Ministry Call
Resumé
Other Materials:
Church Service
Creative Pilgrimage
The Shape of Content
by Ben Shahn
Purchase from Harvard University Press
Beholding: Deepening Our Experience in God
by Strahan Coleman
Available at David C. Cook
Holy Ghost, Printed Form
My August practice, late on purpose
I am on a year-long Creative Pilgrimage, finding ways to weld my creativity, faith, and ethos into a series of contemplative actions, essays, and artworks. For August, I read 1 Samuel, Ben Shahn’s The Shape of Content, and Strahan Coleman’s Beholding.
I’m behind—not because I lost the plot, but because August made me earn it. The Season after Pentecost is slow growth: roots, not fireworks. These readings did not want hot takes; they wanted silence, trial runs, and honest materials. I took the time, missed my own deadline, and then the workshop arrived in a single flash that finally pulled the threads together. I sat up in bed a few weeks ago, wide-eyed at the snap of inspiration, and here we are.
I’m calling the workshop Holy Ghost, Printed Form, and I’ll teach it for the first time in October 2025, then fold it into my Creativity Care offerings.
Origin story, no romance
I didn’t have this class in my back pocket; it emerged while I was reading and grasping for a form that could hold what the texts were asking of me. Milk and soup cartons, a knife, black ink, chine collé for mercy—it clicked all at once when I realized I could help people express those moments brushed by the divine. Blind embossing for the mystery sealed it. Blind embossing, simply put, is pressing a design so it rises from the paper—no ink or color, just clean, crisp texture.Between now and October, I’m building a body of prints in this vein so I walk in prepared and honest. If you want to work with me as an art instructor, reach out; I teach online and in person.
If you want to work with me as an art instructor, reach out! I teach online and in-person!
Reach out about classes
Reach out about classes
Why this workshop answers the reading
Holy Ghost, Printed Form is intentionally simple. Discarded cartons become hand-wrought plates. We score and peel lines, ink in black, print on a small press or an adapted pasta maker, and add selective color with chine collé. We also pull uninked plates for blind embossing—what you can see in relief but cannot read in ink. Nothing fancy; all intent. The form grew out of the content, not the other way around.
1 Samuel: choose what fits, not what shines
1 Samuel is a study in discernment. Samuel learns to answer a voice in the night. David refuses Saul’s armor because it doesn’t fit and wins with a sling. God looks at the heart, not the costume. That’s the studio rule here: no parade armor. La sincérité est préferrable å la technique1.
A discarded carton, a blade, pressure, and attention are enough. Printed areas hold the facts of a lived moment; blind embossing stands for a presence that can’t be pictured yet is undeniable; chine collé is the small true color you actually remember. The print functions like an Ebenezer—paper set up as a stone of help. I was helped. Here is the record. (In 1 Samuel 7:12, Samuel sets up a memorial stone named “Ebenezer,” or “stone of help,” to mark God’s aid, so “raising an Ebenezer” now means creating a tangible reminder of help received.)
Ben Shahn: let content shape form
Shahn is blunt about this: technique should answer meaning. Start with lived content or you’re decorating. Carton intaglio enforces that discipline. Every scored line is your hand, not a plug-in. Your wipe decides what stays, what softens, and what gets scraped back. If the moment is grief, you burnish and quiet the surface; if it is relief, you cut wider channels and let the ink pool. Chine collé goes where the light truly was, not where you wish it had been.
Strahan Coleman: behold, don’t perform
Coleman pushes against our compulsion to produce. Beholding is disciplined attention. Printmaking demands that pace; rush and you cut your hand, misregister the paper, and ruin the pull. Blind embossing becomes built-in practice: print what cannot be seen, then look for presence without forcing it. We’ll end with a group conversation where we share our memorialized moments—naming what we see in each other’s work, what was revealed in our own making, and letting the meaning land.
On running late
This wasn’t stalling; it was steeping. The texts slowed me down until a workable form appeared. The “flash” was only possible because the ground had been tilled. I’m fine with the optics of lateness if the output has legs, and this class does. It is repeatable, affordable, and teachable. It respects money, materials, and nerves. It welcomes beginners and still challenges experienced practitioners—I plan to hold myself to its lessons again and again.
Why now, and what’s next
Pentecost’s long green season calls for plants, not spectacles. A low-cost print process belongs here, one that works as a solo practice or a group project. A teen with an X-Acto can plate; an elder with steady hands can wipe and pull; three hours can turn strangers into a small guild. People leave with prints and a practice: begin with content, choose only the techniques that serve it, and give the work time to be seen.
Between now and October 2025, I’ll build a series of prints under the same constraints—black for clarity, chine collé for mercy, embossing for the unseen. No boutique tools. No armor that doesn’t fit. When the class meets, I’ll be teaching from inside the work, not at the edge of it.
What I hope people carry out
I want each participant to leave with a few honest prints—seen and unseen pressed together—and a habit of attention that travels. That braid—Shahn’s integrity, Coleman’s beholding, and 1 Samuel’s discernment—belongs on one sheet of paper. The method arrived suddenly; the groundwork did not. That balance is the lesson I’m taking forward.
Next Month:
SEPTEMBER | Season After Pentecost: Ongoing Growth
For September, we stay with slow, rooted growth by pairing the prophetic sweep of the Book of Isaiah with two companions in attention and wonder—Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and Mary Oliver’s Devotions .- Book of Isaiah
- Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
by Annie Dillard
Read for free on Internet Archive - Devotions
by Mary Oliver
Available at Penguin Random House
1 https://www.riotmaterial.com/walls-speak-art-revolution-may-68/
This phrase is one found on the walls within L’Atelier Populaire, from the 1968 Paris student protests. “For posters, sincerity is preferable to technique”