Grace Fellowship Church

Timonium, MD

2008-Present

For the past few years, besides playing percussion on the Worship Team at Grace, I’ve been expanding my creative reach at the church beyond the murals in the classrooms to stage set construction. I love to use the talents God gave me to bless others! Creative Director for the church, Shawn Slater and the Executive Pastors decide on a theme for the set and hand it over to Cary Lyon, Tom Hayden and myself to execute. Cary & Tom are the builders and I am the artist, along with a core group of high school volunteers from the congregation.

Christmas 2017-2018

Represented here is the Manger set which has been used for every Christmas service since with some added animals and more hay, etc. This year they tried two sheep, two camels, and a donkey.

Easter 2017

We attempted some rock formations for service one year using frames and paper mache. My volunteers Jacob Seese, Owen Goffigon and Zoe Kumpf worked hard on this piece in extremely cramped spaces. Next time we do this I want to try EPS foam in a larger shop.

But we had fun regardless!

Instead of painting it browns and tans to resemble real rock, which was the original plan, we kept it white so that the lighting effects and colors would be seen at their fullest measure.

The best thing about this set was the round “Rock” that literally rolled away to reveal the tomb within. At the moment of climax we had light pouring out from the tomb, heavy stone moving sound effects, epic, triumphant music blasting…it was spectacular!

Gave me goosebumps. Wish I had gotten a video.

Easter 2015

One year a while back I was asked to create some sort of live painting demonstration. I ended up doing something I’ve never done before! Coating a 12 foot canvas in Glow-In-The-Dark paint and using a high powered flashlight to “draw” on the surface. The light activates the glow for a few minutes and then starts to fade. It was an interesting effect and something I would like to experiment with again.