MY STORY

BECOMING AN ARTIST IN  NORTHEAST OHIO
I cannot untangle my journey as an artist from the journey of my mother. My life began in the home of a woman who loved the Lord her God and tilled the time and space of her days to plant the pursuit of creating art. My sisters and I cannot recall a time when we were not encouraged to explore artistic mediums. My mother cultivated not only a sense of freedom to explore artistry, but an unquestioning confidence in our capacity to create beauty that mattered.

Despite the exploration of visual art, from an early age I was drawn to the artistry of words. Mum told us she read Dickens aloud to us when we were quite little—we didn’t know what she was saying, and then she could read what she was interested in! From an early age I was immersed in beautiful, complex stories, and that has shaped my work and my desires to this day. My childhood was imperfect, but was most certainly a good bit of ground for my growth as an artist, tended by my earthly and heavenly gardeners. 

EDUCATION + MAKERSPACERY

For five years I worked at a STEM high school teaching English, and learning to bridge the beauty of literature to students who wanted to be engineers and scientists. Teaching was a beautiful gift, but ultimately not a good fit for me. I had always known I did not want to teach high school forever, so I left when God nodded and worked at a community college makerspace. At HIVE Makerspace, I trained and coached teachers, students, and non-profit professionals in human-centered design. I designed and led workshops using laser cutters, 3D printers, and other machines and tools. The creative space to think differently started me thinking about how much people need encouraged to embrace the maker in them. 

BECOMING AN ARTIST MISSIONARY

 After the makerspace position ended, I spent a few years knocking on a great many doors. A season of knocking is inherently littered with discarded hopes and stinging nettles of disappointment. But someone said to me “you only need one door” and I have held onto that in these years of my life. I can only walk one road at a time, only go one way at once. The door that God has opened is heavy, and will take everything I’ve got and more besides for it to fully open so I may walk through. 

In the deep, painful furrows of rejection and disappointment, God handed me a seed. It was not a new seed, but it had been hidden under layers of soil, not-quite-forgotten, but not-quite-remembered either. A desire, and a capacity I could never have imagined undertaking as anything more than ministry outside of my work. That desire is to do the beautiful, complex work of tending and cultivating artists. Of exhorting, encouraging, challenging, and caring for artists of the church. I am carrying on my mother’s work, which she began in the context of her home and carried into the classes she taught. Mine, in some ways has already begun in various corners of my life—in my classroom, in certain relationships, in small attempts in my new church. But the Lord has given me an opportunity to dig in deep and really make a difference for the artists of his church. 

The door that has opened is through a ministry called United Adoration whose work is this work, to “empower artists, and the local church, to create art that is meaningful to the communities that matter most to them… their own.” This emphasis is so helpful—art isn’t just for national or international fame. Not all artists will live off of their work. Not all of them will follow traditional paths of sharing their work. But all artists need encouragement and companionship to live “on mission” which is to create the art they were made by God to create and share it in beautiful ways. So I am going on staff as an artist missionary to Northeast Ohio, the hills and people I love dearly, so I, too can cultivate in artists an unquestioning confidence in their capacity to create beauty that matters.