With the feast of Pentecost coming up this Sunday, celebrating the gift of the Holy Spirit and the mission of the church, here are a few items of interest from around the web.
VISUAL COMMENTARIES: “The Risen Christ Appearing to the Disciples” by Victoria Emily Jones: This spring my latest exhibition for the Visual Commentary on Scripture was published, on Luke 24:36–49 and John 20:19–23, where Jesus appears to his frightened disciples after his resurrection, giving them peace, assurance, renewed purpose, and power. (In John’s telling of this episode, sometimes referred to as the Johannine Pentecost, Jesus breathes his Spirit onto them!) I selected and wrote about paintings by a medieval German artist, an Italian Renaissance artist, and a contemporary Indian artist that triangulate these parallel passages.
Two shortlisted artworks were David LaChapelle’s photograph Evidence of a Miraculous Event and a digital painting by Duncan Robertson.
>> Want to learn more about the Visual Commentary on Scripture [previously], an excellent free resource for pastors and other readers and teachers of the Bible? Check out the Exhibiting Faith podcast episode from April 30, where host David Trigg interviews VCS director Ben Quash about it.
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SONGS:
>> “O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing,” arr. Christopher M. Smith, performed by the MNU Heritage Choir: Smith arranged two stanzas of this Wesleyan hymn for the student choir he directs at MidAmerica Nazarene University in Olathe, Kansas. They perform the song inside the Bell Cultural Events Center, which has lines from the hymn inscribed on the walls.
>> “Citizen” by Philippa Hanna and Israel Houghton, performed with Moses Bliss
>> “For Your Gift of God the Spirit” by Margaret Clarkson (words) and Darwin Jordan (music), performed by musicians at Philpott Church in Hamilton, Ontario
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ARTICLE: “Vivid Spectrums of Color Radiate from Chris Wood’s Intricate Installations of Dichroic Glass” by Grace Ebert, Colossal: When I saw photos of this artwork by the Cambridgeshire-based light artist Chris Wood, with its prismatic colors and outward expansion, I thought of Pentecost—of the radiant gospel of Jesus Christ, from the launchpad of his resurrection and subsequent giving of his Spirit, going out to the world via and to various people groups, setting it ablaze. The artist says she was inspired by the logarithmic spiral of the nautilus shell. “We find in this a representation of how radiance can be embodied within us, as projected to those around us,” she says.
40 × 40 was commissioned in 2022 by the Japanese luxury skincare and makeup brand Clé de Peau Beauté for its fortieth anniversary. The work comprises forty spirals, each made up of forty pieces of dichronic glass, each forty millimeters long.
“Dichroic is a material that is colorless, but it has an optical filter on it,” Wood explains. “So when light hits it, certain wavelengths, which are manifested as colors, reflect back, and the remaining wavelengths pass through, creating two colors. Those colors change depending on the angle and quality of the light and the viewpoint. It’s just the most eloquent description of the magic of light that I could find.”
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VIDEO: “The Lord’s Prayer: One Church, One Prayer”: ICF (International Christian Fellowship) Rotterdam-Noord, an intercultural church in the Netherlands, recently put together a video compilation of some of its members praying the Lord’s Prayer in their mother tongues; represented are English, Papiamentu, Dutch, Malayalam, Swahili, Arabic, Twi, Spanish, Tagalog, Chinese, and German.
Rotterdam is a diverse city, home to 170 different nationalities. In the neighborhoods ICF North serves, 70 percent of residents have a migrant background. Every Sunday the church, pastored by Fred Kappinga, offers an Arabic-Dutch service and an English-Dutch service, with translations into other languages when necessary and possible. They sing Christian worship songs from around the world and host guest preachers of various ethnicities.
Art & Theology 