First Person with Wayne Shepherd

First Person: Ron DiCianni

Artist Ron DiCianni tells his story of coming to Christ in faith and how that decision has shaped his life and calling as an artist. Send your support for FIRST PERSON to the Far East Broadcasting Company: FEBC National Processing Center Far East Broadcasting Company P.O. Box 6020 Albert Lea, MN 56007 Please mention FIRST PERSON when you give. Thank you!

Duration:: 23m
Broadcast on:: 20 Jan 2011
Audio Format:: other

Artist Ron DiCianni tells his story of coming to Christ in faith and how that decision has shaped his life and calling as an artist.

Send your support for FIRST PERSON to the Far East Broadcasting Company:
FEBC National Processing Center
Far East Broadcasting Company
P.O. Box 6020
Albert Lea, MN 56007

Please mention FIRST PERSON when you give. Thank you!

I remember at one point crying as I was painting. I believe I was painting Christ's face. I said to the Lord, "If I don't stop crying, I'm not going to be able to finish this." And I really felt that my heart, Him, said to me, "That's okay, you're not painting it anyway." Welcome to First Person, a weekly conversation centering on a personal story of God's calling and faithfulness. Today, we'll meet Ron D. Ciani, who was on a lifelong quest to reclaim the arts for Christ. Wayne Shepard will get to today's conversation with Ron in just a moment. Each of these weekly interviews is also available online at firstpersoninterview.com. You can go back through the archive and listen to any program you may have missed or check the calendar for upcoming broadcasts. Just go to firstpersoninterview.com, and if you're on Facebook, you can connect with the program by clicking on the Facebook icon at firstpersoninterview.com. Well, I've known Ron D. Ciani for a number of years and have always found him to be not only a talented artist, but also a great advocate for reintroducing the arts to the church. But his passion had to come from somewhere in his past and that's what I wanted to find out as I invited Ron to my studio to sit down and talk about his life story and the beginning of his career in the creative arts. When I was in high school, art was the only class I excelled in. And therefore, the teachers thought, "Well, you're goofing around in everything else because you're failing everything else, not realizing that I was exercising my gift." And back in my day, art was just like one step below recess. You know what I mean? It was, you got the crucial things of reading and math and all of that stuff under your belt. And if you needed an elective, "Well, let's throw you in an art class and see what happens." Not realizing that there were people God created specifically for the purpose of doing creative things in the world. As a matter of fact, there's a great verse in Scripture that many times people misinterpret and I know you know it and I know a lot of the people listening are going to know it. It says, "Train up a child in the way that he should go and when he is old, he will not depart from it." So what people do is they say, "Well, teach him right and wrong." Well, of course, that's of course. However, deeper meaning is, "Watch the way your child is bent to go." And if you send him that way when he's old, he won't depart from it. That's why you have people who are even doctors. Today said, "My grandfather was a doctor, my father was a doctor. They wanted me to be a doctor and I hate my job. I don't want to get up in the morning and go to work." Because they were expected to do it. They were expected to do it. What's their bent? They didn't look at the way he was bent and created to go. And so I've tried to look diligently at my kids and say, "Let's see what you're equipped. How you wired, how did God wire you and be very sensitive to that?" So was there a person? Was it a parent? Was it a teacher? Who was it that believed in you? My mom was probably the first to realize that I had creative abilities and always tried to foster that. However, you got to remember, I grew up in the inner city of Chicago where my dad was a construction worker. When I kept talking about the arts, he said, "Good, how are you going to make a living?" And he told me, he said, "Go be a construction worker. Go be an electrician. Go be a carpenter. You'll always have work." I guess he didn't foresee that today, even some of those are hurting, but he didn't understand that you could be an artist and make a living. But the one that came along that God sent into my life was my wife, Pat. We started dating when I was 16 years old. She was the only date I ever had in my life. Really? Yeah. And I knew she was the one, and she, at least to me, the most beautiful woman I've ever seen in my life. And she didn't know that, I mean, I'm not singing the blues here, but we didn't give Christmas gifts in our family. We didn't have the money. What used to happen is you got a coat around August, and that was your Christmas gift. That had to suffice. That had to suffice. I mean, you got what you needed, and do you remember that coat I bought you four months ago? That was your Christmas gift. So we didn't have the festivities. So Pat bought me my first set of oil paints, bought me my first easel, bought me everything for Christmas gifts. I'm unwrapping Christmas gifts, and I'm going, "What