ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, March 27, 1997 TAG: 9703280020
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: N-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: FRANCES STEBBINS SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES
Barbara Lashley, an artist, believes God's message also can be expressed in films, dance, music and writing.
When it became known that the annual Virginia Southern Baptist Evangelism Conference held in Roanoke in January was to focus on the arts rather than revival-meeting techniques, some traditionalist church leaders stayed away.
But the conference, says one of its planners, Barbara Lashley, brought out others who view the arts as an exciting path to greater spiritual depth in the 21st century. Church people can convey God's message not only in paintings like she does in many media and styles, she says, but also in films, dance, music and writing.
In the nearly 50 years that she has been drawing and painting, Lashley has integrated her Baptist faith with the symbolism of visual art. As a minister's wife, she has always been active in church; she currently serves as a deacon and adult class teacher at the Colonial Avenue congregation. Her husband, Kirk, supervises the outreach programs of more than 70 congregations in the Roanoke Valley and in Botetourt and Craig counties.
To Lashley, the connection between the arts and evangelism is clear. She quotes from a source she can no longer remember: "My God is a creative God, he gives us the gift to create and we in turn give that back to him."
From the earliest times, she points out, religious faith has been expressed in the symbols that are the basis of art. Once, it was mosaic or drawings on cave walls. Today, it is computer graphics, plays with contemporary themes, music with a cultural background. Many films marketed for secular audiences have an underlying message of reliance on God.
Speaking in her home, a contemporary design that sits high on a mountain east of Vinton, Lashley observed that the denomination she knows best, the Baptist, has been slower than some others to value beautiful architecture. This comes from the austerity the denomination's earliest leaders felt was necessary in the Protestant Reformation to combat the corruption of the Roman Catholic Church where art glorified its beliefs rather than Christ.
Today, says Lashley, a lot of Baptists appreciate Catholicism's art heritage, but not many are using it to draw in younger people who don't respond to sermons and traditional printed material.
"A lot of churches have wonderful walls to display paintings for occasional or permanent exhibits. And an art exhibit brings people into churches who would never be there otherwise," she said.
Lashley's breadth of interest in religious art and its creators has been supported by her husband. Over the past 15 years, the two have traveled to 30 countries. These trips have produced souvenirs that adorn the many-windowed home, which has a view extending almost to Smith Mountain Lake. Ideas, too, have come from the trips, like the Arabic-looking squiggles Barbara Lashley used as the background for an abstract with three circles for the Trinity.
"I like abstracts because we can see so many personal differences in them," she said. "There's less place for the imagination in a more traditional picture."
But Lashley does not see herself as a trailblazer, and admits that, for a majority of Baptists, unconventional art in any form is likely to stir resistance because they associate it with immorality or the shock value of entertainment and commercialism.
As she has matured in her art and her faith, she said, she has learned she needs the support of others with the dual interest. Through her friendship with the Rev. Kelly Sisson, pastor of Glade Baptist Church in Blacksburg, Lashley met several other New River Valley artists and a poet whose creativity inclines to religion. The interfaith group now includes several Roanoke Valley residents; works of Heaven & Earth have been shown in Pulaski, Martinsville, Blacksburg and Roanoke and at several churches over the past year.
During Lent, an exhibit of the faith-inspired works of a mother and daughter, Lyndall Mason and Vera Dickerson, have been displayed in the gallery at Colonial Avenue Baptist. They may be seen through Easter Sunday by calling 774-2084.
Though her art and religion had been inseparable for years, Lashley said her Hollins master's project of painting a different cross every day for a year revealed her creative fascination with that universal symbol of Christian compassion. At the time, she was sharing the grief of a friend, Susan Walters, whose young son, Ralph, had been killed in an auto accident that also seriously injured his minister father.
Today, the father is a college chaplain in Kentucky, and a remodeled chapel holds stained-glass windows whose cross designs are Lashley's tribute to the child.
NAME: Barbara Norman Lashley, 57
OCCUPATION: Artist, part-time Averett College extension teacher of visual arts, with classes in Roanoke and Lynchburg.
BACKGROUND: Born and reared in Martinsville, "loved art from childhood" and was
inspired to make it her vocation on a visit with a teacher to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond. As a Baptist pastor's wife, reared three children while the family lived in Danville. Moved to Vinton in 1990.
EDUCATION: B.A. in art from Averett, 1977; master's in liberal studies from Hollins College, 1994, with additional study at Penland School of Crafts, 1994.
FAMILY: Wife of the Rev. Kirkland Lashley and mother of three adult children; four grandsons.
PROFESSIONAL ACHIEVEMENTS: Has exhibited art in many media throughout Virginia and North Carolina. Several works hang in the permanent collections of schools, churches and business establishments. With her husband, set up a small business, Art and Soul Inc. operated from their home at 4260 Twin Mountains Drive, Vinton. Two years ago founded Heaven & Earth, "an alliance of artists with spiritual convictions."
PERSONAL STATEMENT: "Growth and experimentation is important in my work; I can't do the same thing over and over. I feel I have succeeded [in teaching] when I introduce someone to the love of art. It's never too late."
SOME FAVORITE WORK: A large stylized portrait of Alma Hunt using a mountain quilt motif commissioned for a new institutional cottage bearing the former Southern Baptist mission executive's name in Salem. A collection of 365 cross designs executed daily in 1994 for a master's thesis at Hollins College. Some of these are now in stained glass chapel windows at Campbellsville College in Kentucky
LENGTH: Long : 115 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: JANEL RHODA/THE ROANOKE TIMES. Barbara Lashley, whoby CNBorganized local artists interested in religious themes, shows one of
her paintings in her almost-finished studio in her Vinton home.