river of life

I've been working on a new series of assemblage artworks that explore the concept of home - for me, I can't really think about home without thinking of my final home, Heaven. I have these works on display in my studio at the Kennedy Gallery, and sometimes the discussion gets to all that a piece means, but often not, so I wanted to share these works in detail here.

This piece is titled "River of Life" which can have multiple meanings. I live and am from the Sacramento area and we live at the confluence of two major rivers. Indeed, rivers were the reason the town was built here and still are the genesis of our drinking water, the irrigation for the agriculture here and a popular recreation location. My home town wouldn't be what it is without it's rivers.

But of course, the River of Life is also present in heaven, and Christ is referred to as living water - my true home is the reality that my earthly home faintly copies and what is even better, is that heaven will come down to earth and the earth/home God has given us to love & care for will be restored to perfection. I can't begin to accurately express all that in a piece of artwork, but that's the direction I'm heading.

springs of living water

I'm trying to find the things in my personal archives that I haven't managed to get to the blog before - like this watercolor by Becky Baker that depicts the river of life. Notice that the living water flows from the heart of God.

In Becky's own words: "Part of growing up I remember the harmonious songs we sang while attending Catholic school in the Long Beach area. One of the songs that stick in my mind is 'Come to the Springs of Living Waters.' It is a beautiful song with harmony that touched my soul to the core. Since then I have searched for this song in the Catholic Hymnals but cannot find it. What a treasure if I can ever find the words to this beautiful song."

doorway to heaven

Today we have a contribution from an artist you haven't heard from before, David Kiesewetter. Dave is still experimenting with different media, trying to find one that really suits him, as many of us do before we settle into one or two primary media. (Unless we just decide to mix them all up!) This piece is a wonderful pen and ink drawing, part of Dave's process for a larger work, but strong enough to stand on it's own as well.

Dave's inspiration for this piece, comes from Revelation 4:1, "After this I looked, and there before me was a door standing open in heaven. And the voice I had first heard speaking to me like a trumpet said, 'Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this.'"

Here we see the door open to show a glimpse into heaven beyond, including some of the twenty-four elders sitting around the central throne of God, referred to in Revelation 4:4. In the foreground, you can see the water of the river of life, that flows out from the throne of God, as found in Revelation 22:1.

As we prepare for Thanksgiving tomorrow, I thank God that he is preparing this wonderful place to share with us. Blessings to all.

process and the river of life

Today I'm going to take you through the process for one of my mixed media photographs, "River of Life." I'll actually show you the step by step process I've gone through in my artist's journal I've been keeping just for this project.

The first step was reading through the book "In Light of Eternity" by Randy Alcorn and looking up all the scriptural references that he cites in his book. This has been the basis for all of the artwork done by all of the artists over the course of this past year. There were actually a couple of pieces of scripture that inspired this particular piece. First, in Revelation 22:1, it says, "Then the angel showed me a river with the water of life, clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb."


One of the first things this scripture does is make me think of what river images I might already have, like this photo taken for no particular reason at the time but has been patiently waiting for me to print it. I made a digital copy to color and put in my journal, waiting for the next piece of the work to come together. You can see I also doodled some palm trees onto it, to see how I'd like to work in the palm tree element that I want to keep as a theme in this project.


Another verse helped influence this piece, Genesis 2:10-14, "A river watered the garden and then flowed out of Eden and divided into four branches. The first branch, called the Pishon, flowed around the entire land of Havilah, where gold is found... The second branch, called the Gihon, flowed around the entire land of Cush. The third branch, called the Tigris, flowed east of the land of Asshur. The fourth branch is called the Euphrates." I really like the link between maps of a place and the image of the place, and I've used maps for overlays before this project, so it wasn't a great stretch for me to think of a map of Eden's rivers to connect the River of Life in Heaven and the river that fed the whole earth from Eden, possibly even the same river? The thought intrigues me that there is a close link between Eden, referred to as Paradise in the Bible, and Heaven, also referred to as Paradise...


In my journal, I can overlap the photographic image and the map, to work out how the two will fit together in the darkroom, change it if I want to, mull it over, move it, or change it completely.


This is the black and white contact print, with the map and a single palm tree as an overlay. When you look at this image and the next one, you can see that the overlay can move around, making no two in the series exactly alike.


Finally, I use watercolors, then dry colored pencils to add the final dimension of color to the piece. In this case, I decided to make the sky yellow in a reference to God's light in Heaven, eliminating the need for the sun or moon, but not necessarily eliminating the sun & the moon themselves, as found in Revelation 22:5. "And there will be no night there - no need for lamps or sun - for the Lord God will shine on them."

So that takes you from beginning to end in the process. By the way, the first entry for this in my journal is dated February 2007, and I just finished it November 2007: about nine months, so I guess it's appropriate for me to think of the finished piece as one of my babies.

river of healing revisted

This is a pair of images I first showed some time ago as they appear in my journal, and now they're finally finished. They form a diptych, or two images that are considered one piece, and they actually have elements that run from one image to the next.





They were inspired by Ezekiel 47:7 & 9, "When I returned, I was surprised by the sight of many trees growing on both sides of the river... There will be swarms of living things wherever the water of this river flows... Life will flourish wherever this water flows." All this from a vision Ezekiel was having of heaven. Of course, we are also told about the river of life in heaven in Revelation 22:2, "It flowed down the center of the main street. On each side of the river grew a tree of life... the leaves were used for medicine to heal the nations." So the vision of John is different but certainly has commonalities with Ezekiel's vision.

