I never expected to find myself running an art center. While I grew up in a city and enjoyed regular visits to great art museums, when I left home to study at Covenant College, I chose business administration as my major. It wasn’t until marriage took me to Indianapolis and my husband Bill and I became lay leaders of a PCA church plant that my calling changed to the arts.
Our congregation, Redeemer Presbyterian, purchased a historic church complex which allowed the congregation to both grow and host a partner art center. I became an arts administrator. For the past 23 years, I have been working with artists, learning their stories, walking with them in their struggles, and being inspired by their creative resilience.
While my job is to serve emerging artists to grow in their careers, I also help emerging patrons (regular people like me) learn that art is for them too. As an emerging patron myself, I didn’t understand how powerful art was until I saw that it was changing me and my community. I am grateful that God has used art to humble me, give me opportunities to reflect, and grow my faith in the creator God.
This personal journey is what made Russ Ramsey’s “Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart” resonate so deeply with me. When I first read the book, it was by audio during a long car trip. As I began to listen, I felt that Ramsey was writing for the people who attend the art events I host. They are emerging patrons who often feel intimidated by the art world. He welcomed the reader to fall in love with art.
The combination of Ramsey’s warm pastoral tone and personal stories made me trust him and want to learn from him. His skillful retelling of the artists’ own stories kept my attention and turned old favorites into fascinating new friends.
As an arts administrator, I was impressed that the book also met the emerging patrons’ need for practical answers: What do you do when encountering art that you don’t like? How do you start an art collection? What do those symbols (candle, mirror, broken glass, etc.) in a painting actually mean?
But storytelling is what Ramsey does. Through it, Ramsey reminded me why I love art and why I love my work. The Harrison Center, the arts nonprofit I lead, houses 43 studio artists and serves over 400 local creatives annually. Their stories, art, and beauty have strengthened our urban community, educated our youth, loved elderly neighbors, and cast a vision for the future. These artists have also challenged us, requiring diaconate help, counseling, and the support of patrons.
These artists share both pain and beauty with us as they create work. Ramsey gives us context for the suffering artists are prone to experience and reminds us how to respond: “be gentle–it’s a hard world”.
When my bound copy of the book finally arrived, I reread it, especially to drill down into the stories that struck me the first time around, like Artemisia Gentileschi’s. I wanted to understand how she, an 18 year old, had the inner strength to withstand the pain of the thumb screws (the 17th-century torturous version of a lie detector test) in her fight for justice.
I read the Norman Rockwell chapter again slowly, as I had just heard Ruby Bridges speak in Indianapolis and was interested in Rockwell’s departure from The Saturday Evening Post over civil rights issues. Now, rather than viewing him as a popular and sentimental artist, I know Rockwell as a person who changed and wanted his art to tell a true story.
Ramsey’s stories are more than a collection of biographical sketches to help us understand the artists and their context so we can appreciate their art; they mirror our own stories about the complexities we are experiencing today. Artemisia Gentileschi’s story reminds us to stand strong in the face of injustice, and Rockwell’s story gives us hope that we, too, can change and tell a true story. By the time I finished this second read, I was convinced that Ramsey’s book wasn’t just for emerging patrons, but for all of us.
While Ramsey’s love of art is deeply personal, his theological insights make this an important book for Christians to read. Ramsey helps the reader to understand that art is a lens that can reveal truths that are relevant to our daily lives and deepen our understanding of faith, grace, and redemption.
When I apply this lens to my own heart, I can use art as a tool for introspection and spiritual growth. When I apply this lens to my community, it asks me to go deeper in my conversations. Ramsey facilitates this application by providing a discussion guide with thoughtful questions and prompts. He encourages us to process these things by getting close to art. “Art”, he says, “is not to be admired from a distance.”
I was an accidental art administrator. It was the change I saw in myself and in my community that helped me understand the power of art. What if more of our congregations experienced that power? I think that is what Russ Ramsey’s pastoral heart is longing for. Please encourage your churches to purchase this book, organize a community read, and be surprised by how art will change you.
Joanna Taft is executive director of the Harrison Center in Indianapolis, Indiana, and a member of Redeemer Presbyterian Church.