Willow Creek Worship & Arts Conference 2007 Photos

Lighting, Stage New Willow Creek Auditorium. 

Above:  Backdrop for the Event.  Each “layer” of the stage raised electronically/mechanically so that other elements needed to come out from behind stage to the front, as we saw in the ”Scribble” presentation.  Even with all the staging, there was still plent of room for another dance team on the stage.  I wonder what it’s dimensions were?  It’s HUGE.

Above:  Downtown Chicago, and a walk to Lake Michigan the night we went to see Blue Man Group.  My cam battery was all but dead, but thankfully, I got a few shots.  We weren’t allowed to take pics of the Blue Man Group and I didn’t want to fight the crowd after the show for one.  But, Blue Man Group was a great artistic show.  It was like Saturday Night Live on Mountain Dew with Drums.  Very crazy.  Very Fun.  Very Creative, and a little weird.  Okay, a lot weird.  It took us THREE HOURS to drive from Northern Chicago to downtown for Blue Man Group…fortunately, we were on a tour bus with Willow and they served a box dinner for us.  It only took an hour to get back to Willow at 10PM.  Traffic in Chicago is NUTS.  On the trip, they showed us last year’s featured artist concert:  Delirious!  We watched how they coordinated a video concert CD for Dilirious, and gave live action from “the blue room” with all 11 cameras flying every which way to make a great video with the production guy’s commands directing the taping.  Very cool.

This is behind Willow Creek’s Auditorium.  We went for a walk during Wednesday’s lunch break to stretch our legs.  After a day of driving and then sitting in conferences, the “escape” was so welcome.  I imagine this little nature refuge helps people reconnect from a busy world as well. 

The fountain can be seen from the old auditorium windows.  I love how they raise and lower blinds in both auditoriums to  gradually transition back to “the real world”.

The grounds were well tended and had people sprawling all over the yard.  The only thing that seemed out of place was the inordinate amount of dog dung to navigate as you walked or tried to sit down to rest on the lavish grash.  Apparently, people come to walk their dogs there a lot…which seemed odd.  How do they get there?  Do they drive and then walk across the hot blacktop?  There seemed no houses nearby.  Quite a mystery.  If you know more about the mystery of the dog dung, let us know.

A second question…we found these berries growing on a tree pictured above.  Now, they looked like blackberries, but blackberries don’t grow on trees, they grow on vines, right?  They tasted sweeter than a blackberry…no bitter essence at all.  Anybody know what the mystery of the berry is?  (Okay, my Mom and “Daisy” emailed to tell me they are mulburries!)

These were some Chicago street musicians they brought in to entertain us in the lobby during our break.  This guy was about social justice.  One guy was about lost love and lovers gone awry.  Another was a soulful saxophone player.  Each had their tip box or open guitar case.   You could feel their soul and desperate need to do what they did…

Do you have pics?  Link here…I’d like to see them.  I few posts ago, I wrote some personal reflections from the teachings.  I’ll add that link here soon.

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