WonderCafe's Paint Your Faith mural in Toronto has a brief cameo in the new Neil Young movie! Check it out at about 27 seconds into this trailer.

When aerosol artist Chor Boogie, who was part of the original Paint Your Faith event in Toronto, showed up at the recent Vancouver PYF event, no one expected him to paint. He had come to Vancouver to share his art at the Paint Your Faith show at Ayden Gallery and connect with PYF Vancouver artists Indigo, Titi Freak, Faith 47, and Peeta along the way while they worked on the new PYF mural.

While at the mural site, Chor also connected with Sandra Severs of First United Church Mission, which was co-sponsoring PYF Vancouver along with WonderCafe.ca. Chor asked if he could paint a section of First United's roof and Sandra said "Go for it!" And soon Chor, along with the Paint Your Faith documentary team, were climbing several levels of ladders to reach the steeple of First United Church, high above the Downtown Eastside.

The Paint Your Faith Vancouver mural is almost ready for its big reveal, Wednesday, April 28. Even though it has rained nearly every production day (this is Vancouver after all!), the artists have been working hard right through it.

Ann Shin, the director of a documentary being shot about the project, wrote on the Paint Your Faith blog, "Faith47 is almost finished her inspiring centre piece for the wall mural. Indigo’s 9-foot image is finished of a girl blowing a dandelion, the fluff transforms as you follow it across the mural. Titi Freak is almost done his favela/people paintings, and Peeta has started on his second piece."

The artists' collaborative work is a stunning, one-of-a-kind mural which is already sparking conversations about the meaning of faith among passersby in the neighbourhood and those who hear about the mural on-line. When the Vancouver Sun called it a "a large religion-themed mural" and an arts blog mistakenly reported the artists were all Christians, a discussion about faith, spirituality, and religion was sparked even among the artists themselves.

It's been an interesting experience working for WonderCafe's Paint Your Faith project producing a wall of this size with artists who are in different parts of the world. In Toronto we had the artists Chor Boogie and Siloette flown in, Elicser and Mediah were local and when they came together they just hit the wall and it was quite spontaneous -- intense but truly original in the form of street art.

This time around in Vancouver our approach was quite different. The City of Vancouver has a tight program on street art and we had to apply for a permit, this required the submission of what the actual art work would look like on the wall we plan to create the art on. This meant reaching out to Faith47 in South Africa, Titi Freak in Sao Paulo, and Indigo, and Peeta in Vancouver and somehow coming together to plan how they would hit the wall together ahead of doing the work on-site and spontaneously.

As a producer, we are use to the many moving parts involved with creating projects the size of Toronto and Vancouver, there are so many variables and anything could go wrong, but we managed to bring an amazing crew of talent, work with so many great partners and supporters and we are all pretty excited about how the wall will look at 55-57 W. Hastings St.

Paint Your Faith | April 21-28, 2010
At the corner of W. Hastings & Abbott, Vancouver

Paint Your Faith is a remarkable project in which four celebrated artists are interpreting what faith means to them. We would love to know if any of their visions match yours.

Paint Your Faith Vancouver brings together the top urban artists from Brazil, Canada, Italy, and South Africa to collaborate on a mural expressing what faith means to them - creating a public dialogue about how spirituality and street art can transform lives and change communities.

This edition of Paint Your Faith features the artists Faith47 (South Africa), Indigo (Canada), TitiFreak (Brazil), and Peeta (Italy).

We invite you to join us at the following events:

Originally posted on Sojourners God's Politics blog.

One of the reasons the St. Francis quip, “Preach the gospel always, if necessary use words,” is so often quoted is because it pokes fun at Christians’ propensity to think sharing our faith is primarily about words. And for good reason. We study the words of the Bible. Our church services are filled with words. Our endless discussions on hot-button issues overflow with words. Even prayer, our most intimate form of communication, is nearly always reduced to mean those prayers we make with words.

But if mere words were enough, perhaps the Word we worship wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of becoming flesh and dwelling among us. Sharing our faith can’t be reduced to rehearsed sound bite, but is something as complex, sensitive, and alive as we are.

For those of you who haven't seem the full version of the Paint Your Faith mural, it's a really beautiful work of art. Click here to see a larger version.