The Art Scribble

 

We had our own logo and everything!

Back in September of 2019, a small group of artists gathered together for the last time. It was the last "Art Scribble" and the end of an era.

In 2012, my wife and I started attending a new church based in Arlington, but that had just started a church plant in Salem. Our old church had recently fallen apart after our pastor left to work for a non-profit, and several key members of the church leadership followed.

The new church, Highrock Northshore, was meeting in the Salem YMCA, which was only about a block away from where we were living at the time, and had been recommended to us by friends from our old church, who said it might appeal to us because it was "Artsy".
That turned out to be true. We discovered in short order that Highrock had a great interest in and commitment to, supporting and utilizing the arts.
Within a couple of months we were part of a Creative Arts Group, comprised of artists who were members of the church, to discuss ways we could use our art to help the mission of the church. My interest in the arts was appreciated so much, that when the church opened an office on Pickering Wharf, the staff set aside a desk and part of the office for me. I felt very welcomed. About year and a half after that, in the fall of 2014, my wife and I started running a monthly gathering called the Art Scribble.

This was a once-a month, Saturday gathering, usually held in the church offices, where artists from the church community could hang out, and make art together. You would bring whatever you were working on at the time: writing, drawing, knitting, painting, and share what you were working on, discuss art and whatever else was on your mind, and occasionally, you would make field trips to local museums, or just outside to draw in nature. It was all very casual. There was no preaching or agenda, other than to share art and art-making with each other. It was never attended in large numbers, (I believe the most we ever had at one meeting was 14 people). At one point we had 28 people on the e-mail list. Many liked to be invited every month, but never came. We never really pushed attendance, as space in the office was somewhat limited, and if we had too many people, it would be difficult to actually make art. We were kid-friendly, but did not have childcare per se. We also, did not offer instruction, or lessons. It was a time for artists to share, but not instruct. But even with these limitations we did have a core group of about 5-6 that made it almost every time. In retrospect, these gatherings were some of my favorite times making, and discussing art. 

That was a good day. L-R: Kerrie James, Amy Harkins, Kara Jade Fuller, Amy Courage, George Courage, Kirsten Borne

We ran the Scribble for seven years. Inevitably, the novelty wore off, and people started to drift away. Some were college students who graduated and moved away, some had children and other family commitments to attend to. Others found that Saturday was too precious a day to give up, even once a month.  Some felt pressure to have something to show at the meetings, and felt guilty if they didn't have anything. We occasionally added a new member, but we were starting to lose more than we gained.
Towards the end, it started to become a drag for us. I was dealing with the sudden death of one of my best friends, and the serious health crisis of another.  

We would set aside our Saturday for the Scribble, and only one or two people, or worse, no one, would show up. We never required a commitment, which in retrospect, may have been a mistake. At any rate, after a particularly long run of non-attendance, it was too much, and we officially decided to end it.

The announcement was met with some regret, but everyone knew that there was a kind of inevitability to it's ending. It was lovely for a season, and then, as is always the case with something lovely, it ended.

Below is the last Artscribble meeting. The core group is in attendance.  There was an air of melancholy and loss, but also of fun, and gratefulness for the time we had. 

L-R: Amy Courage, Levi Nelson, Kerrie James, Kirsten Borne. (I am unseen and taking the picture)

Epilogue: One of the regular members, Walker Simons, agreed to take over running the Scribble going forward. It has been difficult to get people to attend, especially during the Covid-19  pandemic, but I am happy that he has taken this on, and hopeful that he will not only be able to continue this tradition, but hopefully expand it, as well.

Lent Devotional Art

Back in December of 2013, Brynn Harrington, one of the pastors at Highrock Northshore, (the church my wife and I attend), contacted several artists and members of the Art Group at the church about the possibility of illustrating a lent devotional booklet. We all thought it was a very interesting idea. Brynn sent us the 40 days of devotionals, a passage for each day of lent. Kerrie James, one of the Art Group leaders and Brynn, divided up the devotionals among the 6 artists: Solomon Kong, Rachel Neikirk, Kerrie James, Ben Ober, Kirsten Borne, and myself.  I was assigned 7 different passages from day 15 to day 21. My passages were all from the book of Matthew. I took a look at the passages, re-reading them and researching representations of what other artists had done with these specific passages. I wanted the images to be familiar and recognizable, without being cliché. I will focus on the first passage which was Matthew 16:21-28. I decided to focus on verse 24:

²⁴ Jesus then said to his disciples, If any man will follow me, let him forsake himself: and take up his cross, and follow me. 

Most of the images I found were similar to the one below. It is a fairly iconic image, but how to make it my own?

 

We were encouraged to do these in any style and medium we wanted, so that the final variety was visually rich and varied. Because the final illustrations in the devotional book were going to be small , (about 2 inches square), and also because I procrastinated on the project until the week before the deadline, I decided to do mine as small, very loose colored-pencil drawings. I wanted them to be as direct and simple as I could make them. I drew them all on one sheet of Bristol board at about a 1 inch by 1 inch size. I sketched in non-photo blue pencil and then inked and colored them with colored pencil.

As you can see from this detai, they are pretty rough.

I scanned the images individually so that they were 300 ppi at 3.5 inches, or about twice the size they would be when finished. I liked the texture and the energy of the sketches, but I also realized that they would need to be refined a bit for reproduction, so I brought the scans into Photoshop, and started to digital "clean-up". In most cases I was deleting the sketch lines, and saturating the color. Sometimes redrawing or clarifying parts of the image, (such as the face). The trick was to clean it up without going too far and losing the gesture and energy of the original sketch. Here is the final version of "Take up your cross".

Here are the final versions of all the artwork. You can see that they  have achieved various levels of success. The least successful is probably #2 "The Transfiguration"and the most,  #7 "the Greatest Commandment", but overall, i was pretty happy with the results.

 The final digital files were sent off to the church office to be placed into the book design.
This is what the illustration looked like printed.

The artwork was also projected as a background image for the  Good Friday service, and prints of the artwork were displayed at the Easter service.