All posts tagged Our Projects

Title: ‘Merry…Homeless..(O’Mulligan)’ by Mark Anthony Mulligan

The Homeless exhibit keeps traveling around the country.  Right now, it’s got an extended stay at Convergence Center for the Arts in New Orleans, a project much like Sojourn’s the 930.  Convergence is operated by a New Orleans Church also called Sojourn.  Yes, it does have some ties to the Louisville Sojourn.

Last week, the big paper in New Orleans wrote a great review of the show.  You can read it here on nola.com – ‘Homeless Art Show Visits New Orleans’.

There is some talk of Sojourn Visual Arts again partnering with the folks at Jefferson Street Baptist Center in 2010 to make new artwork with and for the homeless, so keep your ears peeled for that.

A big thanks to Jesse Eubanks for continuing to put so much work into getting the Homeless exhibit in front of new audiences!

This video walks through The 930, giving a tour of the space with Michael Winters, and hearing the philosophy of ministry from pastor Daniel Montgomery.
The video was made by a couple of guys from The Austin Stone Church in Austin, Texas when their church was researching how they wanted to go about purchasing and renovating a building of their own.

It’s not well known, but there’s a Sojourn Visual Arts Room on the 3rd floor of the 930 for your use. There’s a bookshelf with good arts-related books for you to borrow. There’s also the completed series of Art21 DVD’s made by PBS. You can check them out if you promise to bring them back.

Room #302 is also a nice place to come and use the wireless connection or to work on a messy art project. You can pretty much get in 9-5 Monday-Friday by buzzing in at the East Entrance.

Betsy, from Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, came last week to visit with us and teach the class “Church Art Now” this past Sunday.  If you missed the class, it will be online as a video soon.  Betsy is Calvin’s resident visual arts expert, and she’s probably the best person there is to come speak on the topic of contemporary church art.  She knows it back and forth.

Besides just doing the class, she also sat down with a couple different groups over good meals at Ramsi’s and then the next day at Kashmir to discuss the overall vision of visual arts ministry at Sojourn, including the 930.  Her insights into our local situation were very helpful, and paired with the recent discussions we’ve had with Steve Halla from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Taylor Worley from Union University and Joanna Taft from the Harrison Center, we’re just about ready to get a  renewed strategy on paper for seeing gospel transformation in the visual arts for individuals, the church, and the world.

I ran into Laura from the “In Three Years” project the other day at the UPS store.  When I made the chalk drawing with Laura last year, she was homeless and not doing to well.  She told me her dream was to work with the environment in the next three years.  When I ran into her at UPS that’s exactly what she was doing.  She was full of smiles, printing off flyers for a work day at a local wetland preserve.  She told me she was fulfilling the dream that we illustrated in the chalk drawing.  That imagined reality had already become a working reality less than one year later.  Plus, she still kept the print we gave her from the project, now hanging in her very own apartment.

Just because this blog is related to a church and I’m writing as a Christian doesn’t mean everything contained in here is going to be rated PG. I thought we should get that out of the way near the beginning. This blog is written with the assumption that whoever reads it will involve themselves critically and make their own judgments. This blog will be interested in art for the church (should be safe), art from the church (sometimes safe), and art facing the church (rarely safe) [Thanks to Harold Best for those helpful categories]. The art scene can be a decadent place and you might see something you didn’t want to if you go chasing links. Another disclaimer should be that the opinions written in this blog are the views of the person writing and not necessarily the views of Sojourn Community Church.

I guess I’ve got something to say. My name is Michael Winters and I’m the director of visual arts for Sojourn Community Church. My plan is to write at least once every two weeks. The subject matter will be mostly related to the intersection of art and Christian faith, though I expect I might get distracted at points.

I’ll respond to what I see.

There’s so much hype about art inside protestant Christian circles right now and it’s hard to wade through all the words (there aren’t as many images). I’m hoping this blog will just point to the most interesting of what is out there, bringing a sort of specific, curated clarity to what a Christian embrace of the visual can be.

I expect that I’ll be writing quite a bit in response to what’s going on locally here in Kentucky, but I want this to be a place of interest for those who are in this niche nationally (or heck, worldwide too).