Surprises Never Cease: You Never Know What God Will Use to Lead You To a New Artistic Expression
By Grace Wiebe - Sept 2005
In the spring of 2003, I was asking God if there was another creative, artistic outlet I could develop, since, although I have been a musician since I was very young, I had become increasingly limited in my ability to continue to play piano, which had been a huge part of my life.
I had developed rheumatoid arthritis in my early teens and over the years have become increasingly restricted due to growing deformities throughout my body, but especially in my hands, fingers and arms (though over the past decade the growing spread of the deformities to my legs and feet have severely disabled my ability to walk and get around, resulting in being almost completely home-bound). I had become basically unable to play piano for the past few years. I also enjoy writing, but since I work at the computer all day for my work, I wanted to do something that would take me away from the computer.
When I asked God about another possible creative outlet, I felt like He said 'sculpture'. I was totally confused because I can hardly draw stick-men, let alone make anything in 3-D!!
So I asked Him to lead me and to confirm this if this was
Him.
I considered the possibility of using soap-stone, which I think is beautiful,
but I didn't see how i could manage that with my crippled hands. I also don't
have the space to work with it, or the finances which would allow for making
mistakes with such costly material.
Other possibilities I considered were using marble or wood, but again, the same problems. I also thought about using clay, but is it so messy and I don't have the amount of room needed for that or the time to mix it, etc. So I kept praying...
Several weeks later, a good friend came over and suggested I try out the modelling clay from a store next door. It was very inexpensive, colorful, soft and I basically had nothing to lose!
I got myself my first few packages of modelling clay and tried making a few things. Unfortunately they all ended up looking like nothing but blobs! I tried and tried for about an hour after supper every night for several weeks. Nothing! Just more blobs!! It was very discouraging. I didn't know what to do as there seemed to be no hope in my ability to 'sculpt' - even with modelling clay, and so I thought I must have heard wrong or misinterpreted what I had thought God had impressed on my heart.
A couple weeks later my niece came over for a weekend. She was 12 at the time and is very artistic. All she wanted to do the entire weekend was make plasticine figurines with all the modelling clay I had around. So that is what we did!
She started making some incredible animals with the plasticine and I was totally amazed at what could be done with inexpensive modelling clay! Her figurines began to inspire me! She then showed me a few tricks and so I had some renewed hope and began to work on developing some more figurines.
But the things I tried to make kept looking like blobs, though there were a bit more sophisticated blobs now that I had a few techniques down.
By the end of the weekend I had one thing that I had made which actually gave me a glimmer of hope that I MIGHT be able to actually eventually make something which I, or others, could actually recognize!
So I decided that I would continue to spend about an hour an evening after supper every night working on it and see what would happen.
I know from many years of piano lessons, both receiving and giving lessons, that gifts are not developed overnight, and take a lot of practice! I decided to give it another good try.
Every night I was working on these figurines, and every night getting more and more discouraged! It just seemed useless...everything still seemed to keep looking like blobs! Any hope I had had was pretty well gone.
So finally I told God that I didn't want to give up on this IF it was from HIM, but I didn't know what else to try, and He and I could both see I was getting NOWHERE!
Finally I just told Him that I would try again the next night, realizing it would HAVE TO BE HIM if anything came of it, but if nothing happened then, I would quit. I didn't know what else to try!
Interestingly, that night I felt that He woke me up with a Scripture on my heart at about 4:30 a.m.!
There was a picture in my head of what a depiction of the passage of Scripture could look like in plasticine! It totally inspired me and I got up immediately, really excited, and went to my couch and got out my basket of plasticine!
As I meditated on the verse and was asking God about how to make various aspects of what I had seen in my head, and what colors to use, I found myself enjoying a new form of worship/fellowship with God that I had not experienced previously in this kind of way!
I felt like we were sitting on the couch together and creating this figurine together as a team effort, and it was such a delight!! (at least for me!! - but I also felt like He was delighted!)
Not only that, I was totally amazed at what came out! I could clearly see what it was!!!! FINALLY!!! To me it was a total miracle! Thank you Jesus!
It seems that God did more than give me a breakthrough! In addition to experiencing His Presence through worshipping Him in a new way, it was like He gave me an art lesson that night! Although I have been developing the art form since then in various ways, I feel like He did a miracle and taught me something in one night that I hadn't been able to learn before that no matter what I tried!
Since then, it is now about 3 years later and I have made close to 400 figurines since then and the ideas keep coming! PTL!!
Several months after this began, I sensed that God was also putting in it on my heart to see this develop into a business, so that has been in the process of developing and has just actually begun to function as a part-time home-business in the past couple of weeks!! (PTL!!!) Much of this supplemental income is intended to cover my on-going major health costs, but another major focus for future profits is to assist various ministries that I’m partnering with in various ways, especially those standing up for social and justice issues, and ministering to the poor, hurting and oppressed.
So far, most of the figurines have been made for friends
and family, which has been and is such a joy to do. God has also used this
time of business development to also help me to think outside the box in terms
of the kinds of creative ways that He can use the arts to reach out into the
marketplace, etc. For example:
+ A
Way For Artists to Encourage and Reach Out to Multicultural (or other) Children
& Their Families -
+ Endless
Opportunities For Artists in the Multicultural Marketplace -
The rest of the figurines are taking every free inch of space my home has had...
The name of the art business is called “EthniClay"
The moral of the story is that if you sense God wanting
you to do something that seems completely impossible, just remember that He
is the God of the Impossible and can teach you things you didn't know how
to do in just one night if that's a part of His plan for you!
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More about my journey
and involvements
Great Commission Worship & Arts Center