Jumpstart your creativity on Wednesday, January 11, 6:30-8:00 or 8:30pm.
Try a workshop in visual arts, devotional poetry writing, or worship song writing.
RSVP below.
Devotional Poetry Writing
Discover how to enrich your devotional life by writing poetry. You’ll learn new tools and practices for engaging with Scripture by penning your own poetry. This workshop will include hands-on writing time, as well as the opportunity for small group sharing and mutual encouragement. Minimum age: high school. This workshop concludes at 8:30pm.
Facilitator: Andrew S. Backer 
enjoys writing poetry devotionally and finds it a place to witness the beauty of the Lord and respond in worship. He is currently pursuing a Masters in Higher Education and Student Development at Wheaton College.
Assistant Facilitator: Helen Wieger enjoys creative writing and has been nurturing a group of creatives for the last several years. She leans toward penning poetry and creative prose.
Visual Arts
Janice Skivington Wood is a painter, illustrator,
and former art teacher. She has collaborated with various artists to develop liturgical art that adorns Resurrection, including the large Jesus icon, the great doors, paintings depicting Old Testament scenes in the narthex, and more.
Emily Verdoorn uses anything from 
pen and pencil to teabags, inks, thread, or homemade dyes to explore the world of her everyday life. Her work often begins like a quiet conversation with places, spaces and the natural world.
Worship Song-Writing
Visual artists and poets at Resurrection are invited to contribute to the new RezArts Gallery, a wall dedicated to rotating exhibits of original work.
The Space
The RezArts Gallery is located on the West wall in RezCafe, spanning 14 feet high and 40 feet long. On Sunday mornings, RezCafe is packed between services with churchgoers socializing over hot coffee and tea. Throughout the week, middle and high school students fellowship here, children’s classes gather, and others meet in the window-lined space. This bustling area will be enhanced by rotating exhibits by Rez artists on the Gallery wall.
The dimensions of our Gallery limit our ability to display dozens of pieces. Artwork may be displayed in a total of six to eight columns of two rows each, depending on the size of pieces in each exhibit.
Gallery Vision
To encourage, teach, and inform the Church through original artwork.
To provide a space for artists at Rez to communicate pieces that lead our congregation and visitors to worship and contemplate.
To provide talks in the future with visiting artists that offer opportunities for engagement and discussion with our congregation and others about art and worldview.
Gallery Goals
Offer rotating exhibits year-round with opportunities for submission from artists within the church.
Exhibit themes focus largely on the liturgical season: Advent/Epiphany, Easter, Ordinary Time.
Supplement the church-wide RezArts Festival (Nov-Jan) to encourage year-round creative expression within the congregation.
An Experimental Process
The RezArts Gallery is in an experimental phase and is a learning process for those overseeing curation and display. Due to our first-time use of the RezCafe wall with new hanging hardware, we do not yet know what fits and works well. Acceptance of a submission will be based on its reflection of the theme, plus multiple factors, including the limited space, how each piece coordinates with other art submissions, and its ability to be displayed with the new wall hardware. Artists should be aware that acceptance or non-acceptance of submissions for exhibit depends on these various factors, and not particular standards of artistic excellence for an individual piece.
Join us on Friday, June 27, 6:30-8:30pm, in RezCafe for a gallery reception and an opportunity to learn from renowned local artist and painter Joel Sheesley. Enjoy live music by harpist Hannah Muzzy and light refreshments. Invite your friends!
Joel will speak about what he has learned as he has painted landscapes in DuPage County and the surrounding area. In this illustrated talk he will offer a brief history of his artistic journey to the landscape as subject. He will discuss his painting methods, his conceptual understanding of landscape painting, and his sense of the value and meaning landscape painting offers to viewers.
Joel Sheesley is a painter whose fifty-year artistic path has embraced a variety of genres. About ten years ago he turned toward landscape painting and has been captivated by it ever since. Sheesley is professor emeritus at Wheaton College where he taught painting for 42 years. He has exhibited his work locally and nationally in galleries and museums. He recently completed artistic residencies with The Conservation Foundation, the Edith Farnsworth House, The Forest Preserve District of DuPage, and the Shirley Heinze Land Trust. Joel Sheesley’s studio and home are in Wheaton where he lives with his wife Joan.
