Fiona Morgan, News Editor
Students who have attended chapel in the past four weeks, have likely noticed other students painting on stage during services. The paintings are part of a series of symbols that relate to sermon messages. Both art & design majors and non-art & design majors have painted or will paint six symbols on Mondays during Reveal chapels.
Senior worship arts major Laura Griffith acts as head of the project and has painted two of the symbols. She painted the globe on Feb. 4 and the Ten Commandments on Feb. 18. The other symbols have or will include a crown, fish and loaves, the cross and a dove.
Griffith is the creative arts coordinator in the worship arts department, which means she is in charge of coming up with ideas for worship events and gathering creative people to work with on those projects. She approached the chapel committee, which is run by Asbury administration and chaplains, with the idea of painting in chapel, and they tasked her with the symbol series.
“The symbols really help us with understanding where we’ve started in chapel and where we’re ending,” said Griffith. “This whole [Reveal] series has been about going through the Bible, beginning with Genesis and ending with Revelation, and those symbols just really point to some major parts of the story of the Bible and of our faith.”
Madison Samokar, junior worship arts major and art & design minor, painted the crown symbol on Feb. 11. Samokar explained, “A lot of preparation goes into something like painting live in front of people — not only preparation in design and materials, but the mental preparation of knowing you are doing something you love in front of hundreds of people who will all have an opinion about your work.”
Griffith mentioned that while the act of painting may be distracting for some in the audience, for others it can be relaxing. “I’m a tactile person, and sitting in chapel for that long can get restless,” said Griffith. “For a lot of people, it gives them something to rest in and watch, and for me when I’m painting, it’s a way of worship and a way of really focusing.”
Griffith did not know how successful she would be in finding people to paint, but since beginning the series, she received unprecedented interest. “After [Samokar] painted, I just had an outpouring of people reach out and say, ‘I would love to paint in chapel,’” she said. “Painting is so vulnerable; not many people realize it, but artists don’t often want to step out in front of people and paint.”
Sophomore art & design major Vivienne Feiser painted the fish and loaves symbol on Feb. 25. However, she had initially been bothered by the chapel paintings. “I stopped and asked myself why I was bothered by it in chapel and began to ask around what others thought of it,” she said. “Some people couldn’t care less; some liked it; others were bothered by it. And that got me wondering why it bothers people to see someone creating and dedicating their work to the glory of God. It is another form of worship, just as singing and raising our hands to the Lord in worship.”
Since the guidelines for these paintings included the background being abstract and the symbol being the focus, Feiser said she struggled with preparing a composition.
“Fish and bread aren’t necessarily very interesting to look at, but in some ways, that gives me more opportunity to make them interesting,” she said. “I let the setting of the story serve as my main inspiration — the sea of Galilee — sky blues and sea blues but also earthy colors like the browns and oranges.”
Although the series will not continue this semester past the six paintings, Griffith expressed her hope that someone would work on something similar next school year. “A lot of people who have been interested are not seniors; they are people who will be here next year,” she said.
Asbury has utilized other art forms in chapel — such as spoken word poetry, acting performances and dance — and Griffith hopes that the paintings will encourage Asbury to use more diverse art forms in chapel. “My hope is that what this starts is just for more artists to step out of their comfort zone and maybe somebody else to take it over next year or just have more artists showcased in chapel,” she said.
The paintings will be displayed in Hughes Auditorium at least until the series is complete. They then may be displayed elsewhere on campus.
