The design team from Southeast Christian Church in Louisville, KY brings us this awesome mosaic using colored water bottles.
Editor’s note: I didn’t rewrite this post so it’s in Southeast Christian’s words.
Night of Worship started with a brainstorming meeting in April. One of our worship staff members threw out the song “Beautiful Things.” The ideas started circling around the fact that God can take our junk and make it beautiful. We then decided that there had to be a way for our people to participate in a way other than singing. We wanted them to bring their burden, their sin, or their “junk” and give it to God. Then we wanted to make something beautiful out of it.
Our scenic/lighting designer, Joel, remembered seeing an artist who used colored water bottles to create a mosaic. We decided that we could do the same thing, but have the water bottle be the burden and throwing it away could represent surrendering it to God. We also thought that building the mosaic during the worship time would be a greater impact because we could show people what God could do with their “trash.”
As people came in for the night they were handed bottles and a small piece of paper. Brian, our worship leader, told everyone to write down their burden or sin and place it in the bottle. They were then instructed to bring their bottle at any time during worship and place it in trash containers at the front of stage. We did not tell people what the bottles would be used for.
During the worship set, there were workers on stage pushing the bottles into a chain link fence stretched across a truss frame. This part of the stage remained in darkness. The people in the audience could only see the workers and their headlamps.
The reveal of the bottles happened during the reprise of “Dry Bones” by Gungor. The mosaic is the flower from the promo material. Watch the reveal:
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It’s the biggest Lite Brite I have ever seen! Very cool! A couple questions: 1) were the bottle dyed or painted in some way before being handed out to create the colors? 2) Were there marks on the paper to know where the correct color of bottle was going or was it completely “Free handed”?
First of all, I apologize for the delay. Indeed it was the biggest Lite Brite I’d ever seen too.
To address your questions:
1. They were painted using Rosco Colorine. Details on that process can be found here: http://www.southeastblogs.org/default/worship/night-of-worship-6.26.11-part-2-bottle-painting
2. We projected the pattern on the paper and traced it in with pencil. That gave the crew guidelines where to put the various colors.
Let me know if you have any other questions. Thanks!