wfn.org | Artist’s sketchbook brings fresh perspective

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Note #5954 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

GA00009
June 24, 2000

	Artist’s sketchbook brings fresh
  perspective to General Assembly proceedings

              by Emily Enders Odom

LONG BEACH, June 24 – Becky Bane is a woman after John Calvin’s own heart. 
The May graduate of San Francisco Theological Seminary (SFTS) speaks with
great fervor of her deep commitment to Presbyterian process and the Reformed
tradition, all while exercising her unbridled passion for the visual arts. 
Inspired in part by the great Reformer, whose appreciation for music, dance
and the fine arts is well documented, Bane is using her own considerable
artistic gifts to shed new light on the spiritual and human dimensions that
are ever active beneath the surface of these General Assembly Proceedings. 
She has been given the opportunity this year by Dr. Jack Rogers, whose
course at SFTS entitled, “Presbyterianism: Principles and Practice,”seized
her imagination in Ft. Worth last year,  to create a visual portrait of the
Assembly through her carefully detailed and heartfelt sketches.

	 “It’s a dream come true,” said Bane of her role this year at the 212th
General Assembly.  “I love the process.  I love to visually document it with
my sketches.”  Indeed Bane’s artwork is already in evidence on a special
website she has designed and is continually updating for the Assembly.  Bane
enjoys the ongoing dialogue between what she designates “low-tech” and
“high-tech” artistic pursuits.

	“I get to do both,” observed Bane, “the low-tech sitting with my sketchbook
and pencils, and the high-tech design of a website.”  Her “Sketches from the
212th General Assembly Course ‘Presbyterianism: Principles and Practice,’”
is the first link listed on the SFTS homepage at www.sftssc.edu

	The gentle, soft-spoken Bane, who is seeking God’s call to a specialized
ministry utilizing her God-given talents in conversation with her
theological expertise, names Sasha Makovkin, the noted evangelist who
preaches while throwing pots, as another source of inspiration.  Like
Makovkin, Bane travels extensively by invitation, engaging in a “visual
proclamation of the Word” as she does interpretive painting on a 7x8 foot
screen during worship.  She was conference artist and designed the logo for
the Association of Presbyterian Christian Educators conference earlier this
year.

	Bane’s model as she pursues her unique vocation is that of the
“compassionate observer,” which, according to Native American tradition, is
a person who is both participant and observer in a group, allowing her to be
unobtrusive as she “tries to capture the visual, but also the feeling” of a
gathering.  Bane also believes that “everyone has the capability of being an
artist and to learn from that whole process, if they keep the material
simple and the process simple, so that they’re not intimidated by it.”  A
fine formula  indeed for approaching and appreciating the work of a General
Assembly.

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