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Pumpkins and Gourds
Sometimes I can work for hours and end up with nothing to show for it. In grammar school, I could use the excuse, “The dog ate my diorama.” Today my primary reason is “The latest iOS upgrade sent my file into the far realms of the cloud and smashed it to smithereens while it was…
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Creating a Picasso Still Life
Einstein never said, “If we do the same thing every time, but expect a different result, this is the definition of insanity.” So why do artists return over and over to the still life? For that matter, why do preachers repeatedly use the same scripture texts for their sermons? Some of my former congregation members…
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Learning Creativity
Is creativity innate or can we learn creativity? From my experience, children are creative up until about age eight, at which time peer pressure begins to suppress their imagination and willingness to experiment and exercise their own inner truths. About this age, children acquire an understanding of the “real world,” as opposed to the worlds…
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Intuitive Color Wheels
The great and wonderful part of art is exercising imagination and discovering new ways to solve problems. One of my favorite memories in art school was the day our professor came to class with a single red clay brick. Our first thought was this is going to be the most boring drawing class ever, but…
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Cosmic Rainbow
In times of cultural change and uncertainty, some faith-based communities turn to apocalyptic literature to find meaning, if not solace, for their suffering. Other communities of faith look forward to a future of hope and joy, even though they live in the same circumstances. Apocalyptic literature is a genre of writing that appeared during times…
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OAKLAWN FRIDAY ART CLASS
WE’RE BACK!!! The older I get, the faster time flies! When I was a child, summers were long and lazy times. I actually got so bored, by the first of August I’d start to play school. I’d line up my brothers and the neighborhood children and pretend to teach them. It was our way of…
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The Creating God
In the dead heat of summer, our gardens aren’t putting forth the fruit of our planting. Maybe the animals of our neighborhood have made their too frequent nightly visitations, so our harvest is skimpy. We can forget God is a both a creating god and a recreating god as well. The first words of the…
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The Witness of the Cross
We are a people who follow Jesus, “the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and (who) has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God,” as the writer of Hebrews 12:2 reminds us.…

