‘I Am Art’ Workshop to Deal with Lament
Athentikos
Joel Van Dyke, leadership developer for urban mission for Resonate Global Mission, is joining with Shabrae Jackson-Krieg, an African American artist living in Mexico City, to offer a series of interactive, online workshops aimed at fostering faith in a time of struggle and upheaval.
Called “I Am Art,” the workshop combines teaching, reflection, and responsive art to explore the theme of lament — a theme especially relevant in today’s world — as a means to help us get at the deep emotions of sadness and loss and grief that many of us are feeling, said Van Dyke.
“This workshop is aimed primarily at artists and creative people in hopes of helping them understand, celebrate, and activate their prophetic voices in this time of collective struggle in the world today,” he said.
Resonate is a participating organization, and anyone in the Christian Reformed Church can join the online course for free.
Van Dyke said the dual pandemics of COVID-19 and social injustice/inequity “have left followers of Christ disoriented and at times untethered, it seems, to the moorings that previously held and rooted them.”
Important to note, he added, is that there are “very divergent experiences . . . between the ways white Christians and Christians of color have had to navigate these realities — which is why I am facilitating this workshop with Shabrae Jackson-Krieg.”
Van Dyke said it has been his concern for years that the church has not given space to the artists and creative people “in the body of Christ who are uniquely positioned . . . to guide the body of Christ into lament as the poetry of truth-telling, and that ‘truth-telling’ is so desperately needed in the church today.”
Lament, he said, is necessary for us to face our difficulties and shortcomings, and especially our grief, before we can move forward into a deeper space and relationship with God.
Inspiring the online course on artistic reflection and expressions is Athentikos, an organization that Van Dyke helped to launch some 15 years ago and that was integrally connected to his work for many years as a missionary with Resonate in Guatemala.
During that period, two documentary films were produced: Reparando and Becoming Fools.
One of the things that sprang from the work on those films was the inception of the “I Am Art” initiative that countless artists from CRC congregations, as well as from other churches, have engaged in throughout the years, he said.
Because of COVID-19, the “I Am Art” camps in Guatemala scheduled for the summer and fall of 2020 were all canceled; then, in their place a series of online webinars/workshops was set in motion, and this one is part of that series.
By joining this workshop, you “get to sit at a global table with artists and creatives from all over the world and learn to embrace their prophetic call for the church, leading the people of God into biblical lament in the midst of the disorientation of 2020,” said Van Dyke.
There will be teaching on lament and interactive art-making practices, and the fifth week of the four-week workshop will culminate in an online gallery focused on the work of the artist participants from around the world.
Each session will be offered in English and Spanish and have five components:
- teaching, reflection, and discernment
- presentation by a visiting artist
- group work
- art-making
- creative prompts for “between-session” studio time.
The global cohort for the workshop will meet online weekly on Thursdays from Sept. 10 through Oct. 8, 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. (EST).
