Ayla Roback & Marisa Buhr Mizunaka

The process of collaboration can be sticky and difficult: Contending for co-creating is not easy... Yet an incredible necessity. When our minds and art come together, it is a little fearsome when we wonder if it will clash or meld, singing sparks of heat springing from the meeting. Yet out of those sparks, something beautiful is made and realized, whether or not it comes out the way we envisioned it. To collaborate is to recognize: With you, my art is made better. With you, I see a new piece of reality I had not, not considered before. With you, my mind is expanded. 

Collaboration is the heart of what we aim to do and become at B+PC because we believe that together, we can go so much further. As with any village, the more diverse the community, the better the chance of our survival.  

In big and in small, through failures and successes, with our collaboration, we are looking forward and working toward a shared vision of the world. 

This month, B+PC went spooky, with all original hand-drawn art from Ayla and Marisa collaborating to create comic style and 1940-60s inspired Horror movie posters. They took inspiration from vintage movie posters, comics, and art in the style of Roy Lichtenstein and created a mind-meld of their unique art styles and backgrounds in graphic design.

Marisa Buhr Mizunaka is our resident wordsmith, Featured Artist lead, and artist. Bible + Pop Culture is important to her because this community prompts deeper thought and a more intentional creation of space for conversation. If you want to read more of her work, check out and engage with her favorite written works, An Exploration of Definition Through the Enneagram and Who Told You?: A Letter to Women. Her artistic mediums include photography, painting, specialty coffee, and human connection. Learn more at Marisa Buhr Photography and connect at @marisa.mizunaka.

Also a member of our Creative Team, Ayla Roback serves as our graphic designer. She creates all of the posts for our social media, designs the graphics and covers for our articles, and is one of the faces behind the screen, commenting and interacting with you on our posts. Ayla has also written a few articles for B+PC including Millennials and Social Media: What’s the Hype?, The Circle: Are You In or Out?, Onward: The Great Quest for Meaningful Story, Chadwick Boseman: Real-Life Superhero & Legacy of Black Excellence, and switched it up this month with the podcast, Haunting of Hill House: It’s Not As Bad As It Is In Your Head. Her passions are graphic design, all things pop culture (Disney, Studio Ghibli films, Game of Thrones, Wes Anderson movies, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Marvel, scary movies, AND Star Wars…no really, ALL the things), and the arts, and her free time is spent with her little buddy, four-year-old, Finn. Her graphic design page can be found here:

@ayllama_designs on Instagram.

Resources

We’ve created a free downloadable PDF to explore the article deeper. It contains discussion questions about the topic in general terms that will give you a jumping-off point for beginning a conversation.

The second page contains a way to see the topic from a biblical perspective.

And finally, to go deeper into the subject, we have chosen a few curated resources to explore from other authors’ and thinkers’ research or perspectives.

Read. Engage. Enjoy!

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Depending on how a gem is held, light refracts differently. At B+PC we engage in Pop Culture topics to see ideas from a new angle, to bring us to a deeper understanding. And like Pastor Shane Willard notes, we want “…Jesus to get bigger, the cross to get clearer, the Resurrection to be central…” Instead of approaching a topic from “I don’t want to be wrong,“ we strive for the alternative “I want to expand my perspective.” 

So, we invite you to engage with us here. What piqued your curiosity to dig deeper? What line inspired you to action? What idea made you ask, “Hmmm?” Let’s join with our community to wrestle with our thoughts in love in the Comment Section! See you there!