Artwork to Celebrate a One Year Anniversary

Well my friends, it has officially been a full year since I returned home from the race. It was not the year any of us expected, but as the listening prayer taped to my wall reminds me, “Embrace the season of life you’re in. God wastes nothing.” (thanks Katie Hammond for your listening prayer art. It’s been a huge reminder through these very uncertain times). 

Anyways for this auspicious one year anniversary, I’m excited to share with you-  *drumroll please* 

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My adopt-a-box supporter art. 

 

*jazz hands* 

 

Maybe you thought I forgot about it. MAYBE you forgot about it yourself! 

Maybe I underestimated the amount of time it would take me to make 11 pieces of art about my trip and about what each month meant to me. 

Nevertheless, I have been working away and I am excited to finally share the art and the thoughts and stories behind it. 

 

(If you’ve been following along on instagram you may have already seen many of these but I’ll also link to relevant blogs and things if you are interested in reading deeper into each story) 

 

As promised, I will be doing a random drawing from those who purchased boxes for my adopt-a-box fundraiser so each of these pieces will end up with one of my supporters. But I would like to thank each and every one of you who supported me in prayer, financially, and emotionally. Thank you all for reading my blogs and being a part of all the amazing things that God had in store for this trip. May this little digital gallery serve as a delight and an encouragement to you. 

Now without further ado, here is some art that captures some feelings, moments, and stories from my trip. 

Côte d’ Ivoire (Month 1)

This is a drawing of a cow we saw on a 8(ish) mile prayer walk (from one side of the village to the other, and back). The collaged paper is from a loose notebook page I found on the ground near our host home. There was a school nearby so I would find discarded pages from the kids notebooks. I was fascinated to see their doodles and school notes (even though most of the notes were in French). We got to go and talk at the school, sharing encouragement and answering questions the kids had. I fell in love with the kids a little every time we visited a school (which we did often in lots of countries). The little scraps of paper I found along the road in Cote d’ Ivoire with stick figures and math problems and messy 5th grader handwriting reminded me of my own school and childhood and the fact that students all over the world have so much in common.

If you’d like a refresher on more details from month 1 you can find it here. (Again I’m gonna try and post any relevant blogs for each piece in case you want more info but don’t feel obligated to read them) 

 

Oh, also here is the herd of cows we ran into on our prayer walk. It was so weird. They were all heading down the road together; no one was directing them, but they certainly seemed to know where they were going. 

 

Ghana (Month 2)

While we were in Ghana the Lord started talking to me about my role in his kingdom as a maker. This was overwhelmingly sweet and beautiful for me since I had been looking at the race as a time during which I would need to set aside my passion for art and making (more on that here and here). One day we were having a little worship time outside and I started braiding a piece of grass. That sparked an idea and I started thinking about prayer-soaked objects. As an exploration of this concept, my supporter art piece for month 2 is this little sculpture, which I have covered (literally) in prayer (that dense overlapping writing you see). I also prayed over the sculpture through my entire experience of making it.

Materials: Pine, sharpie, ballpoint pen, fabric, thread. 

Here is the original braided piece of grass and a couple of my journal pages from Ghana. 

As mentioned in my possibly hard-to-read handwriting, Acts 19:11-12 says: “And God was doing extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul, so that even handkerchiefs or aprons that had touched his skin were carried to the sick, and their diseases left them and evil spirits came out of them.” 

Before you brush this off as one of those crazy miracles that only happens in the Bible, I would like to share with you something one of our coaches said often: “The miracles in the Bible are the least we can expect from God.” This sounds like a bold claim, but consider this- we have the same Holy Spirit that was sent to the disciples nearly 2000 years ago. We know God is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow (Hebrews 13:8, Malachi 3:6, Revelation 1:8) so to, must be the Spirit. Why would God’s power be any less evident now than it was then? During my trip I got to see God’s hand in some miraculous ways (here are a few I wrote about: Cote d’ Ivoire, Togo, Indonesia, Bolivia, Peru). But I also think many Christians today are afraid to ask God for miracles and may be afraid to believe that they are even possible. We should be bold in prayer; asking the Spirit to be present with us in fresh and powerful ways.  

