Art of renewal

LITTLE ROCK — On a mixed-media painting in the fellowship hall of First Presbyterian Church, an inviting Jesus appears in front of Cregeen’s Irish Pub and North Little Rock’s City Hall.

“Jesus of Argenta,” a church member’s creation, represents a growing congregation with a reborn church ready to spread an arts-infused gospel to its North Little Rock community, church leaders say.

First Presbyterian Church, a previously struggling church in the burgeoning downtown North Little Rock area known as Argenta, has in the last three years found a form of financial salvation by renting space to musicians, printmakers, filmmakers, painters and more.

“We’ve got artists coming out of our ears,” pastor Anne Russ said on a recent weekday morning.

They began trickling in three years ago when church leaders, at artist V.L.

Cox’s urging, began renting space to area artists. The church, which has averaged fewer than 50 people in weekly attendance for a decade, had received total contributions of about $26,000 in 2005, according to the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Web site. Moreover, the church’s elderly congregation, which averaged 80-85 years of age, didn’t need much of the education wing because there wasn’t a Sunday School, said Ross Stanley, 74, a longtime church member.

Cox became the first to rent at Fourth and Maple streets. Seven other artists, and a lawyer, have followed, she said. Renting the spaces brings in about $24,000 annually for the church, Russ said.

“It turned into a huge success,” added Cox, who became a church member. “Art and religion have gone hand and hand from day one, basically.” Not all the church’s studio tenants are members, although Russ praised their willingness to help with recent renovations when asked.

The artists aren’t just helping to pay the bills. They’re also sharing their creative talents.

“I wanted to stress that Jesus isn’t just somebody who existed 2,000 years ago,” said illustrator Sherrie Shepherd, who painted Jesus of Argenta about three months ago. “The spirit of Jesus is in people’s heart now.”

While the church earned enough with the extra income to stay afloat, it didn’t have enough to fix mounting structural problems.

The sanctuary’s heating and air units, which dated to the early 1950s, broke a couple of years ago, forcing the dwindling congregation to hold Sunday services in the fellowship hall, church leaders said.

Russ said about 15 people were regularly attending when she began work as the church’s part-time pastor in October. She had moved to central Arkansas after living in Germany and England,where her husband worked for Acxiom.

She has since helped build a “sense of momentum” with the church through her passion, said Bill Galbraith, general presbyter of the Presbytery of Arkansas. About 50 people now regularly attend the church, Russ said.

One of her major projects so far was bringing in a new heating and air unit with the help of a local contractor.

Russ met Cox’s friend, Chuck Hamilton, who owns a construction firm, at one of Cox’s art shows. Russ shared her sanctuary’s plight, which inspired Hamilton to help. He purchased and donated heating units, and plans to pay for air-conditioning units in the spring, Russ said.

Without his help, replacing the heating and air units at retail prices would have cost the congregation more than $25,000, Russ said. The church will use $5,000 of its own to cover installation costs, she added.

Cox recalled sharing news about the repair with the congregation: “I’ve never seen the elders so giddy in my life.” Besides rendering the sanctuary unusable, extreme temperatures had been damaging some of the building’s hand-painted stained glass windows by causing the soft lead in them to expand and contract, Cox said.

“Now we can stabilize the temperature.”

The repair was finished in the last few weeks, allowing the congregation to worship in the sanctuary on Christmas Eve.

Russ plans for larger Sunday services in the reopened sanctuary, which can fit nearly 400 people, and looks to the neighborhoods nearby for more potential members.

The brick-and-mortar church, originally built in the 1890s, is the only one left in Argenta of its kind, church leaders said. The area’s First United Methodist Church and First Baptist Church congregations left, Stanley said, partly attributing the exodus to increasing crime in surrounding neighborhoods over recent decades.

Russ wants the church to one day hold art and music workshops, as well as educational programs, geared toward poor children in Argenta.

“We want to be a good steward of this building,” she said. “We’ve had so many people that have helped us and have given their gifts and talents and time. So we want to take that, and help this building be a blessing to the community.”

Religion, Pages 12 on 01/09/2010

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