From House to House

Acts 2:46Kitchen

$24.00

By Thursday afternoon you are counting chairs again, pulling the extra one in from the hallway, setting the bread out. Beside the kitchen table hangs a village seen from above at supper time, every door standing open, one roof lit gold. Nobody in it is on their own. It is the quiet proof that your house, small as it is, has been enough every week. People sit down, look up, and ask what the little gold roof means, and you answer in your own words.

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170 gsm archival matte paper, ships rolled

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Acts 2:46

Every door on the street is standing open

From across the room it reads as one shape: a village at dusk, seen from a little above, roofs in soft greys and a street running between them. Closer, the doors are what you notice. Not one of them is shut, and the path goes from one to the next and never leaves the village.

One roof is lit gold. That is the house where they are all squeezed in tonight, the table pulled out, the chairs that do not match. Living with it makes the crowding feel like the point rather than the apology.

One friend says it is a street at supper time with nothing locked anywhere. Another sees only the gold house and the people inside it. Someone else follows the little path with a finger and says it goes nowhere at all, it just goes door to door, which is the whole idea. It looks like a real painting, and it tells anyone who sits down what kind of home this is.

A framed village scene at dusk hanging on the wall beside a kitchen table

From the artist

The street bends twice and goes nowhere in particular

Elias Brook

Roads seen from above

I keep coming back to the doors. From up here the village is small enough to hold in one hand, and still you can see that not one door is shut. The street bends twice and goes nowhere in particular. It only goes from this threshold to the next one, and then back again, the way a path does when the place you are heading for is already where you are.

The gold roof is nearer the edge than the middle. I like that it is not the grandest house on the map. What I hope is that whoever lives with this keeps finding her own roof in it, and counts the short distance between her door and the rest.

For the study host

The kitchen that filled up every Thursday

Close view of the gold roof and the path running between the open doors

One of them buys it for herself, the week she says yes to hosting. Her place is not big. She has done the arithmetic on chairs and mugs, and that is a lot of hummus and pita that needs to be made, and she says yes anyway, because a home should be a reflection of the woman keeping it and this is what she wants hers to say.

The other is a group, at the end of a study year, quietly putting money together for the woman whose kitchen they have sat in every week since September. They squeezed together around that table and no one complained. The gift is silent, and better than the words they would have fumbled at the door.

It hangs beside the table where the group eats, 45 x 60 cm framed, large enough to read from the far side of the room.

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Acts 2:46 wall art

What arrives at your door

170 gsm matte paper Uncoated, printed right to the edge, with no shine under a kitchen light.
Black wood frame, 12 mm Flat square profile, 22 mm deep, matte, plexiglass front, no mat. Framed prints come on 170 gsm coated silk paper.
Three sizes 30x40, 45x60 and 60x80 cm. The middle one reads from the far side of a full room.
Giclee print The greys stay soft and the one gold roof stays warm rather than bright.

Breaking bread from house to house

What people ask about this one

1.What does breaking bread from house to house mean in Acts 2 46?

Acts 2:46 describes the first believers in Jerusalem moving from one home to the next, eating together with gladness and singleness of heart. Breaking bread there is both an ordinary supper and something more than supper, and the verse leaves the two joined. The scene keeps that open: a street of houses, every door wide, a path running between them.

2.How did the early church meet in homes?

Luke's account has them in the temple courts and in one another's houses on the same day. They had no building of their own, so the meetings happened around tables, in rooms that belonged to somebody who had said yes. That is why this piece is a village rather than a church.

3.What is a good gift for someone who hosts Bible study?

The woman who hosts rarely buys anything for the room everyone else sits in. A piece for the wall beside her table marks the year without putting it on a plaque, and a group can sign the back of the print or tuck a note behind the frame. The 45 x 60 cm framed size suits the wall above a table.

4.What size suits the wall beside a kitchen table?

At 45 x 60 cm it reads from the far side of the room without crowding the chairs. The 30 x 40 cm suits a narrower strip of wall, between a window and a door frame or above a sideboard. The 60 x 80 cm is for a long empty wall in a kitchen where the table is the centre of everything.

5.Will a scripture piece look too churchy in a kitchen?

It reads as a painting first: soft greys, a street at dusk, one roof picked out in gold, and no faces anywhere. Guests tend to ask about the gold roof before they ask about anything else. What it means is left to you to say, in your own words.

Acts 2:42