deAnn Alyse Roe is Director of Visual Arts at Living Word Community Church in York, PA. As Director, she is curator of the monthly art gallery exhibits and creates the sacred space installed for the season of Lent. She plans to offer classes on discovering creativity soon. She's also involved in the Spiritual Direction program at her church through which she meets with a small group of women every month and walks alongside them in their spiritual journeys.
deAnn's blog is Vertical Creativity. She says that God has put on her heart a passion to develop her creativity and meet with Him through her creative endeavors. She believes that spiritual formation through the arts is very real. It's her desire to explore this and offer her experience to others and encourage them in their own creative and spiritual journeys.
LeAnne: Your blog is called Vertical Creativity. What is the focus of it?
deAnn: The focus of my blog is to encourage people--from artistic dabblers to professional artists--to live into their God-given creative Imago Dei (image of God). I can't help but think there is a connection between our creativity and our spirituality. So, I try to help people think vertically about their creativity and to consider approaching it as prayer, which has great potential to deepen their relationship with Jesus. I call this practice, "sitting before the canvas," being fully present and in prayer. Your canvas may be a sketch pad, hunk of clay, your garden, computer keyboard, the viewfinder of your camera, or an actual canvas for painting, etc. Then create whatever bubbles up from within.
I also post local art scene happenings hoping to encourage people to get out and interact with other people's creative endeavors. Vertical Creativity is currently a blog but by the beginning of the new year, it will be a website with an attached blog. I'm excited to see where God takes this ministry.
We are all created in God's image. Therefore, we all have the ability to creative. Vertical Creativity is a place of encouragement as we move along the creative journey.
LM: Why do you want to see people "live in their creativity?"
dR: I believe that we can meet with God in unique-to-us ways as we seek to discover and live in our creativity. God is Creator of everything beautiful and we can co-create beauty with Him. But it's hard to get past the negative inner critic we hear so often, that voice that tells us we are not creative, that we are not artistic, that it's a waste of time, that we have absolutely no ability. That squelches the Imago Dei that is within each of us. You never know what can be created through you until you take the time to try, and then allow God to surprise you!
More from deAnn Roe on Thursday.
No comments:
Post a Comment