About a year ago, Duane Childs and Sandie Beddoe, Puget Sound Adventist Academy volunteers, met in a downstairs hallway to hang a painting.
"The rest of the hallway looks bare," Childs said. "What we need are big-panel paintings of the Creation Week."
"But who could we get to produce them?" Beddoe asked
Childs grinned. "Me," he said. Now retired, Child's lifetime of teaching included seven years teaching in the Auburn Adventist Academy art department. Childs produced preliminary sketches, talked them over with Beddoe, and got to work painting in the light that flooded through his living room patio door.
As a young couple, Duane and Emily Childs were converts from another denomination, and fell even more deeply in love with a God who not only created the world but also provided a satisfying Sabbath rest for its inhabitants.
However, Day Seven panel turned out to be Child's toughest challenge — how does one paint "rest?" He finally decided on a broken-line cross, and a barely-suggested outline of the Ten Commandments with the brightest glow over the Fourth.
Childs gets a special pleasure from knowing students, hurrying from class to class, will pause to look at his paintings. "I hope they'll help the students think about what God has done in making the world, and what He has done for them as well."
Duane Childs, who studied art in both the United States and Mexico, taught at Auburn Adventist Academy for seven years.
Creation Week's Day Seven portrays the cross and the commandments with the brightest glow over the Fourth.
Duane Childs and Sandie Beddoe hang the Creation Week canvases in a hallway at Puget Sound Adventist Academy just before the start of the school year.
Duane Childs, artist, makes preliminary sketches before beginning the big-panel paintings. This sketch shows the concept for Day Six.
Creation week's Day Five panel deliberately blends images and colors into each other to create unity and viewer participation.
