Meet our Fellows

Sanctified Art Creative Team

Black Mountain, North Carolina

Provoking new and expansive images of God

A Sancitifed Art is an artist collective that provides visual art, poetry, and other creative multimedia resources for liturgical worship, offering worshipping communities a helpful path to integrate art and creativity into their spiritual practice.

 A Sancitifed Art grew out of a dream and the initial work of Lisle Gwynn Garrity and has expanded to become a team of artists, pastors, writers, musicians, scholars and poets. Offering worship and devotional resources, as well as visual and other artworks , A Sanctified Art works to guide, facilitate and enrich the spiritual lives of worshippers around the world.

Sanctified Art began operating as a team of artists and pastors in January of 2016. The team, made up of seminary trained theologians who were also artists and creatives, met regularly to discern ways of blending their creative talents with ministry and offering fresh perspectives for worship. In 2019, they began intentionally welcoming guest contributors and partnering with other creatives – including scholars, musicians, poets, visual artists and other creatives. Their first seminary intern, Anna Strickland, officially  joined the team in 2020.

A Sanctified Art provides resources beyond the stale everyday offerings of traditional church publications, seeking to provoke new images of the Divine that are contemporary yet ancient, and to bring back visual art as a part of worship and church life.  “The church has this tradition of not only music, but visual art; however, visual art has a very complicated history. We are very aware of the ways that ‘white Jesus’ has done a lot of harm and limited our imagination around our own sense of visual theology. A big part of why we do what we do is to provide expansive and imaginative images of God. We've been partnering with more guest contributors and working with artists of color. We need to have a new imagination and explore how we can expand the idea that Reggie Williams calls ‘diseased white theology,” said A Sanctified Art Founder, Lisle Garrity.

This prime focus led to the creation of more expansive and imaginative artistic images of God. “For instance, if I say ‘What does Jesus look like?’, you think of the 1941 image of the white guy with long hair called the head of Christ. That image was mass produced into this dearth of visual opportunity and was produced as propaganda around the world. There hasn't been a lot of work that's been well shared that offers a different viewpoint,” said Garrity.

The team begins their work with Scripture, grounded in the Common Lectionary. “Our work is always grounded in the text. People are coming here to a collection of resources that speaks multi-modally, that is intentionally studied and grounded in the texts for the season. It provides pastors and church staff with the ability to show up in these multimodal opportunities, which is the new frontier of evangelism, which is a tough world right now.,” reflected team member, Hannah Garrity.

Sanctified Art serves an ecumenical community and offers a variety of worship resources, including large bundles for Advent and Lent, seasons that are a part of many traditions. They have created an extensive network of guest collaborators and are intent on paying each a fair wage. For each guest collaborator, they also give back, making a donation to an organization that is important to that artist.

About The Creative Team

Rev. Lisle Wynn Garrity

Founder | Creative Director of SA
Lisle (she/her) is a Pastorist (pastor + artist), retreat leader, and creative entrepreneur seeking to fill the church with more color, paint, mystery, and creativity. She founded A Sanctified Art with the conviction that, in order to thrive, the church needs more creatve expression and art- filled freedom.

Rev. Lauren Wright Pittman
Director of Branding | Founding Creative Partner of SA
Lauren (she/her) is an artist, graphic designer, and theologian. She uses paint, metallic inks, and Apple pencil to image the layered complexity she experiences in scripture texts. She also helps faith communities share their vibrant stories through branding & design services.

Hannah Garrity
Founding Creative Partner of SA
Hannah (she/her) is an artist and an athlete, a daughter and a mother, a facilitator and a producer, a leader and a teammate. She serves as the Director of Christian Faith, Life, and Arts at Second Presbyterian Church in Richmond, VA. Additionally, she is an art in worship workshop leader wherever she is called, and a liturgical installation artist at the Montreat Conference Center, Montreat, NC.

Rev. Sarah A. Speed
Founding Creative Partner of SA
Sarah (she/her) is the Associate Pastor for Young Adults and Membership at Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York City. Sarah feels called to welcome people into the church by using her energy and passion for beautifully-scripted words, raw and relevant liturgy, and hands-on worship experiences to engage our longing for God and the need for justice in this messy world.

Rev. Anna Strickland
Operations Support | Content Creator
Anna (she/her) looks for the Divine in the everyday like treasure in clay jars, and first encountered God in the integration of her spiritual self and artistic self. She is a former teacher and college minister, a proud Texas Longhorn and graduate of Iliff School of Theology, a Baptist to the core ministering in ecumenical spaces, and a lover of chaos anchored by the belief that the Spirit is most active in the spaces between us.

To purchase art or worship resources and to learn more about A Sanctified Art, visit their website sanctifiedart.org