In sum­mer of 2017, I received fund­ing from Oral Roberts Uni­ver­sity (ORU) Pres­i­den­t’s Research Fund to pur­sue prints using Bib­li­cal verses as the con­tent and con­tex­tual basis. As visual forms increase in fre­quency, yet decrease in lit­er­acy, a visu­ally dom­i­nant pre­sen­ta­tion of Scrip­ture is needed reen­gage present, and more impor­tantly future, view­ers with the sig­nif­i­cance of the movement’s foun­da­tional verses. The cre­ation of a series of prints that seeks to glo­rify and mod­ern­ize the beauty of the lit­eral word of God as pre­sented in the Bible can address this cul­tural gap. The util­i­tar­ian nature of most bibles hide the ele­gance and grace of the aes­thetic minu­tiae of let­ters, words and pas­sages. The grant appli­ca­tion sought funds for the cre­ation and pro­duc­tion of a series of visu­ally engag­ing prints dis­trib­uted in sup­port of the uni­ver­sity and the Spirit Empow­ered Movement.

Prints framed and mat­ted at the Research Symposium.

The grant cre­ated a series of prints, many cre­ated by and pro­duced in lan­guages spo­ken by ORU stu­dents. The project also began to explore the visual attrib­utes, print mate­ri­als, pro­duc­tion tech­niques and final scale of screen printed and let­ter­press com­po­si­tions. Doc­u­men­ta­tion of the expe­ri­ence took sev­eral forms, includ­ing cam­pus pre­sen­ta­tions, exhi­bi­tions and a detailed account pub­lished here.

Over sev­eral months, this site chron­i­cled the progress of the project, but more impor­tantly became an archival repos­i­tory of the knowl­edge research and pro­duced. Much of what I have done and will con­tinue to do has been inspired by the gen­er­ous doc­u­men­ta­tion of oth­ers, also posted for pub­lic con­sump­tion. I join that tra­di­tion in hopes that some­one will find as much value in the process as I have.

Project out­line:

1. Intro­duc­tion
2. Research and needs assessment
3. Ideation and planning
4. Pro­to­typ­ing and testing
5. Press con­struc­tion
6. Test­ing and improvements
7. Print con­tent
8. Print Process
9. Con­clu­sion

The mono­logue that fol­lows assume inter­me­di­ate knowl­edge of the process of cre­at­ing and print­ing flat­stock, mostly through screen print­ing. Some great begin­ner resources can be found here, here and here if that applies to you.