BoHo Girl Original by Stacy Spangler

About the Artwork
Original 16x20 Mixed Media on stretched canvas by Arkansas Artist Stacy Spangler. Created September 2022. Valued at $475.

Upon arriving at the Vintage Round Top for Meet the Maker, a creative faith retreat, 19 women laid down their burdens and challenges on pieces of paper. It was an exercise to release their burdens to God and to receive His promise that He will meet us wherever we are. We have only to turn to Him with our anxieties and troubles.

My God in His steadfast love will meet me. (Psalm 59:10)

The papers bearing each women’s burdens were torn up and glued to an old canvas that had a large red heart painted on it by a child. Mixed with mod podge, matte medium, and modeling paste, the torn paper became a layer of textured fodder on the canvas. With 19 women watching, mixed media artist, Stacy Spangler, began to create and paint on top of the canvas. The burdens of 19 women soon became the foundation from which a striking vision of beauty, grace, hope, and joy emerged. Watching the transformation of the canvas brought tears to the women’s eyes. They had bared their heart, entrusted the pieces to God, and were now able to witness His artistic, transformative power at work. The burdens we carry and the challenges we face do not have to define us. God defines us and gives us a new countenance to bear. Washed white as snow, we emerge as new creations.

My God in His steadfast love will meet me. (Psalm 59:10)

Inspired by the transforming power of God, these 19 women unanimously agreed to auction this incredibly personal painting and donate the proceeds to Tandem Quilting Co., a small business whose mission is to empower, employ and encourage refugee women.
Tandem’s founder, Elizabeth Beck, has been moved to tell the stories of these resilient women, empower them, provide sustainable job opportunities for them and their families, and celebrate the talents they possess. Tandem Quilting Co. offers high quality quilts, quilted notecards, zippered pouches, woven wall hangings, and other hand-made quilted treasures. Currently, Tandem employs over a dozen women from eight different people groups.

The message of God taking our burdens away is a powerful one that we want to share with the world, both through our actions to lift up and walk alongside those who have been beaten down. We feel wholeheartedly that Tandem Quilting Co. is doing this transformative work.

For more information on Tandem Quilting Co. or to make a donation to them directly, please goto www.tandemquiltingco.com.

To see more artwork by Stacy Spangler, please go to
www.stacyspangler.com, or connect with her on Instagram @stacyspanglerart

We appreciate your support of this auction and of Tandem Quilting Co. To God be the glory. All proceeds for this auction will go to Tandem Quilting Company except for shipping costs. Donation will be made directly to Tandem Quilting Company.

In 2009, Elizabeth Beck started a home-based business called Elizabeth Beck Quilts. She rented a long-arm quilting machine 30 miles west from her home, and studied under Angela Walters, one of the best long-arm quilters in the world!

While running after her vocational dream, Elizabeth simultaneously began falling in love with her neighbors, and investing time in the lives of refugees arriving in Clarkston, Georgia, which is one of the largest refugee resettlement communities in the southeast. It is 8 miles east of Atlanta. CNN deemed it the most diverse square mile in America. Atlanta is already a melting pot, and Clarkston has become the self-proclaimed "Ellis Island of the South”, welcoming waves of tens of thousands of refugees.

Elizabeth fell in love with these beautiful new neighbors and was amazed at the talents they brought to their new homes in America, and learned that they had been master sewers in their own countries. Not only that, but they had larger dreams for their lives and their families. Having this in common, Elizabeth joined with them to start Tandem Quilting Company in 2018.