ArtServe conference: Christ be our light!

Mark Lewis is among the contributors to this year's ArtServe annual weekend conference, which this year is entitled 'Christ be our light!'  The weekend runs from Friday 23rd to Sunday 25th November 2012 at High Leigh, Hoddesdon, Herts, EN11 8SG.

This creative, participative event will reveal all sorts of gifts and insights we can use to witness to God’s active presence in our worship through different media and experiment. The emphasis is on the present and real – recognising all that we have around us. We will examine the opportunities and challenges revealed, along with the possibilities and tensions in the relationship between art and faith, between creativity and the church’s worship. Highlights of the weekend include:

• Lantern Theatre Company’s performance of their challenging drama Key Witness, ordinary people who saw extraordinary things
• Pat Livingstone’s insights and experience as a composer and musician for the Iona Community
• Michaela Youngson revealing the mysterious beauty of colours and textures fused in glass.
• Worshipping together and enjoying excellent hospitality and good company!

From the Darkness and Colin Burns

From the Darkness ... light in contemporary art is a Brighton Festival Fringe exhibition (1 May – 23 May 2010) at Little St Peter's Church, Preston Park, Brighton.

The curator of the exhibition is Nathaniel Hepburn, from Mascalls Gallery in Paddock Wood, West Kent. ‘From the Darkness’ is one of a series of exhibitions from Brighton to Canterbury including works by major international artists including Graham Sutherland, Stanley Spencer, Marc Chagall and Maggi Hambling.

Works of all media which engage with light are to be exhibited in the beautiful setting of this 13th century church, including Illumined Way by Colin Burns.

Colin writes that journeying into the unknown, a sense of adventure and discovery, hinting that there may be something more beyond the physical world than we can see, are all themes that he explores in his work. He does this through the depiction of landscape, where there may be a path leading into the distance which symbolises the idea of journey or there may be light coming from an unseen source drawing the viewer in almost as if entering a hidden, unseen world.