What visual art is spiritually meaningful to you?

We asked the Luther Seminary community to share art that has been spiritually meaningful for them or their church. Here are some of their photos and responses.

Susan Schmalzbauer ’25 M.Div.

I am a licensed local pastor for the United Methodist Church in Missouri. I like to do liturgical art. My first picture is based on the lectionary reading from the Book of Job. The second picture is painting two in a series taken from the liturgy of baptism from the United Methodist Book of Worship. The final is a photo on the study of grief.

Jill Drummond

My experience with Luther Seminary has been through its interns! We as a congregation are proud of our interns and are deeply emotional on their “sending out.” Each of our hearts go out with them to corners unknown with our blessings and of course, God’s too.

These are pictures of our Lenten Rose Banner created by a small group of ladies in our congregation in time to celebrate Emanuel Lutheran Church’s 60th anniversary. At the anniversary dinner, we made pieces of the felt rugged cross available to our church members and guests to glue on themselves, and thereby forever be a part of our life here at Emanuel Lutheran Church.

It was four months in the making by Jill Drummond, Sharon Frazier, Majiu Hessel, Connie Bogosian, Ricki Fehr, Cici Schnakenberg, JoEllen Dobson, and Susan Wright.

Elizabeth Hood ’24 M.A.

I love doing liturgical art in our sanctuary. We mostly work on Easter and Advent. It’s a big space so it’s fun to try to figure out the mechanics of hanging things. We have used ribbon and now tulle to create the effect from the front of the sanctuary to the back. On Easter, I noticed the light and the reflection of the fabric in the baptismal font and thought it looked really interesting!

Judi Tyler ’23 M.Div.

All of the photos are from Unity Lutheran in Southgate, Michigan. The two banners are from Pentecost and were made with foam flames, fish wire, poster board, and ribbon. The lower canvas labyrinth is currently on loan to the church. It catches the light where it is placed right now. The stained glass is Abraham and Isaac right before God talked to him.

Tim Robertson ’92 M.Div.

Painted during the first excerpt of our sermon series “Something Fishy’s Going on Here,” which explained the meaning behind the Jesus Fish—one of the earliest symbols of Christianity.

Jessica Reiter ’27 M.Div.

Here is a piece I made for a theology class project at another university that I have continued to find meaningful. It is an image of the crucifixion. The background is painted over Scripture passages that talk about caring for the poor and oppressed. The body of Jesus is made up of newspaper headlines from the time I made the piece (late 2019). I find the juxtaposition of imagery visually and intellectually arresting, and it speaks to me about the relevance of the crucifixion to our world today.

Jessica Kuhns ’27 M.Div.

My visual arts story is that many years ago my congregation spent a year studying “The Story” and later dove deeper into the story of the Bible using the Narrative Lectionary. A small group of us painted wooden boards each Sunday with the week’s story and now the images from creation to new creation—or Genesis to Revelation—line one wall of our church illustrating the Word much like stained glass windows on old churches did. My favorite image is the one for Revelation; the text study changed my whole perspective on death and the hope of resurrection. I joke that the new Jerusalem is depicted as a golden borg cube (from Star Trek), but the image is truly much more beautiful than that. I love the idea of a time with no more weeping, no more pain, and no more suffering when we will live in harmony as God created us to be.

Zion Lutheran in Loveland, Colorado