Cross My Art
You're probably familiar with "outreach." That's where we direct our ministry of the Gospel into the community instead of just within our building. We do "outreach," but at Holy Cross, we're also planning "artreach." It's a new concept: using art to reach out to our community with the Gospel of Christ.
The idea is to present faith-based arts education for the community by offering classes on a variety of arts (paints, pottery, metal, stained glass, drama, etc.) for all ages. Classes will be offered seasonally, perhaps combined with community fairs or festivals, and each class will include a faith lesson to share and enrich faith in Christ.
To test the concept, we offered a three-class "Cross My Art" session in late January and early February 2011 for adults and children. The classes filled quickly so we have started a waiting list and hope to offer another session soon. Watch your newsletters and Sunday bulletins!
In these first sessions of Cross My Art, participants explored several artistic elements and mediums: They created a watercolor-salt painting of winter birch trees and learned about Jesus' statement in Matthew 5:13ff, "You are the salt of the earth." They learned about Pablo Picasso's style of artwork called "Cubism" as they used oil pastels to create one face out of two different faces in a way similar to Picasso. Just as the different views of faces make up one face, we who trust in Jesus must become one in Jesus to make up his Church (based on John 17:20-23). They learned about Swiss artist Paul Klee who liked to turn common subjects into simple geometric shapes in a lesson based on Jeremiah 18:6 where God tells Jeremiah "Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand," encouraging us to put ourselves in God's hands and let him shape us as he wills.
