Month: March 2019

Communion, my art show, up at FBC Dayton, coming to Christopher’s Restaurant in June

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UPDATE: These paintings and more are going to be hanging up at Christopher’s Restaurant in Kettering, OH in June! So happy! You can see them in person if you come by Christopher’s in June!

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March 26, 2019

Ever feel like one of the best times at church was actually AFTER church at the coffee fellowship? Where you all caught up with everyone’s lives? Where you shared the good news about your new job? Your new apartment? Or shared the loss of a relationship? Things that you may not be able to do in a service—and you receive things here that you may not be able to get in a service either. You get to share something with family, receive praise, encouragement, sympathy—become a community together.

So, I made a set of paintings picturing our church members having coffee together, as part of our regular coffee fellowship that happens after formal church services. I wanted to talk about how the informal coffee we have together is very much like Communion, in that it fosters community. While Communion is a very theological concept of remembering the life and death of Jesus, communion is also a way that a group commits to a larger mission together–to care about each other. My church members went along with my idea by sitting for photographs that I then turned into paintings.

I’ll probably add a few more to this set. I am going to try and shop around this show to area cafes and restaurants to see if anyone would like to show it. (Yeah, like Christopher’s! See Update!)

I also painted our church as a welcoming and affirming Baptist church, so the Pride flag is there…

Prints are available if you would like to have me make them. Just DM me here in the comments or contact me through my email on the About Me page and I can make a print. Email me: jeromestueart@gmail.com

Putting them together for First Fridays! They will be separated again when they are up at Christopher’s Restaurant in June, but I wanted to see them all together here.

“Postlude to the Afternoon of a Faun” published in F&SF + Some featured Jazz

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My story has been published in F&SF for the March/April 2019 issue. I’m so happy about that.

An old jazz-playing faun has the chance to get back everything that was taken from him a hundred years ago, if he can take it from his only student. The story has Jazz, Mentoring and Hope as themes. It also asks the question: how do you change your own life?

My two characters, a young college football player who wants to become a jazz musician, and an old faun who just wants to be a part of the world again, struggle and fail and attempt again this massive turn in their lives, together. At one point, one of the characters says, “I feel like I’m this tiny tugboat trying to turn this massive life around.” And that’s one of the questions I wanted to pose–how do you do that? I hope you find these characters as inspiring as I did.

Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program

I mention an organization I used to work for in my twenties when I was at the University of Missouri-Columbia, the Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program under the Missouri Folk Arts Program. An example of their work is here–pairing two musicians together, a master and an apprentice, much like Mr. Dance and Eric in the story.

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