This piece was created as an artist in residence feature with Open Way Community Church in Vancovuer BC. 

As I was thinking about what to make, I wanted to try something that I hadn’t tried before and see how it would work. I’ve done the shibori technique of using elastic bands as a dye resist before, but this time I wanted to do that and then re-arrange the bands after dipping in one color so that the first color would mix with the color in the second dip as well as with some of the spots left white.

To me this piece is all about experimentation. I had no idea how it was going to turn out or if it was going to even work, all I could do was follow my gut and my imagination which both told me that this would be an interesting thing to try. As I was reading the passage Beth is preaching on today, one particular sentence stood out to me in connection with my piece. 

"Does this offend you?"

I would assume most people would not be offended by the artistic result I got, perhaps I should not assume that but I will for the sake of what I’m saying haha. But it got me thinking about all the times I have done things for the sake of experimentation, the sake of creativity, and gotten push back on it.

Most of the time, if you try something that people are not familiar with, haven’t seen before, or don’t understand, they react negatively. They can think only of the reasons why it won’t work and they will not hesitate to tell you why because it makes them feel more in control and gives them some sort of authority over the situation.

I’ve always been a creative person, I’ve always been one to ask questions that other people weren’t asking, but so much of that has been stifled over the years because of the negative feedback I received. I learned to silence the questions and curiosity, to assimilate myself into doing things in more widely accepted ways, more conventional ways of thinking.

This has caused me nothing but a diminished ability to be creative. My curiosity and ability to think outside the box are some of my greatest strengths, but it is only now that I am starting to embrace that because I have finally learned that other people’s negative reactions actually don’t matter at all because I have a vision and it is my responsibility to stay true to that vision.

For some reason, Jesus’ questions “does this offend you?” in this passage resonates with this experience for me. Jesus clearly has a vision of something greater that is going on, and in his less than comforting or familiar description of it, he made people uncomfortable.

I honestly have no idea what the heck he is talking about myself, and this reflection is completely separate from any conclusions he is drawing or ideas he is talking about…but something in me just resonated with his question.

As I thought about the piece I could easily imagine how people might turn up their noses at my idea of re-locating elastic band dye resists for a second dip because it’s not something that is typically done, and inside I could feel myself asking in a similar almost cheeky and provocative way “oh…does this offend you?”, knowing full well that I don’t care whether or not it offends them because I know that I’m going to try it anyway. I know that the inevitable gravitational pull of my creativity and curiosity is leading somewhere that they are not able to envision and I’m going to be curious and push past the obvious and see what happens no matter how they respond.