 

Togo (Month 3)

Okay so this one is more from Ghana than from Togo, but I’m counting it as my month 3 piece because I actually finished stitching it the very last night of our time in Lomé, Togo. On/before travel days I often was the last to bed and the first up (just packing, getting everything situated, whatever.) I guess that’s just a me thing. This particular time I was up, sitting in the little bathroom attached to the room we were staying in so that I could have the light on and not wake up my teammates. I had been carrying around this little book ever since I had used it as a demo book to teach our host’s girls book making the previous month (you can read the full story here. It’s a good one). I hadn’t gotten around to finishing sewing it up but I told myself I HAD to finish before we left Africa. The fabric and all the materials are from Ghana but this little book transports me back to midnight in our room in the little bible college in Lomé, and of the tiny little bathroom so small that my knees touched the wall if I was sitting on the toilet. It reminds me of the feeling of putting the final stitches on our time spent on one continent, feeling the nostalgia of something ending while at the same time the excitement of what’s to come.  

Hand bound book, fabric from Ghana, pages made with paper from the sketchbook I bought to plan for the mural (links in the previous section), daisy chain stitch. The book is small- about 3 inches by 2.5.  

 

Thailand (Month 4)

This pair of earrings was about the closest I could get to a physical embodiment of our time in Bangkok, Thailand. These three colors feel like they sum up the aesthetic of the red roofed temples and yellow carnations. 

Thailand was absolutely beautiful. It’s my go-to answer when people ask me point blank what my favorite country was. The food was delicious, the people were kind and welcoming, and our hostel was lovely and right by the river. I don’t think I can fully explain why these earrings speak so strongly of Thailand for me. I think there is a sense of playful decadence. It’s a country full of bright colors and exactly this kind of tassel thing adorning both homes and public spaces. 

Here are a few pictures:

A cat napping at a temple.  

 

The courtyard of our hostel. 

 

The river/canal that we could see from the balcony.

None of these pictures are exactly what I’m talking about, but hopefully they’ll give you a feel for the place in general. 

 

Malaysia (Month 5) 

When we were in Penang, Malaysia we spent a lot of time at the Penang House of Prayer (link). We would go for prayer burns and worship nights, carving out space to pray and sit in the presence of the Lord. Being there truly was a refuge. It’s such a fantastic place to worship and soak in the presence of God and pray. During those nights the sense of peace that washed over me was unrivaled. One of the really great things about Penhop was the way the room is set up. There are different walls and sections: a place in the back for communion, a wall with a map of the world and prayer requests for different nations, a wall of sticky notes where people have written personal requests for themselves and friends, and a little art cabinet and table with paper and paints and such. I got some paper and a good pen and did some drawings without thinking too hard about it. This was one of them. The verse is Psalm 16:6

Also note this is not actually the original. At the end of the race I went through all the papers and notes I had been carrying around and I gave a drawing or collage or something to each of my squadmates, so the original is with one of them. 

 

Indonesia (Month 6) 

When we were in Indonesia we worked at a place called Sobat YKAKI which is a children’s cancer center in Makassar (located in South Sulawesi). We would play with the kids and sit with them to read and draw or whatever they liked. They loved origami & I taught them how to make these little paper stars. Often as I sat with the girls and folded paper stars I would write prayers on the strip of paper before I folded it up. Sometimes I think of these prayer stars that I left with the kids in Indonesia. God continues to use our prayers long after we’ve prayed them. Working with such sick kids was completely heartbreaking, but they also had so much joy and getting to meet them all was such a blessing. Here is the blog I wrote about our time with these kids. 

Again like I said, it’s a little heartbreaking; but it’s also so beautiful. 

 

If you would like to know how to make the paper stars, you can find that here.

 

Okay I think I’m gonna make this a two- parter so that this doesn’t become the most unreasonably long blog post. Keep an eye out the final four from South America (which I will be posting shortly). Again thank you all so much for your love and support and for coming along with me on this journey. You are fantastic. 

 

Much Love and God Bless, 

Hattie