The overlay images I used for this piece are actually maps of the rivers that flowed around Eden, or at least an interpretation of where they could have been, since Eden's exact location was lost to us when Adam & Eve sinned. It's thrilling to think that Paradise lost will become Paradise restored when Heaven is at last brought down to earth, which is what the maps signify in this piece.

I've continued that concept in the next piece I've finished, which I'll try to post tomorrow.

trees of life

Many of you are aware of my own personal facination with trees, and the tree of life has to be one of the most facinating concepts for me personally, but it has also been the subject of many artists and iconographers quite literally over the millenia.

In our western society, the tree of life is an apple tree; I've never researched why that happens to be (maybe I should) but I have researched some of the Hebrew tradtitions and found that some hold the tree of life as a date palm, an olive tree, a fig tree, or even a grape vine. For an artist deciding to depict this most heavenly of trees, the options are wide open.

One artist embarking on this journey is Sheila Stockton (many of you also know her as my mother) who is using bead embroidery as her media of choice for this journey.

This is her second finished work, titled "Tree of Life #2: Date Palm." Her scriptural reference for this piece is "Blessed are those who wash their robes. They will be permitted to enter through the gates of the city and eat the fruit from the tree of life." (Revelation 22:14 NLT) You can see the river of life in this image, and the date palm tree of life growing along both sides of the river.

The detail work in these tiny artistic jewels is pretty impressive. (You can click on the image itself to get a closer view of those details.) We'll share a little more of the process that goes into those details in another post very soon...

And just so you know how these things work, if you'd like to see more artwork that relates to the work in this posting, just click on one of the labels at the bottom of the post and see what happens!

a vision from Ross Conklin

At long last, I am sharing more work from painter Ross Conklin, who has been continuously producing work for this show, stretching himself in ways I don't think he has done before. I'm so impressed with this body of work, and I'm pleased to present his next acrylic piece, titled "Beyond the Pearly Gates."







This piece was inspired in part when a family friend sort of jokingly suggested to Ross, “What about the pearly gates?” This actually got him thinking about what the view through the gates might look like. Ross says, "The Bible refers to the pearly gates as being made of one pearl, but I could not understand how to paint one large pearl so I broke it down into segmented stones."

Looking through the pearly gates, Ross shows what is described in Revelation 22: 1-5: "Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb, down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever."

In the painting, we can see the River of Life, which is flowing from the throne of God. The throne of God is depicted by the penetrating bright sun showing through the branches of the tree, and is referred to in verses one and later in verse five. In verse two, the Tree of Life stands on each side of the River of Life, which Ross illustrates by spreading its roots on both sides, then shows it giving fruit, as it will in each month. Ross's stylized approach to this piece gives the image impact and helps us to see what another glimpse into heaven.

final book installment

Finally, I'll share a couple more images from my "Visions of Heaven" altered book. This first image shows another Polaroid transfer image of an almond orchard here in Northern California. I happen to love almonds & my family owned an almond ranch once upon a time, so it sort of speaks a bit of the concept of home for me as well. I used it to illustrate the verse, "Fruit trees of all kinds will grow along both sides of the river, the leaves of these trees will never turn brown and fall, and there will always be fruit on their branches." (Revelation 22:12) The river mentioned is the River of Life, also referred to in my final inscription, opposite the "hole" in my altered book.

When the flaps covering the final recessed section of the book are opened, it reveals a triptych of hand colored Polaroid transfers of a river scene. The scripture across the page comes from Ezekiel 47, verses 7 and 9, "I was surprised by the sight of many trees growing on both sides of the river... There will be swarms of living things wherever the water of this river flows... life will flourish wherever this water flows." Which explains the fruit trees always fruiting...

river of healing

As part of my working on this project, I find myself pouring over my Visions of Heaven journal. This helps me to remember ideas I've had and things I want to shoot, or things I need to print...

As a photographer, there is always a cache of negatives crying out to be printed, sometimes waiting for the right project, other times just waiting patiently for me to get my sorry behind into the darkroom! I've even made quick copies of what I want to print and paired them with scripture and ideas for this project, but other things have demanded my time first. Other shows booked, deadlines for juried events, classes, you name it. But I digress...




So this is a pair of images that I've decided I need to print up as a diptych, called the River of Healing, based on Ezekiel 47: 7 & 9, "When I returned, I was surprised by the sight on many trees growing on both sides of the river.... There will be swarms of living things wherever the water of this river flows... Life will fourish wherever this water flows." I'm back at Ezekiel's vision of heaven and this is his description of the River of Life that flows from the temple - that same one with the palm trees carved on the door posts.

I live in a town at the confluence of two rivers, the American and the Sacramento, and we can go to the edges of these rivers to enjoy the bounty of life there, especially along the American, where some time ago citizens had the foresight to preserve a large amount of wild space along the river. I've spent a fair amount of time shooting along the American, so it was pretty easy to find appropriately lush and wonderful river images to match with this bit of scripture. I'm fairly certain the final pieces will have the palm trees along the edges, but this gives an idea of how I think it will look when it's done.

(By the way, if you want to see this image or any other larger, just click on it.)

more feasting

Here's an update on Becky's "feasting" work: as you can read in her notes here, she's begun the work on her actual clay piece and has provided an updated sketch. She has an interesting mix of perspectives, actually seeming to look down on the feasting table in Heaven when we're usually looking up, but then showing the table in context of a world map, implying how Heaven will be on the earth. Also note the river rocks in the upper right corner, which I assume allude to the river of life.

In addition, the figure in the foreground truly depicts being separated from God by the flames that block the way, but still allow the figure to see what is being missed - showing the true heartbreak of believers who don't want anyone to miss out. I can't wait to see the final work, with all of it's nuances. If you want to see this image larger (or any of the other images in this blog, for that matter, ) simply click on it!