Artist Statement:
Inherent in the idea of “landscape” is that land, an unbounded phenomenon, can be delimited. It can be sampled in discreet segments and pictured. That picturing can take many forms (I know a biologist who is a “landscape ecologist”). I’m working within the tradition of landscape painting because the picture of land that painting produces presupposes a sympathetic relationship between land and people, between a body of land and the hand of the artist. From time to time that sympathy has followed misguided paths, but the truth that people and land are interconnected remains. Whether we are aware of it or not, we all live in relation to a landscape. If in our present circumstances we begin to lose track of that relationship, painted landscapes may play a part in its restoration.
Come for the Gallery Reception, 6:30-8:30pm, on Friday, June 27. The Artist Talk will be held at 7:15pm.
Enjoy live music by harpist Hannah Muzzy from 6:30-7:15pm.
Invite your friends!
The exhibit will remain on display from June 8 to July 31 in RezCafe.
Holy Week poetry 2025
As God created the heavens and the earth and all that is in them, God again and again looked at his creation and said “It is good.”
We live in a fallen world, a world in which all creation groans in expectation for redemption. Yet in that fallenness, there is still so much goodness. We invite you to notice that goodness, which God himself delights in, and join him in that delight. As a visual artist or a writer, you may want to express your delight in creation, explore goodness you rarely notice, or ponder what that goodness looks like in the midst of intense darkness and suffering.
For this upcoming gallery exhibit, we invite you to engage with the reality of God’s creation around you. You may engage with this topic in many ways. If you are stuck, consider some of the ideas below!
- Engage in plein-air painting or drawing. Bring your art supplies outside—to your yard or a park or on vacation—and paint what you see.
- Create a visual art piece with items gathered from creation. This could be a collage, a painting created with pigments you extract from plants, a wood carving, or shaped clay (for 3-dimensional art, make sure it is light and small enough to be displayed in a frame on the gallery wall).
- Ask the Lord to open your eyes to the goodness of his creation in places you don’t usually notice. For one day, carry a notebook and jot down what you observe: perhaps your friend’s face as she laughs or a dandelion in the parking lot or the feel of sunlight on your arms. Write a psalm of praise to God for these things (see Psalms 8, 104, and 148 as examples).
Read and reread some of the rich tradition of poetry about creation. Consider “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” by William Wordsworth, “The Lily” by Mary Oliver, or “Pied Beauty” by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Note the vivid, concrete language the poets use. With these as an inspiration, write a poem about an aspect of creation you encounter.
Guidelines
Contributors must be regular attendees of Resurrection within the last 3 months. Works submitted must have been created in 2024 or 2025.
Limit one submission per person. Submissions will be accepted starting July 1.
Each poem must be submitted online via a Word document. Please title your poem at the top and include your name under the title. Include a) a bio of 1-2 sentences written in the 3rd person and b) a description of 150 words or less explaining your work, your creative process, and what you hope to convey to the reader. Optionally, you may include your social media handle(s) and/or website.
Poems must fit on one 8.5×11” paper in at least 14-point font, allowing for 1 inch margins all around.
If you choose to frame your poem, black, light weight frames with acrylic, not glass, are recommended. We have a limited supply of frames available.
Contributors agree to allow Resurrection to publish digital files of poetry both online and/or in print, on its website and/or social media channels, indefinitely with appropriate credit.
Deadline
Poems and photographs of visual art pieces must be submitted online before midnight Central Time on Saturday, August 2, 2025.
All artwork and any framed poems must be delivered to Resurrection by Sunday, August 10, and left in the upstairs copy room. No late submissions will be accepted.
Questions? Email Communications Director DawnJewell@churchrez.org
The exhibit will be on display from mid-August to mid-October.
- Submissions must be original pieces created by the artist/writer within the last five years. Submissions to the Pentecost Wind Exhibit must have been created since September 2019.
