Entries Tagged 'brandnewmountainspeeches' ↓

matthew chapter five verses sixteen thru twenty:

“But you will recognize them by their fruits. You don’t find sweet, delicious grapes growing on thorny bushes, do you? You don’t find delectable figs growing in the midst of prickly thistles. People and communities and lives are like trees. Good trees bear beautiful, tasty fruit, but bad trees bear ugly, bitter fruit. A good tree cannot bear ugly, bitter fruit; nor can a bad tree bear fruit that is beautiful and tasty. And what happens to the rotten trees? They are cut down. They are used for firewood.”

I am working on a triptych, for the brand new mountain speeches art show on May 3rd, using 3 doors, I am collaborating with other artists to create a revolving door piece. With each door representing a chapter of the sermon on the mount. I have been working on chapter seven, and have been responding on the above excerpt. Right now I seem to be obsessing about trees. I did a talk seven times last year to various audiences using a visual of a tree and the concept of “Up, In and Out.” That as followers of the Way, we are nourished by the roots, which are Jesus and his teachings (Up); and then as we internalize his words, we become regenerated from the inside (In); and begin to grow outward, our branches stretch to the Sun and we begin to produce fruit for nourishment and shade for protection (Out). Using Jesus’ words and the words of Paul in Romans eleven thru twelve, we get a glimpse of what it looks like to be a follower of the Way, an incarnation of the Truth (read: Jesus), in the here and now of our day.

Hopefully, the idea in my head of what the final project is will come to fruition… as two others are working on chapter five and six doors. I have already had the help of two artists on the chapter seven door (it is after all a work of collaboration, a community response), Emily Curley has helped me with some sketches of Trees that I will have to carve out, and Samantha Lamb has contributed some pictures for the depiction of fruit. Go to brandnewmountainspeeches.com for more information and click on the link to the blog for some other artists ideas. Cool.