My Journey: From Art School to Ministry School and Back Again
Hey! I'm Alyssa! I'm a part of the Rooted Minds Team. I have the privilege to call Andy, the face behind Latin With Andy, my brother, and Betsy, the founder of Family Style Schooling Blog, mom. Now I can also say my art is published! I helped with a new educational art book by Courtney Sanford: The Art of Ancient History: Art Lessons from Around the Ancient World. I can't wait to tell you more about it!
Whether we have been introduced before or not, I'm here to talk about the faithfulness of God, involving some beautiful things He's been working in my life.
I went from feeling like I would never make art again, to doing it as a job and being so fulfilled.
My High School Years and Early College
To begin, let me catch you up in what God has been doing in my life since graduating high school in 2022. If we go back to my senior year of high school, I was really pursuing art. My family and I were developing a youtube channel to share my journey of En Plein Air painting. I was writing my senior thesis with Classical Conversations on Beholding Beauty, and the need for christians to function like this to cultivate a culture of hope. This path led me to college where I spent a year studying art and growing my skills. I anticipated my life and path to continue in a straight line from this place, including three more years of college, and growing a social media presence in the same way. I think there was a beauty to the faithfulness of that vision.
But if you are anything like me, and my family, oftentimes our walk with God looks more like a bowl of spaghetti than a straight line. Rarely do things work out in the way we anticipate.
A Shift in Direction
This is where I'm getting to the faithfulness of God part. Long story short, I left art school and set my sights on a Ministry School that had little to none to do with art.
After I got home from my first and only year of college, I came home to a tragic news that my younger cousin had passed away. Through the summer and season of grief that followed, I saw art as something that was mostly behind me. I wasn't sure if it would ever be a part of me like it was before.
Rediscovering Creativity
As my Ministry School began, I started to heal, and pursue God in a deeper way. As I beheld him, things started to fall in place in my art journey. I got connected with an art and worship team. My service assignment was with the livestream team running videos. I began to feel my heart unlock towards creativity again. What I was doing felt generative and lovely.
While I really enjoyed these creative outlets, I still didn't imagine I'd consider myself more than a creative. But here I am saying just that. I am an artist. One thing I didn't expect to happen at ministry school was to see God completely and totally bring back to life creativity in my life. From painting with my church during worship services, to teaching with Rooted Minds I've had incredible opportunities to grow and share come at me.
Just one year ago, Latin with Andy was the extent of what learning opportunities we had to offer. Now it has become so much more, including a space for me to share what I know about art.
An Unexpected Opportunity
One way that God blew me away was this summer, was orchestrating an unexpected art internship. One week sometime in the beginning of June, I received a message from a former art teacher. She was the only art class I ever took in high school: Paint your Way Through Art History with Courtney Sanford. I absolutely ate that class up. It was such an integral part of my art journey.
Courtney messaged me through my Shopify store that I had built for my youtube when I was making painting videos weekly! I miss emails a lot so I was surprised that I found this email within hours of it being sent. In the message she explained that she was recruiting former art students to spend a week helping her develop a book for newer art class she is offering on her online art school.
By the grace of God, I was able to take the internship! God covered my expenses for a week in North Carolina (COMPLETELY free!!). We paused for beach breaks inbetween developing lessons, illustrating projects, and writing instructions for The Art of Ancient History: Art Lessons from Around the Ancient World.
Then throughout the summer, I continued the internship and helped her finish writing the book and editing it! We all felt so proud of the finished work! This class accompanies the Ancient History Cycle for Classical Conversations. I'm also getting the opportunity to teach the class this book supplements with her school!
The Art of Ancient History: Art Lessons from Around the Ancient World
The Art of Ancient History: Art Lessons from Around the Ancient World includes 24 lessons which teach first about a historic artifact and event, then include a beginner level art lesson inspired by the history. The lessons begin in Ancient Egypt, then Old Testament times, Ancient Greece, Rome and then the Americas.
We developed lessons from Old Testament stories. I LOVED this after being so immersed in them in my first year of ministry school! I was really involved in character drawings like King Tut’s mask lesson, or the figure drawings of the Greek warriors. As a kid, incorporating creative projects into the lessons I was learning always made me so excited to learn as well as helping me retain, so I’m so excited to help with this project and help kids enjoy history through art as much as I did!
God's Faithfulness
This opportunity is one of those things that I didn't search for myself but truly felt like a gift from God placed in my lap. In so many different ways, I've seen God pursue and care about my passions and gifting more than me. He is faithful. He never forgets anything. I'm so thankful he knows me so much more than I even know myself. I went from feeling like I would never make art again, to doing it as a job and being so fulfilled.
Looking Ahead
I can't wait to see where he continues to lead me in this path. He is the only one that knows where to go. But to my family, to Courtney, I am so grateful as they have played huge roles in showing me the faithfulness of God tangibly. This is why we need to body, to show us Jesus when we forget.
Alyssa is a high school senior, who has been homeschooled her whole life. She spends her time in things that are creative and unexpected. She loves painting and drawing. She enjoys spending time with her family and friends. You’ll find her curled up with a book and an oat milk latte! Above all, Alyssa loves her God, and strives to be more like him every day.