- Submissions may be abstract and do not need to be literal representations of the theme.
- Poems must be formatted to fit on a single 8.5×11 page with 12 type, allowing 1 inch margins all around.
- The creator must include his or her name, age (if under 18), title of work, and a short description of 150 words or less about your creative process, how it reflects the theme, and what you hope it conveys. You may include a website and/or social media handle(s) for your artwork.
- Creators must be members or regular attendees of Resurrection within the last three months, at minimum.
- Each person or group may only submit one entry per exhibit. Group submissions are welcome if all individuals are regular attendees or members. An individual may submit one solo entry and participate in one group entry.
- Pieces that include nudity, profanity, graphic violence or otherwise inappropriate content for young children or a family audience will not be considered.
- We prefer visual artwork that does not depict a human representation of God the Father.
- Creators agree to allow the Resurrection to publish digital files of all submissions both online and/or in print, on its website and/or social media channels, indefinitely with appropriate credit.
- Creators grant Resurrection non-exclusive rights to use their submissions in ministry, including but not limited to services, events, public displays, or publications, sites, and programs, without further permission or payment involved, with appropriate credit to the artist(s).
- While we will do our best to care for your submission(s), we cannot guarantee the preservation of your work in its original form. The RezArts Gallery space is a highly visible and trafficked area; please be aware that your work may be touched by passing children or accidentally bumped.
Submissions of original artwork and poetry to the Pentecost Wind Exhibit must be received online by midnight Central Time on Saturday, September 21, 2024, and brought to church between Sunday, Sept 22, 8am-1pm, to Friday, Sept 27. Office hours are Mon-Thurs, 9-4:30pm, and Friday 9am-1pm.
Framing/Mounting: Visual artwork must be created or mounted on a sturdy surface, such as canvas, wood, or metal. Visual artists who choose to frame their work, may consider protecting it with a sheet of acrylic, plexiglass, or glass within the frame. Artwork larger than 16×20″ must be mounted with wire spanning the width of the back for hanging.
Poetry submissions do not need to be framed.
Dimensions: The frame must be at least 8”x10”, although the artwork itself may be as small as 4”x4”. No piece larger than 2’x3′ will be accepted without consultation.
Weight: The maximum weight of any piece must not exceed 25 pounds.
How To Submit
- Poetry must be sent via an individual digital file to dawnjewell@churchrez.org by Friday, March 15. Poets should email both a PDF and Word file of their poetry to dawnjewell@churchrez.org
- If you frame or mount your submission, it must be delivered to Resurrection in person by Sunday, March 17, 12:30pm in order to be considered for the Holy Week Exhibit. Pieces should be left at the building until at least May 19, 12:30pm. You must mount and/or frame your submission for display before dropping off per the framing requirements above.
- Include 200 words or less explaining: a) a short paragraph about your work and creative process, b) a 1-2 sentence bio of yourself, and c) (optional) your social media hand(s) and/or website where you share your creative work. Questions? Email dawnjewell@churchrez.org.
How To Submit
- Each work must be submitted online via an individual digital file. Visual artists should submit a photo(s) of their artwork in PDF, JPG or PNG files. Poets should submit both a PDF and Word file of their poetry. Please title your poem and include your name under the title.
- For submissions of actual photography, only one photo is needed. For any other form of visual art, you may include up to 4 photos of your piece.
- Submissions of visual artwork must be delivered to Resurrection in person by Friday, Sept 27, 1pm in order to be considered for the Pentecost Wind Exhibit. Pieces should be left at the building until late November. If we cannot fit your work on the Gallery wall, we will aim to display it online and notify you to pick up your physical piece sooner. You must mount and/or frame your submission for display before dropping off per the framing requirements above.
- Include a paragraph of 150 words or less explaining: a) your work, b) its size and medium, c) your creative process, d) how your entry reflects the theme in part or whole, and e) optionally your social media handle(s) and/or website.
Questions? Email dawnjewell@churchrez.org.
Submission Form
Please complete one form for each submission.
