Suppose you could teach youngsters
about the life of Jesus in a place where you could see the ancient Temple
from the Garden of Gethsemane. What about seeing the gnarled forms
of ancient olive trees as you illustrate the concept of laying the axe to
the root or seeing an endless
desert stretching before you as you explaing the Jew's concept of "wilderness".
The rotation program's focusing of a given room for a given theme allows
this without adding distractions when lessons don't include that kind of
thematic detail.
Another feature of Lee's work
at Alamo Heights is the development of a consistent artistic theme. Notice
here the use of trompe l'oeil limestone columns and the "lintels" with bible
verses included. This theme is continued in common areas and in each
of the Sunday School rooms so that all of the facilities have a sense of
place.
In a room used for story telling here is a layout of the Temple furnishings of the ancient tabernacle, complete with the Ark of the Covenant. These furnishings are described in great detail in the Bible. Recognizing that the artizans among the people of Israel would have been trained in Egyptian traditions we speculated a little to come to the final designs. These have been used often in illustrating the care given to the worship practices of Moses' time.
What would
artists of first-century Israel have done for graphic art? These people
were strong adherents to a refusal to make "graven images", a phrase they
interpreted so literally that they refused to create any image which could
be mistaken for a realistic
representation. Here you see examples of images taken from actual archaeological
digs in remnants of first-century homes in Jerusalem in the Art Room at Alamo
Heights. On a table in the foreground one of our "lintels" is being
prepared for hanging. At Alamo
Heights more than forty volunteers participated in the development of this classroom area. This
contributed to the congregation's acceptance of this new approach to teaching
and also to the sense of ownership the church as a whole feels for the program. More than half
of the painting and nearly all the wallpaper lintels were prepared by these
volunteers.