is this?" And she's going, "Well, don't you ever do Christmas gifts?" I said, "No, we don't, we don't do this." We didn't know Christmas trees, we don't know nothing. And so she was the first one. That's all it. How long have you been married? Thirty-seven years last August, but we've been started dating about 42 years ago. Years ago, and each other a long time. A long, long time. And I don't know if she's good or bad, because she's the only girl. I mean, I guess she's crazy. You know what? She wouldn't go to bed. She was the best. She was the best, you know. There are times I'm sure she looks at me and goes you again, but we're not going to get into that. No, we won't. When did the Lord come into your life? My mom was on her way to have me aborted in 1951. She never did tell me why, but I have a feeling that the fact that Italians have a tendency to have multi-generations living together. So my grandmother lived with us, who was a Pentecostal from Italy, couldn't speak English. That's where I learned to speak Italian. My aunt lived with us, of course, my mom and dad, my brother, the dog. And at some point when she became pregnant with me, I think she just said, you know, we had a small little apartment, can't do another one. So she was on her way and told me that, you know, my grandmother must have been praying because she sat down and the procedure back then, you know, we're talking 1951 now. So that's a long time ago. Yeah, we're about the same age and I was born to a teenage unmarried mother. Well, there you are. And so she said that the doctor said this is going to begin with a injection. And my mom, unsaved at that time, said that as the needle came within an inch of her arm, God, audibly spoke to her and said, don't do this, I have a plan for this baby. So she pushed the needle away, walked out and never went back. And for all of the years that she died when she was 88 years old, for all of the years, she kept saying to me, God, as a plan for you, don't forget that God has a plan for you. She would remind me from the youngest age that God had planned for me. And I would go to what we used to call rallies, you know, where there'd be an evangelist of youth rallies, you know, and I'd be in a crowd of 1500 kids and the evangelists would stop and say, you, I'm surprised I didn't say you, the ugly one over there, come on up here. And I'd go up and he'd say, God's picked you, he's got a plan for you. Do you know that? And I would always say, yes, because my mom had been telling me it for decades. And I then would go back to my seat wondering how I was going to explain it to the kids on the bus ride home, you know, and that's how, you know, we, my life began knowing that God picked me kind of like Samuel, you know, but officially I gave my heart to the Lord when I was about 12 years old, when my grandmother died, and I don't know how to say this, but we got kicked out of the Catholic church because we kept saying, we're not finding what my grandmother had. She had Jesus. Why aren't we reading her Bible and the more questions we asked, the more we got to the point where they finally said, you're not free to come back anymore. We'd rather you didn't come back. So Ron, when did the fusion of your art and your gift that you had and have, when did the fusion with your faith come about and how did that happen? Great question. Well, I had the joy of going to the American Academy of Art in Chicago, which at the time was one of the premier schools in the country. And one of the teachers I had professed Christianity and I said to him, someday I'm going to do this in the kingdom. Now that's usually when you get a big pet on the back and say, hey, go for it, kid, we need this. And he looked at me and said, this will never happen. I mean, you talk about the blood draining to your feet, you know, I said, well, the cold slap on the face. Yeah. I said, well, what do you mean? And he said, the church isn't interested in this. The church could care less. He said, there'll be no money. Go to the world. They appreciate it. Well, you don't argue with people at that level, you know, especially being a first year student. I was lucky they let me in, let alone sit there and argue. So what I did is I took what I felt God put in my heart and I hid it in my heart. And I said, yeah, I'm going to do this. I don't care what anybody says. Did you go off to make a living in art then? Well, I found out, unfortunately he was right, that every place I went to try to get the church engaged and like my son, Grant always says, you know, make a call to action. I couldn't find anybody interested. Everybody said, no, we don't do that. We preach, we write, but we don't, you know, this other stuff we don't know what to do with. Well, fast forward 26 years and I had already achieved what you might want to call fame and fortune, all that kind of stuff in the world. And one day in my quiet time before the Lord, I felt the Lord say now is the time. And I said to the Lord, as soon as I get rid of all these important people, I'll turn my attention to you. Well, if you ever want your life to dramatically change answer the Lord like that. Yeah, you don't say no. You don't say no. So I was Jonah for a while. God made it to be obvious where I was supposed to go. And as I began to go into that arena, which the