Welcome to the online extras and resources for Chapter 15: Displaying Art: In the Gallery and the Sanctuary of The Creative Church Handbook. What you’ll find here is material that is helpful and important, but couldn’t be included in the book because of space constraints. Some thoughts include a reference to the specific page they would have appeared on.
For information and discussion on similar topics see The New Renaissance Arts Movement site at TheNewR.org. For questions, comments, or use permissions you may contact the author directly at Scott (at) TheNewR.org.
Visit our CreativeChurchArtsIdeas.org website for more ideas for creativity and arts ministry in the local church!
This page is under construction. Please check back for updates!
Chapter 15: Displaying Art: In the Gallery and the Sanctuary
Click the link below for the downloadable VineArts gallery forms:
Click the link below for a detailed explanation of the beautiful commissioned art at St. Mary’s Church, Boise, ID
http://www.stmarysboise.org/photos-church.htm
More church art gallery examples:
Express Your Faith Gallery
Lutheran Church of Hope, Des Moines, IA
The arts ministry at LCH maintains two galleries in the atrium outside of their sanctuary. Because of the generous light the atrium allows in they were able to forego the expense of lighting. This enabled them to invest in a channel and wire hanging system for a professional gallery look. That system also makes it easier to install the art and move it around, which is important, as they like to keep the gallery fresh by rotating the artwork every month or two.
The church has a part-time staff member who runs the gallery and also handles building design and altar design. Director of arts, Cyndee Buck says that, “We’ve had people share with us that they’ve come back into our building because of the artwork on the walls.”
“We love artists” Gallery
Life Spring Church, Springdale, IL
Life Spring, a small church north of Chicago, has a heart for artists, so they decided to host a yearly gallery event called “We love artists” to reach out creators in their community.
They started by building a team of volunteers who would organize, produce and promote the show. They established a solid vision, and empowered a leader/facilitator to oversee it. The vision included three parts: most importantly they wanted to encourage local artists, to let them know that Life Spring appreciates them, their gifts, and their work, and that they are welcome at the church. They also wanted to give their church members an opportunity to connect with the arts/artists, and they wanted to invite people from the
community into the church.
Life spring promoted the show on social media, in the newspaper and through word of mouth. One thing that worked well in acquiring art to show was for their team members to attend local art events, pass along fliers/cards and personally invite artists to submit work
Life spring didn’t charge an entry fee for the guests or the art, but suggested a 10% donation to the church for work that sold. Anyone from the community was welcome to submit work, and artist could submit 1-3 pieces.
Justin Hall. Photo: Erik Railton.
The works were juried on 5 criteria: Excellence/Craftsmanship, Contentiousness, Intellectual content, Continuity, and Integrity. Judges rated on a 1-10 scale and entries that received a 7 average or higher were automatically accepted. Lower scoring pieces were juried in based on space after the deadline. The gallery only hung for that night (because of space issues in their building) so the usual concerns about content in a church gallery space where not as pressing.
Life spring meets in an old warehouse so they built moveable drywall partitions to display the art. They provided hors d’oeuvres, and coffee donated from a local business. Funds for the show were raised in part from a Mother’s day bake sale.
Life Spring’s “We love artists” gallery event accomplished what the church had hoped, to encourage and welcome artists. It was very well attended and featured over 40 works from a good mix of Christian and non-Christian artists.
Ecclesia Gallery
Ecclesia Church, Houston, TX
In an interview with Andy Crouch for Q Ideas, Chris Seay, pastor of Ecclesia Church in Houston (the same church where Scott Erikson was artist-in-residence for 3 years) made some interesting observations about their art gallery. He talked about how the church often does a Lectio Divina, an ancient practice where individuals read a Scripture passage three different times, take periods of silence, and listen for a word from God, waiting for God to speak to the individual directly about what they read. Seay would also encourage his congregation to do the same thing with art, a practice sometimes called viso divina (this is described on pg 130 of the Creative Church Handbook). So you would meditate on the art and ask God what he would say to you through it. He says,
“When pastors come to our gallery, most of the time I’ll just stop and ask for a period of silence and I’ll walk them through…and (encourage them to) keep walking to the different pieces until God stops them in front of one of these pieces and the spirit of God begins to speak to them about something…And I often like to do this when the artist is present because it’s powerful for the artist to see the way that their voice is used to speak to so many different people. When you see art, don’t just run to the easy question. Sit and reflect and see what comes at you and I promise that something will come.
Andy: I remember being in the National Gallery in London a few months ago and standing in front of Rembrandt’s painting, the Feast of Belshazzar where the hand is writing on the wall. It’s one of Rembrandt’s just most dramatic pieces. And I really had to walk away and visit some other galleries. And then I said to Catherine, my wife, “Let’s go back and look at that again.” Because you really you have to move away from it and then come back to it and let it speak to you several times before you even really know what you’re seeing in a way.
Chris: You do. And one of the beautiful things about Lectio Divina is that (say) if we were experiencing Lectio together (with other people) some things would speak to you that didn’t speak to me. When you begin to tell me (about those things), (they) speak to me powerfully then, too. And so, learning how our brothers and sisters experience art is really important, and God will speak to us through them, through the art. The artist will speak, the Spirit will speak, and beautiful things happen.
So I’m hopeful that the church will begin to catch on and will realize this is a community interaction. That’s what happens in our
Photo: Eric Cardella.
gallery when we hang and show (art); that people get to come in and not just experience it by themselves but interact around it together, then go sit down and have a coffee and talk and do like you did and come back to it again and again.”
For more churches with arts galleries and arts ministries, visit The New Renaissance Arts Movement:
http://thenewr.org/new-renaissance-church-arts-ministry-links.html
Additional resources:
- IAM –“How to” Resources “How to Look at Art”
