The Book of Acts: Artwork

Vision and Symbolism • JD Raab

The gospel is moving throughout the earth. It is confronting actual men and women with the truth in actual cities where it’s causing actual change. Whereas I’m tempted to think of it as a soft thing—a whisper between friends or some Precious Moments angel in a glass-doored dining room hutch—the gospel is nonetheless a vast, moving force, changing even the most fundamental things about our world as you read this.

The gospel demands a decision: ultimately you’ll either violently oppose Jesus’ rule or to submit to it entirely with pure joy. In the book of Acts, no one is safe from getting caught up in this tension; Caesar is not safe from getting caught up in this tension! That exact gospel tension is here now in our own city, still doing its good work—Jesus demanding with absurd love for my very soul that I “Choose this day whom I will serve.”

Working with Lane on this triptych was a neat experience, because I had so many things (too many things) that I wanted to communicate, yet was at the mercy of an incredible abstract painter, with whom you “feel” arguments way before you “read” or see them. We brainstormed about an organic, “water”-like mass overtaking a more structured, rigid space. There needed to be a tension where the two “halves” of each painting met. A thick, golden, messy tension. I cannot tell you just how skillfully and perfectly she made this vision happen!

So it goes without saying that the blue part represents the gospel, advancing decisively and interminably on the land/our cities/the world (the red part). The overlaps between those two bodies represent the heavy, potentially wonderful decision that all of life faces—to submit with joy or violently resist and be swallowed up.

Creative Process • Lane Geurkink

After walking through the concept and overarching message of Acts with JD my first initial idea was to make something BIG. That not only the composition would speak to the concept, but that the size would be so large that it would be hard to miss and captivating.

I chose the burnt red color for the background of the “city” lines because I wanted a color that had a high contrast value, that wasn’t too pretty and represented a kind of beautiful brokenness. The “city” does not represent a specific city but a hypothetical one. This was drawn with white chalk paint pens. The blue is meant to represent the flooding of the gospel over the city, as JD said before. I used several washes of shades of blue, white, and gold to make this section. The gold is an added representation of the gospel too. My hope is that with the organic shapes of the blue with the contrast of the geometric lines of the city, it will speak boldly to the tension of the world without the Gospel and our need for it. I was so happy to work with JD on this and have his help to conceptually create something for Park, as well as his exceptional design!

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Ruth: Bittersweet Providence Artwork

Park Church loves the arts and artists, and we try to occasionally feature different artists from our church on our blog. The artwork for our current series in Ruth was created by a collaborative work between the calligraphy & drawing of Bethany Siekmeier and JD Raab as a graphic designer. Below is the final sermon series graphic as well as a sampling of some of the lettering and drawings she sent us before JD put together the final graphic! You can find more samples of her work here.

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Advent 2015 Artwork

You may have noticed the Advent artwork for “God With Us” as well as the two banners hanging from the side of the stage (see below) and wondered what the story was with them. We asked Jeremy Grant, the artist who created them, to share a bit about some of the thoughts behind his artwork and this is what he said:

Purple and dark blue colors symbolize waiting and longing, and are the traditional colors of Advent. These darker areas (collaged from images of evening, twilight, deserts and water) show the brokenness and chaos of our world as they cut back and forth sharply.

Lighter colors (collaged from images of clouds and morning light) symbolize Jesus, the “light of the world,” cutting through darkness and chaos to bring light and peace. Little stabs of pink color represent joy.

There are two banners, representing Jesus’ comings to earth. Jesus, the messiah, has already come down to earth (as a child in Bethlehem) fulfilling the longing of the prophets and people of God from centuries past. And Jesus, the master of the cosmos, has promised he will return to earth again. So we look back, and remember what he has done. And we look forward with eager anticipation to what he will do next.

About the Artist
Jeremy Grant is an emerging artist and award-winning graphic designer. His collages and found-object assemblages have been exhibited in solo and juried shows across Colorado and Arkansas. Jeremy is married to an author, has two beautiful babies and loves Jesus, bourbon and robots. You can check out more of his work at jeremygrantcreative.com.

