Brian Hofmeister painting

Great opening on “Black Friday”. It’s an exhibit that everyone should see. The artists are Brian Hofmeister and mi Chelle Vara . Brian is a pastor at Christ Church in Guilderland. His beautiful paintings capture the essence of turn of the century (1900) architecture in Schenectady. Brian’s talent for blending colors on canvas makes him one of the regions emerging artists you have to see. And the abstract metal sculptures by miChelle interspersed among brian’s paintings make this a most interesting exhibit you don’t want to miss! It’s on display through January.

Terra Nova Gallery annual Abolition/Injustice show September 24th thru October 27th.
The Gallery had a successful opening last month with photography by Gina Meola and an exhibit about child sex slavery by Bethany Marcelle. Gallery visitors came away from this event pensively; you are left with a sense of the world’s injustice in your gut and a desire to do something about it. Not often have I viewed art and been so moved. 
Responds Gina Meola when asked of her experience at the Gallery opening: “In my opinion, it isn’t so much the experience itself that matters, but what you take away from it and then do with it. This was an opportunity to push forward in my art, and share the core of why it was created – God’s call to love. I’m so grateful to Terra Nova for opening this door, and eagerly anticipate what lies ahead.”

New Show Friday October 30
Come join us for this month’s Terra Nova gallery opening on Friday October 30,  featuring photography by Ann Fantauzzi  titled Eyes to Namibia  and a painting collection by Carole Warburton titled Vanishing Barns.

We showed the site to another web geek a few days ago and I think his comment summarizes things well. He said “Finally, we have a site that shows Terra Nova for what it really is”. We feel like this new site will better represent who we are as a church. If we are able to properly communicate who we are, and who we are brings glory to God, then this is worth all of the effort.

We need to thank a few people for bringing this site into existence. First, Kevin Richardson, a Terra Nova attender and designer at Overit Media not only put a ton of time into this site, but worked with his company in helping us get chosen as their 2008 Creatathon project (which means that we got this site for free). Jon from Overit continued to work on the site in his spare time even after the createthon was long over. All of the pastors pitched in to clean up or write content. Thanks to everyone!

We know that there are bugs on the site still. And probably some spelling and grammatical errors. Feel free to email them to us. We may already know about them, but that’s OK. Email your thoughts and corrections for the site to HERE.

A special note of thanks to Jon from Overit Media for working through the weekend to finish up the last few details. An entire community of people say thank you.

Almost a year ago, we started talking about a new site. Six months ago or so, we started talking specifically with a graphic artist at Terra Nova who works with a local design and development house. He suggested that we might be a good candidate for something called “Createathon”. Createathon is a nationwide project involving graphic design and web development companies. The basic idea is that they shut down for profit business for a day and turn their attention to not for profit projects. With Kevin as our spokeman, we were chosen. The net result is that we are going to end up with an amazing new site with some great new functions a much better navigation system and a completely new look. And most importantly . . . we are getting this site for free.  This is one of those behind the scenes projects that takes a ton of time figuring out a million details that all add up to what we hope will be a huge step forward and maybe even help create a little more community from an online standpoint. 

Every word, graphic, file, and concept is being rethought. New files, jpegs, videos, text and more are being gathered up to be inserted into the new site. Kevin is working on the artistic direction already. Scott Womer and I met with Kevin a couple of weeks ago to see some preliminary design concepts of the site. And we continue to work on details. On the day of the createathon, those photoshop files that Kevin has been creating will be turned into html code, information and files will be inserted into the appropriate places and if all goes well, we will have a mostly fully functioning new website by October 1st. 

To get a sneak peak at the art direction we are headed in click HERE. Many thanks to Kevin Richardson who has done so much work on this project already.