Art in Community among the Poor

This was created over a few months of learning about facial features, drawing and painting them together. Finally we put it all together and then made the sound track with the help of Ferenkeh Tarawally who has been visiting from from Sierra Leonne. He gave me a few Djimbe lessons while he was with us. The text was adapted from a piece written by David Chronic on working with children with varying degrees of attachment disorder.

(text read in animation)

The Face

baby puts everything in her mouth

ingesting her external environment

making it a part of herself.

a drawn face is moved

up and down in front of her

she smiles back.

the Face is the primal prototype

of religious experience

at around six months

the child becomes aware

that the face is not

constantly present.

the Face in whose Presence

each person was created

is that which constantly seeks us (Luke 19:10).

In His incarnation,

the Son has shown us

the Face of God.

"And all of us with unveiled faces,

seeing the glory of the Lord

as though reflected in a mirror,

are being transformed into the same image

from one degree of glory

to another; For it is God who said,

‘Let light shine out of darkness,’

who has shone in our hearts

to give the light of the knowledge

of the glory of God in the face of Christ.(2 Corinthians 3:17-18)

the Face that finds us and liberates us

will never leave or abandon us (Hebrews 13:5).

We no longer find identity

in opposition to others,

now identity is in relationship to the Son,

By responding, the Triune God becomes our primary attachment.

constant loneliness is dissolved in His Face

to whom we belong and correspond. (pause)

As community we come together as a sign

that our cosmic loneliness has found the constant presence of the Face.

As community, we invite people into the Spirit of God

to hear the affirmation of the Father,

and we together incarnate a “face” of consistency,

fidelity, love, and limits, finding together the Face of God.