We hope the art stands a visual reminder of this season and helps shape your heart’s affection toward Christ and longing for His return!

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Christ In The Psalms 2015 Artwork

Learn more about Christ in the Psalms artwork and download artwork guides here.

Every summer we return to the Psalms as a church. We are preaching through the entire Psalter, generally about 10-12 psalms every summer in chronological order. Our prayer is that as we work our way through the Psalms, the Psalms would work their way into our every days… That they would inform our prayer lives, our lives of worship before God, and that we would see Christ within every chapter! Last summer, we asked a variety of artists to help us “see” the psalms in a new light. Each artist picked one of the psalms we were going to study that summer, and as they studied it and meditated on the text, they responded to it in art. Below are 12 of the Psalms put to canvas and wood and paint. We pray these pieces of art help you see new things you may have never seen in each Psalm, and even feel them.
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Christ In The Psalms 2014 Artwork

You may have noticed a few new pieces of artwork up for our “Christ in the Psalms” series over the last few weeks. Meagan Tidwell is a calligraphist & artist at our church (see her work here). She created the logo for the series, the 2 scrolls hung along the back of the stage and the abstract mixed media piece hung in the hallway next to the foyer. We posted some photos of the work below, but we asked Meagan to share some of her thoughts regarding her creative process:

Spending time in the Psalms, you realize it’s not difficult to resonate with the cries of the psalmist — the rejoicing, the lamenting, the laughing, the crying — sometimes all in the same moment. The breadth of David’s emotional experience is tangible and relatable. One moment he’s up, the next he’s down…and isn’t that true of us all?

Yet, woven throughout these poems and songs, there’s an undercurrent of peace. Deep peace. David experiences such an intimacy with God — such a profound knowledge of who God is — that it creates this freedom to openly pour out the depths of his soul, without fear of reproach or rejection. It’s that liberty that enables him to trust God even in the midst of death, anxiety and depression.

I suppose that is the best way to sum up where I started as I approached the artwork for this Psalms series. I wanted to display the tension of the emotional pull, but also incorporate the anchor of God’s peace in the midst of it all.

So there are two pieces of art that were created.

First, there is an abstract piece that sits in the hallway behind the sanctuary. Conceptually, this encompasses my observations of the Psalms. The jagged collage of songs and poetry represents the inconsistent range of emotions that we experience as we walk through life — ever-changing and dependent upon our circumstances. But, behind and throughout that collage there is a wash of cool, harmonious color. It speaks to the peace that we experience as we walk through life being hemmed in — behind and before — by our Shepherd. For this I used strips out of an old hymnal, acrylic paint, and layers upon layers of texture paste mixed with thin layers of paper towels. Most of the paint was applied by hand, as I can’t seem to get a paintbrush to ever do exactly what I would like it to do : )

Second are the scrolls that sit on each side of the stage. These are more of an explicit proclamation of the bookends to the Psalms — beginning with chapter one and ending with chapter one fifty. The verses were written out using ink and brush onto large rolls of brown kraft paper. My desire with this is that these book ends would serve to solidify the Psalmist’s and, subsequently, our need to be anchored by the peace of God no matter the circumstance—our need to be “like a tree planted by rivers of water” as we praise the Lord with all the breath that we have.

While we all wade through the various ups and downs of the struggles of life, I hope these pieces can somehow point you to the peace that comes through intimacy and closeness with God.

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2014 Lent Artwork

You may have noticed the artwork hung in the middle of the stage over the last couple weeks of Lent. We commissioned Lane Geurkink, a visual artist and graphic designer from our church to create a progressive art piece that will visually capture the “feel” of Lent. It started off with the simplicity of the ash cross that marks the beginning of Lent on Ash Wednesday. Over the 40 days of Lent, the art piece will gradually turn darker and darker as we remember our sin and need for a Savior! Our prayer is that as you come on Sundays, the artwork would remind us of the darkness of sin but also the beauty and light of our Savior as we turn to Him in repentance.

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