As Chapel services begin again, we wanted to highlight the chapel art that was created earlier this year. Each week we will share the story behind one of the banners:
Once a month in the chapel service over this past semester, we participated in a worship practice that drew us into embodied participation with the Word. These embodied practices were tied to painting or drawing that now fill the banners in the chapel.
These banners were brought to life through the collaboration and leadership of Kari Miller, who, throughout the season of Lent and Easter, came to both lead and participate in worship; she helped to illuminate for us ways in which we could use calligraphy and pictography as a way of engaging the scripture.
Materials: Paper and Conté
Scripture: Psalm 32
Prompt: Psalm 32 contains a well-known phrase within verse 7: “You are a hiding place for me; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with glad cries of deliverance.” The whole Psalm confirms this assertion, speaking of deliverance and perseverance amidst trouble and the steadfast love of the Lord. Using Conté, a type of pastel chalk, we were invited to reflect on what stood out to us in the scripture and sketch out what that evoked for us on the banner. At a second prompt, we were invited to shift our position and pick up where someone else had left off.
What emerged was an impactful piece that evokes pictographic drawing of early human cultures. Images of shelter and protection abound with many drawings containing arches, circles, and harbors, referring to both the hiding place and the steadfast nature of God amidst distress.