Faith Art Gallery
Behold the Faith Church Art Gallery
New Art Gallery Exhibit:
“Alive Together in Christ -- 75th Anniversary Celebration”
Featuring the Artistry of Thomas Zima
Faith Church is blessed to have many members who are wonderfully creative artists, and a few who are formally educated in their specialty. Tom Zima is one of them! A Faith member since the late ’80s, he holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting from Northern Illinois University and Master of Fine Arts in Sculpture from the University of Colorado, Boulder. Tom has taught at the community college and university levels and over the years has had numerous works featured in various exhibitions, but says he is “most proud of the works that have found a home in private collections.”
For as long as Tom can remember, and maybe even before then, he has made art. “Art is not something that I deliberately set out to do,” Tom explains. “It's in the warp and weft of my fabric. Chances are, if I'm not thinking about what I'm doing, I'm probably making art.”
Tom describes his artistic style as “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.” Keep this description in mind while viewing Tom’s uniquely compelling creations in the Gallery and you’ll quickly understand what he means!
“Alive Together in Christ -- 75th Anniversary Celebration” is Tom’s third exhibit in the Faith Art Gallery. The exhibit will run from May 22-July 31. You won’t want to miss it!
Following, in Tom’s own words, are the inspiration and ideas that motivated his exhibit in celebration of Faith’s 75th Anniversary. Enjoy!
The church is not a building. The church is not a steeple. The church is not a resting place…
The church is a living organism. It grows, it breathes, it moves, it creates, it drinks a lot of coffee.
And it ages. Faith is 75 years old. Old for a person, young for a tree, blink of an eye for a mountain, even less than a whim for God. And yet, God is here every minute. Every step. He’s cheering us on. He leads us. He laughs with us and cries with us.
As I considered creating works for our 75th anniversary celebration – Alive Together in Christ - images of living things kept running through my brain. I saw farms primarily.
Mark 4: 3 - 8
I saw people in fields; planting, sowing, cultivating, reaping, harvesting. So many parables involve farmers. I saw Thomas Hart Benton in my head and I started putting them down on paper. What appealed most about Benton‘s paintings is that all of them are figure groupings. They present groups of people working together. Not everyone is doing the same task, but all of them are contributing their talents, skills and labor toward a common goal.
1 Corinthians 12: 13
I see the fabric of life very much like collage. Things that seem radically different; sourced from different places, made of different materials, different in colors, shapes, textures and sizes - different focus and different definition - all coming together in a quilt that is the story of our daily lives.
Stained glass works much the same way; unique fragments arranged to make a beautiful whole. I wanted the works to have a depth in time, in theme, in emotion, generationally. And together they tell one great story.
The show is not an archive or an album. I don’t know how I could adequately describe 75 years of this Congregation. We have a mission statement, and in 1,000 words I could not craft anything that says it better. But in a dozen images, I can celebrate the one word that means the mission of the church to me—Community.
“Alive Together in Christ -- 75th Anniversary Celebration”
Featuring the Artistry of Thomas Zima
Faith Church is blessed to have many members who are wonderfully creative artists, and a few who are formally educated in their specialty. Tom Zima is one of them! A Faith member since the late ’80s, he holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting from Northern Illinois University and Master of Fine Arts in Sculpture from the University of Colorado, Boulder. Tom has taught at the community college and university levels and over the years has had numerous works featured in various exhibitions, but says he is “most proud of the works that have found a home in private collections.”
For as long as Tom can remember, and maybe even before then, he has made art. “Art is not something that I deliberately set out to do,” Tom explains. “It's in the warp and weft of my fabric. Chances are, if I'm not thinking about what I'm doing, I'm probably making art.”
Tom describes his artistic style as “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.” Keep this description in mind while viewing Tom’s uniquely compelling creations in the Gallery and you’ll quickly understand what he means!
“Alive Together in Christ -- 75th Anniversary Celebration” is Tom’s third exhibit in the Faith Art Gallery. The exhibit will run from May 22-July 31. You won’t want to miss it!
Following, in Tom’s own words, are the inspiration and ideas that motivated his exhibit in celebration of Faith’s 75th Anniversary. Enjoy!
The church is not a building. The church is not a steeple. The church is not a resting place…
The church is a living organism. It grows, it breathes, it moves, it creates, it drinks a lot of coffee.
And it ages. Faith is 75 years old. Old for a person, young for a tree, blink of an eye for a mountain, even less than a whim for God. And yet, God is here every minute. Every step. He’s cheering us on. He leads us. He laughs with us and cries with us.
As I considered creating works for our 75th anniversary celebration – Alive Together in Christ - images of living things kept running through my brain. I saw farms primarily.
Mark 4: 3 - 8
I saw people in fields; planting, sowing, cultivating, reaping, harvesting. So many parables involve farmers. I saw Thomas Hart Benton in my head and I started putting them down on paper. What appealed most about Benton‘s paintings is that all of them are figure groupings. They present groups of people working together. Not everyone is doing the same task, but all of them are contributing their talents, skills and labor toward a common goal.
1 Corinthians 12: 13
I see the fabric of life very much like collage. Things that seem radically different; sourced from different places, made of different materials, different in colors, shapes, textures and sizes - different focus and different definition - all coming together in a quilt that is the story of our daily lives.
Stained glass works much the same way; unique fragments arranged to make a beautiful whole. I wanted the works to have a depth in time, in theme, in emotion, generationally. And together they tell one great story.
The show is not an archive or an album. I don’t know how I could adequately describe 75 years of this Congregation. We have a mission statement, and in 1,000 words I could not craft anything that says it better. But in a dozen images, I can celebrate the one word that means the mission of the church to me—Community.