This is unrelated to my summer in NYC. A final update is still coming on that. I just came from our biennial national staff conference in Ft. Collins, CO that around 5000 staff attended. One of the things they focused on was the tragedy at VA Tech and the 3 Campus Crusade students killed that day. In a seemingly unrelated note, a former UCF student has been developing an amazing short film series going through the basics in a parable style. The first is on forgiveness and is utterly amazing. What really struck me about the video was that he chose to use the journal entry of a slain VA tech student involved in Crusade. Mary Karen Read penned a favorite quote the day before she died. "When a deep injury is done us, we never recover until we forgive."
On my last post, you can view some photos of the show. I'll upload some videos in the next few days. It amazes me that in all the craziness of finishing things and building the structure and preparing the gallery, that its finished and how God has been using it. In the next few days I'll write some posts sharing stories of the conversations that we've had with people explaining the pieces and how God has enabled us to share the Gospel and to challenge people to think more deeply about their spiritual lives and life in general. it has truly been amazing.
Pray for tonight. It is the last night of the exhibition and I'll be working a shift which means I'll be interacting with the people who attend, sharing the vision behind the pieces with them and getting to know them where they're at.
The show is called 2x2 and the artist statement behind the exhibit explains it all.
2x2
We can't do this.
We shove things into memories or poems or paintings but our real purpose can't be shoved into anything. It's too big. We asked the question, "What image best represents God?"
The answer isn't fitting on a 2x2 panel.
But we liked the name 2x2 and we kept it. It represents our process-in attempting to answer the question, we didn't do it alone. We teamed up with each other, with the community, maybe with you. This is not the art of isolation, this is the art of a group of creators from across the country.
We're trying to do something here.
We're trying to make art because we were created to create, because we were created to know and magnify beauty. We're trying to answer an unanswerable question and that's what you'll find in this gallery-our attempts, our successes, our failures. You'll find the best ideas we came up with to answer that question.
But where do ideas come from anyway?
That's our point exactly. And because these ideas don't really belong to us they're not ideas that are meant to be thought about alone. Talk about them with someone-a friend, a lover, maybe a stranger in the gallery. Make sure the ideas you came with aren't the ideas you leave with, and maybe they won't be yours.
Pray for tonight. It is the last night of the exhibition and I'll be working a shift which means I'll be interacting with the people who attend, sharing the vision behind the pieces with them and getting to know them where they're at.
The show is called 2x2 and the artist statement behind the exhibit explains it all.
2x2
We can't do this.
We shove things into memories or poems or paintings but our real purpose can't be shoved into anything. It's too big. We asked the question, "What image best represents God?"
The answer isn't fitting on a 2x2 panel.
But we liked the name 2x2 and we kept it. It represents our process-in attempting to answer the question, we didn't do it alone. We teamed up with each other, with the community, maybe with you. This is not the art of isolation, this is the art of a group of creators from across the country.
We're trying to do something here.
We're trying to make art because we were created to create, because we were created to know and magnify beauty. We're trying to answer an unanswerable question and that's what you'll find in this gallery-our attempts, our successes, our failures. You'll find the best ideas we came up with to answer that question.
But where do ideas come from anyway?
That's our point exactly. And because these ideas don't really belong to us they're not ideas that are meant to be thought about alone. Talk about them with someone-a friend, a lover, maybe a stranger in the gallery. Make sure the ideas you came with aren't the ideas you leave with, and maybe they won't be yours.
The exhibition
So, I've been very lax in writing the last two weeks. Things have been pretty crazy and the time has had its ups and downs. In the last 3 days, I've gotten about 7 hours of sleep. Last night, i didn't even bother to try. We were up all night putting one of the structures together that displays some of the artwork students and staff have developed this summer. Please pray for tonight and this weekend. Tonight is our private opening where supporters of the ministry and the summer can come experience it for themselves. Students have been handing out the invitation cards to the show all day, including one student, Nick, who headed down to Union Square in a pink tutu...yes, I'm serious. Pray that people who are seeking would come to the show and that we would be able to engage in great conversations this week/weekend until the show closes. Project ends in less than a week and I'm saddened to be leaving this community.