church has withdrawn from, I got to the place where I found what I was born to do. And 26 years after I talked to that instructor, I was at a book in print signing, and I saw the shoes of an old man shuffle up to me. I looked up with tears in his eyes. He was standing in front of me on a start. And we continue our conversation with artist Ron D. Ciani. We'll talk about his current work, and we'll talk about the arts in the church. Next time on First Person, you'll meet Jerry Wiles, who teaches us how to share our faith. I often emphasize the fact that, you know, we're instruments of his work and it's Christ living in us that makes it our work. It's not our personality or charm or education or intelligence. We can all be vessels of his reductive activity. The author of No Greater Joy, Jerry Wiles, joins us to talk about using stories and questions to share our faith. Next time on First Person. As we continue our conversation with Ron D. Ciani, if you'd like to see some of his artwork, you'll find a link to it at firstpersoninterview.com. Ron is working on a large mural in Dallas, and I ask him to talk about that. Well, about two years ago, actually it's a little more than that, I got a call from the Museum of Biblical Art in Dallas, Texas, who had suffered a couple of years before that a devastating fire and literally burned to the ground. Now I had already had a relationship with them, had a show there, had a very successful show, and when they decided to rebuild and, you know, figured out where their money was going to come from, and insurance, and so on and so forth, called me and said, "We lost all of our art, and we need a pilgrimage piece. We need a piece that people are going to come from all over the world just to see. Could you do that for us?" And I said, "Heck, yeah." And then I clicked the phone and said, "What are you nuts?" Did you do anything like that before? Never. I mean, I had done four murals before that, but not to that size. How big is this one? This is, in its raw form, 13 feet high by 41 feet wide. Of course, there was what we call bleed, which means when they wrap it around the stretcher bars. So it turned out to be 12 feet by 40 feet. And what's the subject here? Well, they gave me only one mandate, and they said, "We want it on the resurrection." And you go pray, you figure out what we're supposed to do, and I went and prayed, and two things emerged. The first was, over the years, I had seen the resurrection portrayed as the empty tomb. So just simply an empty tomb symbolized, Christ isn't there any longer. I said, "Boy, it just left me short." I wanted to stop a moment in time where that moment where Christ is grabbing the side of the tomb as the stone was rolled away and he's pulling himself out. Now let me just tell you that when this was on our huge wall in our studio warehouse in California, Johnny Erickson came over to see it. Weeping her eyes out, she said, "Christ's face says to me that he's looking up to the father saying I did it, I didn't, and I was so blessed," I mean, you know, Grant's blowing Johnny's nose for her, and we're sitting there singing, and it's your son who was with you. Yeah, and I mean what a time we had. So at any rate, the second thing I wanted to do was I went after prayer and felt that Hebrews 12-1 had something that needed to be pictured, and that verse says that, "Therefore since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses," that means right now, Wayne, as you and I are talking, is David right over here? Is Jeremiah down right sitting outside waiting for us? I believe, yes, the scripture tells us. Yeah, and so you've got that in this mural. I mean, here's Moses holding up the Ten Commandments, and on the other side, you've got what? You've got John the Baptist? I've got Elijah, I've got Noah, Esther, John the Baptist, the great heroes of the faith. Daniel, the Hall of Fame so to speak. Yeah, Abraham, behind Moses is David kneeling, holding his crown out, Abraham Isaiah, and there's so many things to look for in the painting. It's just amazing. Yeah. We're going to put your website on our website so people can go and look at some of the photographs of this, but if they go to Dallas, they can see this. They can see it and stand in front of it, and I've got to tell you, as I was painting it, I remember weeping, and I paint- And it could be worship for you? Well, it was an experience like my simple words cannot describe. I remember at one point, crying as I was painting, I believe I was painting Christ's face, and I said to the Lord, "If I don't stop crying, I'm not going to be able to finish this." And I really felt in my heart him say to me, "That's okay, you're not painting it anyway." And it's really the truth because as I would get off my scissor lift, I'm 16, 20 feet in the air in an un-air conditioned warehouse in Southern California, it's probably 110 degrees up there, and I'm sweating like I just worked out, but having a ball, and of course, I am terrified of heights. So I would say to the Lord all the time, "You have a great sense of humor." And I felt again that the Lord was saying to me, "This is because you'll never be able to say, "Well, this is what I do. This is what I do." We have so little time left, but you must have seen a bit of a shift in terms of the church and arts. We're