Here’s the last art project I plan to share.  This one was actually done in the step-down program.  We were instructed to create something that expressed our identity using any of the art supplies available.  One woman actually wrote a song and sang it for us while playing the guitar.

I had a coloring book with geometric designs and patterns in it and decided to use something out there; I was really enjoying the soothing repetition of filling in the spaces and seeing how the colors blended together.  As I paged through I found this design.  I colored all the orange, purple, and green, and then glued letters of “I am…” that I’d cut out of magazines.

Each of
the oval spaces
provided just enough room to write something about myself.

What positive, true things would you write about yourself?

This page had 102 spaces
to fill!

This third art project wasn’t part of the art class itself.  We were asked to consider two quotes and draw how one of them resonated with us.

“Sometime in your life you will go on a journey.
It will be the longest journey you have ever taken.
It is the journey to find yourself.”
~Katherine Sharp

“One does not discover new lands without consenting
to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.
Set the sails. Pull anchor. Cast away. Feel the wind at your back.
Keep your eyes on the horizon.
Or stay on shore.
But choose.”
~Andre Gide, French writer

I chose the second one.

One the left side is a dark
land fraught with peril.  It’s
dark trials. It’s self-absorption.
It’s works instead of grace.
On the right side is a brighter
place filled with grace, peace,
and love. It’s peace in the circumstances. It’s reaching
out to others. It’s relying on
God and believing his truth.

In the middle is the vast sea with many waves and just a little vessel. Because of the vastness, the little vessel has to let go the shore before it has any hope of seeing the other side.  There’s two consolations to the small person in this vastness.  The land to come holds promise the previous one didn’t, and the mast is a cross as a reminder that Jesus went before, endured all things, and intercedes for all.

Ultimately, it’s still a choice to pull anchor and leave the shore.

I’m still in the vastness, and I know I’m closer
to the second shore than ever before.
What would you choose?  What have you chosen?

Here is another art project I made at Timberline.  This one was supposed to be specifically about Joy.  I think this was shortly after I started playing the piano in the dining hall, so music was on my mind.  I used a piece of cardboard to start and covered it with wide black ribbon. The white piano keys, pink “staff”, and green note were also of different kinds of ribbon. For the word Joy, I untwisted a three-strand black cord.

It looks really simple, but I wasn’t able to finish in one session; I had to work on it the next day in our open session. I like how it turned out.  It’s interesting how the artwork, the act of making it, working with your hands, and then explaining it to the others is cathartic.  It’s easier to express some things through art than to talk about them.  Those projects were harder to explain to the others than this one was.

Some of us had to challenge our perfectionism during these sessions.  Our instructor liked to say, “art is imperfect. It’s not about perfection, but expression. Mistakes make art.”  I understand what she’s saying; it’s just difficult sometimes to show your work to others when you don’t like how it turned out.  For me, almost more frustrating was not being able to finish!  On a different project I told the instructor, “I know it’s not perfect.  That doesn’t bother me.  I just want to finish it!”  Interestingly, that project was about speaking out instead of holding all my thoughts inside.  She let me stay for five minutes (because I had my white hat and because I asked!) such that I could finish the last three lines.