May Arts Gathering - Final meeting until September

Hope artists met at the Bryant's home for an extravagant potluck, performance, reports and prayer. Here is an overview.

Before and after dinner, we decorated seed packets for the upcoming Hope Chapel art project. Anyone is invited to take a template and draw/write on it the type of seed they are, the type of plant it will become, and instructions for growing or other seed-type information.

Wendy and Kathy will be traveling to Turkey in June with other Hope Chapel leaders. They will represent the arts ministry and women's ministry. A lively discussion about missions and the arts, both at home and in other countries revealed much interest. Issues that were raised included (1) labeling an activity as "mission" can be self-justification, (2) the importance of understanding God's will for artists in mission functions, (3) artists need respect for the "secret life," the time they spend honing their craft and creating work, and (4) the need for artists to be skilled when they do mission work and for mission groups to use skilled artists in the work the public sees. Several stories of traditional missions using artists and artists doing nontraditional mission work emerged and encouraged us all.

Jane and Kate attended a meeting about submitting proposals to participate in First Night, a New Year's Eve celebration sponsored by the city of Austin. Although the deadline is this week, she asked anyone with an idea to check out the information she brought back and their website. She noted that the city representatives used the same language the church uses in talking about their vision for the event. Words like hope, illumination of the soul, gift, creative, meaningful.

Kate gave a brief summary of Makoto Fujimura's talk at the arts pastors' retreat at Laity Lodge last month. We will look into buying the CDs of his and David Taylor's talks to have in the church library. Also a CD set of the talks from the Transforming Culture symposium last year.

Wendy and Ruth outlined the arts festival this summer, which will consist of a juried visual arts exhibit, an opening reception with performances, and two days of workshops focused on sparking creativity.

Jane and Wendy explained the format of the artist gatherings for next year, starting in September. They wll alternate between meetings for all artists and meetings for each of four interest groups: performers, writers, designers, and visual artists. Kate reminded everyone to send her links to post on the website and events to post on the calendar.

The meeting was adjourned, and Melinda and Brie performed a scene from a play Melinda is writing called Just Between Us Icons. Brie played Lady Liberty and Melinda was Our Lady of Guadalupe. It was delightful!

Rick led us in praying Psalm 23.