not all the way there yet. Yeah, we're still working our way up, you know, unfortunately. Give me an assessment of where you feel we are now and what we need to do. I want to be kind and I want to be encouraging, but I think what has happened is contemporary culture is still dictating where the church goes. We are still looking at what's selling, at what the movies are doing. We're mimicking. We're not creating. We're still not blazing trails. And you know that God has had me blazing trails for all of my life. This is what publishers have always done to me. They've said, "Ron, we've never done anything like that before." And I've always said, "Duh, that's why I'm here." And so I continue to blaze those trails because we have a God that if I could paint another thousand years, I would not touch the surface of His creativity. And since He lives inside of me and His Holy Spirit dwells in me, I've got ideas that are so out of the box that when I bring these to publishers, it just freaks them out. They know that there are some things that are safe, that if they do that, well, we're going to sell so many. And I look at them and I say, "Well, why don't we use some faith and try this?" And it just scares the heck out of them. So as an artist, are you finding it hard to reach the audience you want to reach? Not anymore. Through the traditional channels, I was finding it difficult because what they were wanting was security leaving faith behind. What I was wanting was faith leading me so that we could reach the people in ways that they had never been reached before and speak to them in a language that they had never been spoken to before. So what's changed for you? How are you doing it? Well, one of them is the mural, of course, is impacting people on a grand scale. My pastor, when I was actually painting, my pastor came and would watch me. And he would bring guys from the church or the deacons or the board or whoever, and he said, "You know, I've got an idea." He said, "Around next Easter, however far you're done, why don't we have a worship service in here? We'll move all the machines and all your sons, framing the equipment and all that stuff." And we'll have a worship service, we'll bring the band in. Well, as it got closer, he said it got a better idea. Why don't we tell the other churches in the area? Now I live in a small town in California. It's called Temecula, it's the secondary wine country of California. Not that populated. Do you know almost 2,000 people came out in one day? And we saw people weeping, getting saved right on the spot. We saw parents talking to their kids. We saw kids with eyes so wide that they didn't want to leave. Their parents were sort of dragging them away because we were bringing them in in waves. And the kids didn't want to move. They were being indelibly impacted. So let me just say I'm going for it huge. I'm going for this thing big. When my time to go out happens, I want Jesus to say you did it. That was a question I had for you, how do you want to be remembered someday? I'd like to be remembered as somebody who made his business God. My business, and I'm sort of robbing this from A.W. Tozer who said the business of the church is God. Ron, as you stand before your easel or these giant murals today, is there consciously a verse of scripture or a teaching that goes through your mind that guides your hand? Well, just this past week I was at a summit of artists and a man and his wife who are known for just giving a word of knowledge to people came up to me and said, "We have a word from God for you." And they went to one of my favorite passages, which is where God, Exodus 31 and also Exodus 35, where God said to the artist, he chose bezelel and a holy ab. And he said, "I have filled you with my spirit of skill, ability, and artistic ability to do all the things I've commanded you to do." And then he went on to say, "And for all the craftsmen, I've filled them with the same spirit." And I say to people, "I'm in the Bible. Just way, way down the line. I'm one of those other guys, but way down the line." And so that's what constantly goes through my mind of how God approves of this. Just one of the other guys, but a very talented one, artist Ron D. Ciani. If you'd like to see some of Ron's artwork and read more about his ministry, we've placed a link to his website at firstpersoninterview.com. Also, there's more from Ron that you can listen to online as we didn't have time on the broadcast for the whole conversation. You can hear the rest when you click on "Listen Now" at the top of the webpage, firstpersoninterview.com. First Person is a weekly program highlighting people and their stories as I encounter them on the course of my work in radio ministry. Of course, your ideas for guests are always welcomed as well, and you can email me with the address found at firstpersoninterview.com. By the way, the website also contains an archive of this week's interview and all previous first person interviews. Just click on "Listen Now" for the list of guests to choose from at firstpersoninterview.com. Next week, you'll meet Jerry Wiles of Living Water International, who is the author of No Greater Joy. He'll teach us to share our faith. Now with thanks to my producer and friend Joe Carlson, I'm Wayne Shepard. Join us next week for First Person. [music]