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Resources on the Web - Ron Riemstra
Inspiration, Illustration, and Integration: Resources on the web for the visual artist
by Ron Rienstra
The weekly head-scratching exercise (“Well, what do we do this Sunday?”) is well-known to preachers, liturgists, dramatists, and musicians. Visual artists, on the other hand, contribute to worship less regularly. That is to say, while congregations enjoy artwork week in and week out, the work of producing that art—a new banner for a new season, a new baptismal font, ceramic pieces thrown for a new communion set—happens, at least for the traditional visual artist, more periodically.
The weekly head-scratching exercise (“Well, what do we do this Sunday?”) is well-known to preachers, liturgists, dramatists, and musicians. Visual artists, on the other hand, contribute to worship less regularly. That is to say, while congregations enjoy artwork week in and week out, the work of producing that art—a new banner for a new season, a new baptismal font, ceramic pieces thrown for a new communion set—happens, at least for the traditional visual artist, more periodically.
But there has always been the person (unlikely to be called a visual artist) who does artwork with greater regularity—for instance, the person who puts appropriate clip art in the weekly church newsletter. Or the pastor who wants to discuss or display a handful of famous paintings as visual illustrations for a sermon series. Or the person who finds the beautiful woodcut and has it scanned for the cover of the Easter bulletin. Or the high-tech equivalent in some churches today: the person who designs and puts together a PowerPoint presentation that may include clip art or fine art or even film art.