I was egged on by my friend Matt Yow (mattyow.com) to document the process of my mural making for Lauren Elizabeth. Thus, here are a few pictures for your viewing pleasure. Now that I have a projector, my next step will be to make some transparencies of circles and words so I can draw them on the wall, not to mention the rather complicated drawing of the hiker on the mountains coming off of the crest of the earth. I hope to make and post pictures of the “wall necklace,” as I have been calling it, in the next few days.
the man
the wall
the color/ texture (wallpaper and paint)
the other colors
again
the (a) sketch
the (not my- it’s borrowed) awesome (transformers) projector
the transformers (this picture is a joke)
Meaning in the mural
Lauren asked me to make a mural for her that reflected the truths found in Acts 17. The part of that chapter that is most pertinent to this mural is the section that says,
“24 The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. 26 From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. 27 God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. 28 For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’”
The way I chose to represent these truths is to show the planets as small, two dimensional, and hanging from strings (black vertical lines). Every other object in the mural will also have a string attached to its top-most point. In this way, the sovereignty of God can be communicated. To him the planets are just like paper is to us. To him they might as well be flat and on a wall. To him they are as small as beads are to us. Not that God is a puppeteer, but that he holds all things in the balance– just as Acts 17 says that he “determined the times… and the exact places” of things– even down to the lives of men and women.
Other possible elements in the mural include a leviathan (see Job 41 and Psalm 104:25-27), a satellite, a space shuttle, and a bird (I like this idea).
There window hanging (wall necklace) will include mobile elements like stars and planets (hopefully a saturn if I can figure it out), as well as silk flowers and foliage, giant cork beads, broken jewelry, feathers, hemp rope, and brass wire. I am using crystal and brass drawer pulls for the hooks on the wall.
I am in for a lot of work. Good work. For “There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil” (Ecclesiastes 2:24).
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