Hover over the artist’s photograph to see their story
Andrea Nwabuike | Contributing Editor
When I first read Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, I felt as though I had returned home after a long and tiresome journey. The journey was my search for characters and stories that represented my own experience, but I constantly found myself coming across dead ends.
Adichie’s work reminded me that I come from a complex and multifaceted people, whose stories deserve to be told. Her work ignited my hunger for African literature and I have since gone on to feast on the words of Chinua Achebe, Ngugi Wa’Thiongo, Tricia Adaobi Nwaubani and countless others.
Their stories have given me the courage to embrace my ethnic and racial identity not as a hinderance, but as a gift. With this courage comes the conviction that the gospel is relevant to all of my existence. It does not ignore my cultural identity, neither does it shy away from the injustices and inequalities of this life. The good news of Jesus Christ is powerful because it is relevant to me now, in this body and in moment time.
Conviction always come with a calling; that is why I write. I write with the prayer that the Holy Spirit will give me words of truth, relevance and beauty. And I write with the hope that my craft would be an invitation to other weary sojourners to come home.
Abbey Sitterley | Writer
In Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard writes, “Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery…” Every day we move and act with so much trust – in molecules and atoms, in structures, relationships and dialogues – without which, we couldn’t take a step. We tread water in a sea fathoms deep, grasping for whatever driftwood ideas greet us on a passing wave. Even as God reveals Himself in His word, there are eternal mysteries my synapses and nodes strain to comprehend: the Trinity, the Incarnation, a prodigal son welcomed home. I lack language for these things, yet feel the longing and sublimity they evoke with fervor. In my fascination with what is just beyond the realm of comprehension, image and metaphor help me get closer to conveyance. I want both my life and my work to be held in the acknowledgement of that mystery, which often looks like simply opening my hands.
Caroline Hennekes | Photographer
During my first semesters of college, Emily Dickinson spoke through poetry the unfathomable wrestlings of my fearful heart and planted a seed for growing my personal artistic philosophy. Dickinson did not shy away from confronting truths, especially the hard ones. And, though ambivalent about it, she cared for her work, sewing the pages of her poetry together and wrapping them up in twine to be found after she died.
I like to think that the approach Dickinson took to poetry, I might take to painting. Her resolve was fierce, her subjects deeply complex, her manner was independent yet undoubtedly affected by Christ and by the world. She finds her refuge in line breaks and verse. Her craft is no careless, trend-following, superfluous thing. She runs to her art to be frustrated, angry, and honest about life and death. It is in this seemingly forsaken place she discovers and creates beauty.
Painting has become this place for me: somewhere to sit and ponder our living, breathing, and dying—through colors and shapes. Whether in words or pictures, our greatly creative God has granted us this gift. It would be wrong not to embrace it. My prayer is that my art, like Dickinson’s, may present a safe haven to be truly honest in our yearning after Christ, and in that, find hope.
Sara Billups | Writer
I first read Simone Weil during college, when I spent a semester studying in the Oregon mountains. From a cabin near the California border I wandered around the chapters of Waiting for God some 50 years after she wrote it. My surroundings were a stark contrast to Weil's, who worked in an auto plant to understand worker's conditions and served with the French Resistance.
But Weil was a fearless writer, and her mysticism flared up my own young emotions and longings to understand God. I could also intuit both her Jewishness and her Christianity. That same dichotomy that was in her is in me, and it paradoxically felt like a perfect circle.
"Creative attention means really giving our attention to what does not exist,” Weil writes. These are the kind of words written for anyone open to receiving them. I like to think they're especially for any seeker feeling both out of alignment in culture and wanting to challenge it.
Shonette Reed | Writer
I spent the second half of my elementary school education in an after school program. With two working parents, it was important to them that my brothers and I were afforded experiences that were beneficial to us. So, I read. I read The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros and A Light in the Attic and Where The Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein. These were all books that enabled me to try writing in the fourth grade. Books that offered me the chance to see how these writers viewed other people and the happenings of life.
As a Christian, writing has allowed space for me to explore and sit with my emotions; it has allowed me to navigate the tough parts of my own story. And through that, I am able to hold the stories of others with more care. It is a constant meeting with God for me.
Charis Wong | Photographer
I recently graduated from University of Toronto's Voice Performance Program, and for a time was considering continuing into a Masters in the same field. During that time I thought a lot about the nature of art and music, namely the question, “is it necessary?”
I felt that the career path I had chosen didn’t have the same weight as other professions—a doctor saves lives, a singer can only sing. In fear, I questioned whether God could use my small offering for His purpose. It was not until a dear friend of mine pointed to scripture that I remembered God’s love for his people manifests itself partly in the good gifts He gives, and none of these gifts are without purpose. why, apart from a God who is beautiful and who loves beauty, would He command the making of ornate and intricate designs of pomegranates and flowers to decorate His temple? Our God rejoices over us with loud singing, and we respond with worship in song—He delights in our singing, our designing, our painting. Our desire for beauty is God-given, not to gratify ourselves, but to drive us to look at His perfection, and glorify Him. His image is the most beautiful, the most desirable, the most satisfying.
Psalm 27:4 says, “One thing have i asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire at his temple."
Strahan Coleman | Folk Psalmist
Art, and music in particular, has always been a thin place for me. One particularly holy moment was an evening during a holiday with friends over 10 years ago. I was playing and singing with others when I began to see colours and shapes coming out of me. I felt taken over, which is something that I’ve only felt a few times in that way in my life since, and I suddenly began to hear words being spoken to me that I would repeat in melody. It was totally spontaneous, beautiful and honestly quite overwhelming. That experience left a mystical imprint on my understanding of song and has shaped a lot of both my work and spirituality since.
Morgan Kelly | Photographer
For me, the biggest draw as a creator is that God is the ultimate Creator. Being made in His image and likeness means that we bare His traits, and so following in the Lord’s creative path for me is truly what makes me feel most aligned with His heart, when I get to share in the same creative likeness.
As for artistic inspiration, two street photographers that I’ve been constantly intrigued by are Vivian Maier & Joe Greer in the way they capture people & moments in the most raw & pure sense.
Walter Cabal | Writer
I have a medical condition called Dysthymia, the subsequent depression can leave me existentially helpless and blind from day today.
It’s in the silky, beautiful dissonance of ‘never having’ found in Wong Kar Wai’s films where I accepted what falls through the holes in our hands; from the sandpaper textures in Stray From The Path‘s screaming songs that I learned that anger’s fire still emits light when we feel the need to throw tables at injustice, and it’s from the incredibly quiet and alone poems of poet Mary Oliver that I learned that prayer and poetry are made of the same spirit; guided by the same helper. If all scripture is God breathed, then I believe art has taught me that anything with life giving breath in it - is a kind of scripture.
When I allow art’s dissonance to rub saliva and dirt in my eyes - somehow I begin to see.