Ten Years Later

This month marks the tenth year since work began on the design project that would come to be known as The Minimum Bible. Here’s the first draft (c. 2012) of what would become “Genesis”, the first print in the series.

I honestly cannot believe it’s been ten years since I pitched the idea to my wife in our family room one evening. Ten years since a successful Kickstarter campaign led to the first sketches which led to the first drafts which led to countless revisions which finally ended with the complete set of sixty (60) prints.

I have had the profound privilege of having this series featured in art galleries and churches across the United States and beyond. I’ve been humbled to connect with numerous people—some deeply religious and others far from it—who have found something in my work that spoke to them. Over the years since The Minimum Bible was completed, I’ve had the opportunity to speak at conferences, illustrate a couple books, design album covers, create commissioned art, and to develop some additional projects I’ve been interested in making. Along the way, I’ve got to meet some legitimate artists and talk about how they work and what makes them tick. What started as a passion project has become the best kind of side hustle—the kind of work you love doing and which also helps you pay some bills.

What started as a passion project has become the best kind of side hustle—the kind of work you love doing and which also helps you pay some bills.

These days, I’m feeling a little reflective and I wanted to do something to mark the tenth anniversary of The Minimum Bible, so I thought I would start this blog to reflect on some of my favorite pieces from The Minimum Bible and my other print series. Here’s how we’re going to do this.

Each post on this blog will feature one print along with some of my design notes and insights, some old, others new. Those who know me (or who merely glance through my art) will see that I shun the use of words to explain my art for the simple reason that once an artist weighs in, the viewer often feels less capable of coming to their own conclusions about what the art means to them. Art is not objective science, an art piece is not an attempt at carbon copying the intention and thought of the artist so that all viewers in all places will come to the same conclusion. Rather, I believe that art creates a mingling place between the artist and the viewer, a place where the art is suggestive and provocative and meaning-filled, but which requires reception, conversation, or even protest to become what it sets out to be.

I believe that art creates a mingling place between the artist and the viewer, a place where the art is suggestive and provocative and meaning-filled, but which requires reception, conversation, or even protest to become what it sets out to be.

To that end, in the writing I offer, I’m going to keep my insights brief and in the form of “wonderings”, short statements expressing curiosity—not certitude—about the shapes, colors, lines, and textures of the pieces. I want to invite your “wonderings”, too. What do you see, how do you encounter these pieces. Where do they take your imagination? How do they lead you back into the texts of Scripture which provoked them? Where do the pieces fail to communicate well?

Thanks for being part of the story that is The Minimum Bible.