revelation passage we heard before beginning.

After finishing we talked through our experience and Lisle explained that this was a warm up exercise that she had with a group that created banners for the worship space (water and fire). They worked individually and then later read a scripture together and as a community talked through the ideas before creating a piece together that would be used for liturgical art.

Art can be used as a way for expression and response to scripture. Creating art gives another dimension that just observing can never do. Even when people don't consider themselves artists something beautiful can still be created, especially when there is a safe space and opportunity.