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Faith + Creativity

  • Faith + Creativity

    Grace in the Pivot: The Plan is not Your Calling

    What a prison art exhibit taught me about creativity, faithfulness, and responding to unexpected change. The lights were off as we installed art in the prison. Not metaphorically. Literally. Amy and I had arrived the prison’s visitation room to set up our fourth art exhibit for incarcerated artists we’ve been teaching for the past two […]
    Jessie Nilo
  • Faith + Creativity

    Are You Ready?

    Are you ready? Here at God Loves Art, we see how God uses creativity to heal, serve, and inspire. Are you ready to see Him work through art like that in your own life? What about the lives of those around you? You may be like many others and not even realize that Art Ministry […]
    God Loves Art
  • Faith + Creativity

    Because He First Loved Us

    I’m an artist who works in the medium of people… and I’ve learned a few things. If the church loves artists—in all their glorious mess—artists will find hope & healing. Pictured in the frame is Alyee. When I met her 5 years ago, she was struggling for life and abandoned by her family. We became her family. With love […]
    Jessie Nilo
  • Faith + Creativity

    Time To Create

    This is my first blog post without my friend Mark Kessler in the world. He was 48. I remember he tried to teach me how to blog in 2007, at a workshop with 4 students. I think I was just learning the word “blog,” while Mark was running several websites like a breeze and was excited […]
    Jessie Nilo
  • Faith + Creativity

    Sun Stand Still

    Mike-Freeman-Sun-Stand-Still The-Passion-of-Mike Mike-Resulting-in-Wonder Artistic friend, meet Pastor Mike. You’ll like him. I’ve observed that our artists gravitate to Mike Freeman just as readily as paint clings to fingers. Mike is a pastor who understands your daily struggles, listens well, asks questions about your work, delights in all beauty everywhere, and maintains constant curiosity and wonder […]
    Jessie Nilo
  • Faith + Creativity

    What’s Your Job Description?

    Re-reading my previous post, “The Night Hardly Anyone Came to the Art Studio,” got me thinking about how God moves in our everyday places of work. Our pastor, Trevor Estes, defines work in the following way:Your job description is neither an “area” nor what you “do” (such as office work, or counseling, or health care, […]
    Jessie Nilo
  • Faith + Creativity

    The Sun-Dog

    I was enjoying Open Studio in the late afternoon with several friends. Golden sunlight flooded in through the windows, saturating our art tables as we worked. I could have moved to a different table with no direct sunlight, but the glow was too lovely to leave. My cell phone rang. It was my friend Angelia, […]
    Jessie Nilo
  • Faith + Creativity

    Worth Sharing

    My ideas seem so dull and so obvious to me– they don’t really seem worth sharing– but it never fails: Whenever I share those same ideas with another artist, sparks fly, tears flow, ideas are born, and God is glorified. Why is that? Do you know that the greatest danger to you as an artist […]
    Jessie Nilo

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