Artsy Theology Moves to Art As Spiritual Care

My art blogging theme has shifted from general art journaling to one specifically focused on integrating mixed media with spiritual care. As of March 7, 2016 I will no longer be updating ArtsyTheology. Instead, you can find my how-to create and do visual journaling with mixed media art as spiritual care on my new blog site: artasspiritualcare.blogspot.com and I also have one which focuses on art and personal testimonies of immigrant mothers and children seeking asylum in the US which you can view at refugeeartblog.com
I hope you will join me there...

Hope: Past, Present, and Future

The theme that emerged out of my most recent round of translating the journal (bottom) layer of the immigrant (detention center) art is hope. How did these women maintain hope through the horrors they experienced? What gives them hope (& keeps them going) during the uncertainty of incarceration and pleaing for asylum? What gives them hope for a better Tommorrow? The guides art meditation leads them through these reflective questions. The general art directions also will be included, but of course (and wonderfully so) each one will look very different. 

One aspect of the directions invites participants to choose a symbol which they then repeat throughout the art. 

Best Practices for Cross-Cultural Art Sessions

It isn't always interesting to do the behind the scenes prep for an art ministry, but it is exactly that extra time spent which makes the art ministry day flow smoothly.  For cross-cultural (bilingual) art ministry best practices includes a four-step sample, which means the tedious bottom later must be done X all four samples. Key word: must. Any time I skip this laborious step...I always regret it when it's the art event day. So, paste on the happy face and do the behind-the-scenes prep so the flow goes smoothly during the art activity. 

Boring to prep but important to have: four "bottom layers" of the four-step sample. It makes it faster and easier to print the first step (in Spanish) and use carbon paper to trace the directions X 4.