My Story

My journey as an artist began deep in childhood when I was told so many times I was an artist — I loved to draw, and create imaginary worlds. Fast forward to age 16 and choosing a college: I decided to find a Christian liberal arts college (because that's what my parents did) and be an art major. I didn't initially know how few colleges had art majors, so I ended up at Messiah College, in tiny Grantham, south-central Pennsylvania. I loved my fine arts education, made great life-long friends, met my wife Dawn and raised our children. We've lived in the same place— Grantham— for over 30 years now.

 

My main medium all those years was graphic arts, freelancing to help small businesses and local nonprofits with their communication projects. I worked at Messiah for nine years in their Publications Office doing photography, layout/design and even special event T-shirt graphics for silkscreening. I started working from home solo in 1996, just as our third son (James) was joining the family.

 

Getting Artsy at Church

I always wanted to do something more artistic, but struggled to make the time. Parenting little ones and running a freelance business consumed most of my energy. In the early 2000s was asked to join the church's Worship Commission as they were starting to discuss how to be intentionally inclusive with "worship arts", meaning more than just music. We decided to open an art gallery in the church to showcase various ways Christians can be artists, using a wide diversity of media and materials, format, subject matter, etc. Our goal was to make visible the community's welcome of the artists and their art into the life of the church. This gallery continues today, after 25 years, with four exhibits per year. www.granthamchurch.org/art-gallery

 

The other new thing we created was a Worship Arts Weekend in the winter each year for 7 years, where the Commission offered hands-on workshops, lectures, concerts, dance, and demonstrations of a lot of different art forms, including storytelling, poetry, dramatic reading, ceramics, painting, stained glass, etc.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Community Arts

After these weekends stopped my focus shifted more to the worship arts pieces I was asked to do and community arts projects I led. Our  pastor was excited to have visual art as a focal point on the sanctuary stage area, but it needed to be either tied to a sermon series, or a liturgical season of the church calendar. We also intentionally made art that was temporary. We wanted the art to change from season to season. One of the biggest of these projects was the 2007-2008 New Clothes: Exploring the BIC Core Values series by pastor Terry L. Brensinger. My article in the 2022 BIC History & Life Journal can be found here.

 

Most projects depended on volunteers and donated materials, so that the art itself reflected and represented the community in tangible ways. We tried to involve non-traditional artists in the work, so that people not usually identifying as artists might see their way to contributing their skills, such as carpentry, electrical, etc.

For more on Worship Arts, click here.