ANCIENT-FUTURE
WORSHIP ARTS
Our theme this year was “Ancient-Future Worship Arts:
Recovering the Fullness of the Sacred.” At Cornerstone
Festival, we’ve seen an explosion of creative worship,
and this year’s Burning Brush program was a move on our
part to help facilitate this conversation and begin to explore
new worship possibilities. Pastor Fred Nelson shared his experiences
at his own Redeemer Church and their "Re-Image
Worship" endeavor. Pastor Tina Herrin (Jesus
People USA), presented a seminar on rediscovering
traditions and practices of the church across the ages. Karl
Sullivan led a workshop on creating worship art sculpted out
of non-traditional materials like foamboard. Karl brought along
several beautiful examples of his work, which we displayed along
with many other pieces to create our sacred space – not
quite a Medieval cathedral, but definitely a powerful integration
of visual arts into a multi-sensory worship experience. Each
morning we began the day in our sacred space with a worship
service featuring different guest worship leaders each day,
each contributing a different distinctive style.
PILGRIMAGE/LABYRINTH
These efforts to bring worship and visual arts together follow
an instinctive path we’ve been taking with Burning Brush
in recent years. Our 2007 Pilgrimage was inspired by the “Names
of God”. The journey was laid out along the road in the
main festival midway.Many festival attendees stopped at a variety
of art pieces within this theme to interact in a thoughtful
way with both the art and with the many-named God who inspired
each work. Take a virtual tour of this year’s Pilgrimage
here. The Labyrinth continues to grow in popularity as people
discover that, even in the midst of this busy, noisy music festival,
one can enter into a focussed encounter with God as they follow
a winding, stone-lined path. This year, designer Hugo Thysse
chose a “Stations of the Cross” theme for the experience,
and hundreds of visitors followed these stations along a profound,
personal meditation upon the suffering of Christ. (Get a sense
of possibilities for Divine encounters along the Labyrinth with
our virtual version.)
BURNING BRUSH GALLERY UNITES WITH “SEEDS”
The 2007 Burning Brush Gallery featured one of our strongest
shows yet. We were honored to collaborate with SEEDS,
a California-based ministry of visual evangelism. These pieces
took their place along with the works in our regular juried
show to make for an impressive and varied visual experience.
Thanks to everyone who contributed to the show this year. View
images from the SEEDS exhibit on our photos page. View this
years juried show winners, as well as winners from past years
at our Creative Spark
online gallery.
WORKSHOPS/SEMINARS
As always, we were blessed to have several folks on hand to
help faciliate and process the rich and diverse experience that
is Burning Brush. Longtime art consultant HYPERLINK “xxx”
Nancy Hughes led gallery walks each day during the fest and
shared a thoughtful series of talks on “Knowing Self,
God and Calling,” a discussion of practical matters of
being a Christian and an artist in contemporary society. Other
seminar sessions were led by Ned Bustard, designer and author
of It
was Good: Making Art to the Glory of God, and artist
and longtime Burning Brush veteran, Rick
Beerhorst. Our hands-on workshops this year included
a primer on linoleum cut printing with Cherilyn Christie, and
an oil painting demonstration with freelance illustrator Jason
Seiler (Time and Sports Illustrated are just a
few of his clients).
LOOKING TO 2008
In all, the 2007 Burning Brush seemed a significant step in
our own growth as a venue at Cornerstone Festival, but also
in our being able to play a key role in the re-integration of
worship and the visual arts. Stay tuned for further developments
along this line at Cornerstone as the festival moves toward
creating a new “sacred space” worship venue that
will build on the conversations and experiences from our worship-arts
program and implement these ideas in new and exciting ways.
We at Burning Brush are also thinking about our own program
for next year as our own journey continues. If you’d like
to be a part of that journey, sign up for our e-mail newsletter
and stay in touch. Let’s continue to inspire one another
by discovering and sharing – and especially by creating
– art that fires us with that inextinguishable passion
for the Creator and all of Creation.
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