A team art project

In April, I had the privilege of coming up with a creative team building project for the BIC U.S. World Missions office staff of which I am a part.

“A church for every people;
The gospel to every person;
A mission from every church;
Jesus worshipped in the nations.”

BIC U.S. World Missions vision
Every hand tells part of a story. The more I look at it, the more grateful I am to work with each of these individuals who bring their unique personalities, interesting life stories, gifts, and strengths to the table and God moves and works among us to accomplish his purposes through us. So grateful.
Each team member traced their hand on copy paper, decorated it with black marker and watercolor, and cut it out.
The globe is made from layered Bible pages (from a very large, discarded pulpit Bible) intentionally chosen to include passages about our call to make disciples, “white-washed” with white acrylic paint, and then watercolored. [The frame is ironwood from Indonesia donated by a teammate, the “canvas” is stitched-together, natural colored duck cloth curtains, and the paint is acrylic. I am pretty committed to using what we have on hand.]
How big did the globe need to be in relation to our arms/hands and the dimensions of the canvas, and how big did the white area of the galaxy need to be? Those were some of the consuming questions along the way.
I got overwhelmed with trying to figure out digital lettering placement and so I jumped in with a piece of chalk and a vague idea of what it should look like, and hand-lettered it on the fly.
Each person temporarily put their completed hand on the canvas. To see them all together is the most powerful part. It’s a colorful visual of the uniqueness that is part of the team as a whole.
The border was taped to create a lettering baseline and the vision statement was chalked in
Hand-lettered with Sharpie paint pen. Somehow the bottom line was the most difficult.
Next step: re-taping the baseline to create an inner border on which to line up the tops of the hands/arms.
The hands were sealed with a spray sealer, re-layered onto their final resting position, cut off to match the baseline and mod-podged onto the canvas.

When each member brings their unique individuality to the team and to the work we do together, it’s a very beautiful thing.