Romans Road by Sojourn Visual Arts
on view January 9 - February 15, 2009 in the 2nd floor gallery.
Every week in 2008, a local artist produced an image related to the book of Romans found in the Bible. This project was completed by Sojourn Visual Arts, an art group growing out of Sojourn Community Church which also operates the 930. The images were used in Sojourn’s weekly print materials and now form this exhibit.
Each artist was given a passage from the book to respond to. The book of Romans is full of abstract concepts like faith, hope, and love. These abstract concepts challenged the artists to figure out how to make the abstract ideas concrete and take on shapes and forms and colors. Each artist responded to the text in unique ways. Mickie Winters’ digital collage “Live by Faith (pictured)” responds to the text with both traditional iconography and a new iconography of her own creation. Katherine Valentine’s mixed media piece titled “Redeeming Fulcrum” visually defines the concept of grace in an imagined world where a single feather can weigh the same amount as a group of people and obnoxiously large metal keys.
The exhibit title Romans Road was chosen for this exhibit as a contrast to the phenomenon of Christian witnessing pamphlets that go by the same name. In the Romans Road witnessing pamphlets, readers are given just a few verses from the book of Romans which are intended to represent the fundamentals of Christian beliefs and the road to salvation. Unfortunately the brief nature of these pamphlets leads to an often over-simplified presentation. Rather than being overly-simplified, Sojourn Visual Arts offers an expansive view of the road opened up by the book of Romans.
Artists who participated in making these artworks include Hayley Abell, Tyler Deeb, Michael Diaz, Molly McCoy, Eric Scholtens, Katherine Valentine, Michael and Mickie Winters.
The images in this exhibit are mostly prints made from the originals. All sales will benefit Sojourn Visual Arts programs for 2009 which will include a similar but new series titled B.C. which will invite artists to respond to the Old Testament.
