paint your faith

Wall vs Mural

We are a few days away from the production of Paint Your Faith Vancouver and the anticipation is overwhelming, exciting and it is a great feeling to know that all the work we’ve done over the past six months is now coming to fruition.  We are in the midst of also producing an artist showcase and gallery event at an amazing gallery in downtown Vancouver, near Chinatown called Ayden Gallery owned by Ken Lum.  Ken has an amazing place and probably one of a kind in Canada.

We are doing something new for the Paint Your Faith project and that is adding an artist showcase to celebrate the past artists and the new ones we are working with.  During that process we created a before and after canvas while I was at our reproduction printers today.  ABC Photo in Vancouver is handling all of our print reproductions, these guys are amazing and can’t believe they are pumping out so much work in such little time, thanks again guys.

So back to this before and after thought I had today.  Since we are printing the before and after shots I thought I would share this with those who can’t be with us at the Gallery event this Saturday, April 24th.

There is an adage which many of you may know, “A picture is worth a thousand words”. This adage refers to the idea that complex stories can be described with just a single still image, or that an image may be more influential than a substantial amount of text.  No matter which way you look at it, the areas which we have chosen to develop the murals are complex, misunderstood.  Places where hopes, dreams, pain, hurt all collide, thrive or die.

This wall could have been used and leased to companies like CBS Outdoor, Pattinson, Viacom or other large media companies who make millions of dollars off of advertising, but the Metropolitan United Church who owns the property decided to donate the wall to us for this project.  Lifting the spirits of the area, putting smiles on peoples faces, and giving people an inspiration was far more important than just profits. It is something you don’t see every day in the mass consumption world we live in.  Imagine replacing a few advertising billboards with artwork created by the type of artists we are working with, or having more organizations taking proactive approaches to improving a local area with this type of project.

I had lunch today with Sandra Severs who runs the First United Mission Church and  is one of our local partners. She asked me why we choose the downtown east side in Vancouver. The obvious answer was, the wall is at Abbott and W.Hastings St. which happens to be in the DTES, but more importantly, this mural has a chance to brighten up the area, get people to talk about the work, help create conversation about the theme, and it creates awareness for what First United Mission does day in and day out, which is being one of the strongest support pillars for the community in the DTES.

Back in Toronto, the wall is visited by local people, some groups come to have moments of prayer and reflection, tourists come by and take pictures and share it with their friends in other cities, it is admired by anyone and everyone who passes by the major intersections at Church and Shuter.  Even 8 months after the fact, the press are still writing about it, people are still blogging about it, and pictures and videos are being shared with family and friends.  The wall which is now are has become a part of the community and touches peoples lives everyday.

So I guess I would ask you this, would you rather have a billboard up with an advertisement or a piece of beautiful artwork in your neighbourhood.

Check out the line-up for Paint Your Faith’s Ayden Gallery exhibit on April 24. Please drop by if you’re in the neighborhood! (Click “Read More” to see the event poster.)

Ayden Gallery | 88 West Pender, 2nd Floor | Vancouver | 7 p.m. – 11 p.m.
Faith47 | Indigo | Peeta | Titi Freak | Chor Boogie | Mediah | Elicser | Siloette | Dedos | Misk | Kaput | Scott Sueme | Phresha | Live Painting | DJ & Drinks | Free Admission

Here’s the event poster.

Titi's first crack and suggestion for our wall

Its been an interesting experience working on producing a wall of this size and event with artists who are in different parts of the world. In Toronto we had Chor Boogie and Siloette flown in, Elicser and Mediah were local and when they came together they just hit the wall and it was quite spontaneous, intense but truly original the form of street art. This time around in Vancouver our approach was quite different. The City of Vancouver has a tight program on street art and we had to apply for a permit, this required the submission of what the actual art work would look like on the wall we plan to create the art on. This meant reaching out to Faith47 in South Africa, Titi Freak in Sao Paulo and Indigo and Peeta in Vancouver and somehow coming together to plan how they would hit the wall together ahead of doing the work on-site and spontaneously. As a producer, we are use to the many moving parts involved with creating projects the size of Toronto and Vancouver, there are so many variables and anything could go wrong, but we managed to bring an amazing crew of talent, work with so many great partners and supporters and we are all pretty excited about how the wall will look at 55-57 W.Hastings St. For anyone who plans to work in Vancouver, be prepared that the process is quite deep and there are many many details you need to cover. These types of projects are great for the city, community and especially the local people who will see the art everyday. I hope to share more of my experience and happily give anyone advice on doing this in your city or local community.

Titi started to give it some life and colour

Alan Serpa is producer for Paint Your Faith Vancouver and Toronto.

Originally posted on Sojourners God’s Politics blog.

One of the reasons the St. Francis quip, “Preach the gospel always, if necessary use words,” is so often quoted is because it pokes fun at Christians’ propensity to think sharing our faith is primarily about words. And for good reason. We study the words of the Bible. Our church services are filled with words. Our endless discussions on hot-button issues overflow with words. Even prayer, our most intimate form of communication, is nearly always reduced to mean those prayers we make with words.

But if mere words were enough, perhaps the Word we worship wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of becoming flesh and dwelling among us. Sharing our faith can’t be reduced to rehearsed sound bite, but is something as complex, sensitive, and alive as we are.

In September 2009, The United Church of Canada’s WonderCafe online discussion forum (www.wondercafe.ca) invited four internationally acclaimed aerosol artists to show faith can be much deeper, richer, and more complex than most people think. Their resulting “Paint Your Faith” mural collaboration in Toronto’s downtown core is a unique public display of faith filled with colors, shapes, imagination, and emotion.

The massive 30- by 60-foot wall where the Paint Your Faith mural was created could have been prime commercial advertising space, but Metropolitan United Church instead used it to beautify their community and bring the inner life of the church out into the streets.

Each of the four aerosol artists worked on a quadrant of the wall. The graffiti-like styling of the word “Yahweh” by Toronto’s Mediah provides a foundation for the mural in the bottom left area. At the top left, another Toronto artist, Elicser, offers flowing imagery depicting a family’s complex engagement with faith, religion, and life.

The top right corner of the mural is dominated by San Francisco artist Chor Boogie’s powerful spiritual symbolism and the rainbow of “color therapy” techniques for which his work has become known. In the lower right, Siloette, also of San Francisco, offers her own stunning expression of faith in the form of an angelic woman in prayer. At the center, the four pieces of the mural are brought into harmony by the gentle and innocent image of a child filled with wonder by the surrounding expressions of faith brought to life on the wall.

Of course, public displays of faith are nothing new for the church. Almost from the beginning the church has used its buildings and public spaces as expressions of faith, from the towering architecture of steeples and sanctuaries to the sublime and gentle beauty of gospel stories wrought in stained glass.

Yet, in our post-Christendom era, we lack a shared understanding of religious symbolism that was once assumed. For many, the symbols of faith carry a lot a baggage — both good and bad — and that makes it difficult to use these symbols as a place to start a discussion about the things we consider important in life.

By sidestepping traditional and predictable religious symbols, art like the Paint Your Faith mural raises opportunities for us to share our values, hopes, and dreams about those things we find beautiful. These are issues of faith, and there’s no reason the church shouldn’t raise them in the streets as well as from the pulpit.

Paint Your Faith is a way of praying in color with the world. It is an expression of our spirits that goes beyond words, yet can be shared by all.

Click here to watch a video about the Paint Your Faith. Watch here for more details.

Aaron McCarroll Gallegos is executive producer for The United Church of Canada’s WonderCafe.ca.