by Patti Holman

Astrid and Roger Feldman sit halfway back in Bethany's sanctuary on Sundays, but every other day they are up on their feet—working hard and giving back. This month Astrid (pronounced "Austri") begins her fifth year on the faculty of Hay Elementary School, and Roger, a sculptor, starts his sixth year on the art faculty of Seattle Pacific University.

Though the Feldmans are relatively new to Bethany, becoming members last December, they are old friends to Seattle.

In high school, through different Young Life ministries, both Astrid and Roger found personal relationships with Jesus Christ. When they started at the University of Washington in the fall of '68, they both volunteered with Young Life—to give back.

Astrid was working in the University of Washington’s Young Life office, when Roger—fresh from Spokane—stopped in to volunteer. Roger immediately noticed Astrid's Nordic beauty and exuberant enthusiasm, and Astrid later discovered Roger's deep, thoughtful commitment to the Lord.

They dated on and off through college, served together on Young Life’s Eastside, and were among the first to lead Young Life's Beyond Malibu climbing program. They both graduated in 1972—Roger in Art Education and Astrid in Secondary Education—and enrolled in different seminaries after college.

Separation clarified everything, and by Christmas they were married. Instead of returning to seminary, Astrid took a job to pay the bills. Astrid remembers:

"I married Roger thinking I was going to be a minister's wife, but it was so interesting: whenever we would go out, Roger always took his sketch book with him, and he was always drawing. I could tell he was torn between art and the Christian ministry, and I guess because I am adventurous, when I saw Roger at Fuller doing art, I thought, 'Lord. Wow! He's got such gifts and such talents. How are You going to use him being an artist, in a church ministry?'"

For Roger, that melding together of art and church ministry came in 1973, when he did his first art installation on the Fuller campus as part of a class assignment. Briefly, installation art is a contemporary development of sculpture that emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The essence of installation art joins the viewer's experiences with the artist's creation in a total, interactive participation involving the senses and the body as well as the mind and the emotions. The “13 Doors” exhibit, coordinated by Abbie Berry on the Bethany lawn in August, was in the genre of installation art.

When his seminary professors glimpsed the artist in Roger, they helped him connect with Christian art historian Hans Rookmaaker, whose wise influence resolved Roger's dilemma between commitment to Christ and the secularism of contemporary art.

That first summer, they moved back to Seattle to save money, and Astrid was immediately sought out by Mercer Island High School, teaching kids she had led in Young Life just a year earlier. Roger split his time between construction work and, with Astrid's encouragement, began pursuing his new sense of God's leading into art.

"Having a studio was a luxury, but I knew he needed it, because if he didn't have an outlet to do his art, he was not himself," Astrid explains. Even though the budget was tight, she understood that a separate studio validated Roger's fledgling call as an artist.

"Let's be risk-takers," Astrid responded when, with just one semester's tuition saved, they moved to California so Roger could study for a Master’s in Fine Arts in Sculpture at Claremont. After a few faith-testing months, God blessed Astrid with a great job just three blocks from their Claremont apartment, where she taught home economics at El Roble Middle School.

Roger remembers: "I had an offer from a major artist in LA, to work for him, with the implication of an entre into the LA art scene. But we wanted to start a family, and Astrid didn’t want to have to work full time with small children. So by moving back to Seattle, we could start a family and still handle it financially on one income, mine. As we moved back to Seattle I was thinking my chances for an art career were dead, because of that move.”

They bought a bargain house on Queen Anne overlooking SPU, and Roger took a salaried position as a graphic artist in an advertising firm. Two beautiful babies arrived soon after, Kirsten (1979) and Kyle (1982).

"In 1983, I surprised Roger with a trip to New York City,” Astrid reflects. “Roger was so excited to see the art. When I saw him in that environment, it was so obvious that God had really gifted him with talent." With two preschoolers and money very tight, she still made sure they afforded a studio for Roger.

Describing the day he received the call telling him he had been awarded a 1986 National Endowment for the Arts/Individual Artist Fellowship Grant, Roger remembers, "I was stunned. This was a God thing! This is the only national peer review tool that validates an artist's work and gives credibility to an artist. It gave us both enough confidence for me to leave my job and focus 100 percent on art." Other significant commissions followed, one among them from the Washington State Arts Commission/Art in Public Places for an installation in Renton in 1989.

"If you had a job to go to, I could see us moving down here," Roger remembers Astrid saying on a trip to Disneyland that same year, when they went to scout the campus for an installation commissioned by Biola University.

Six months later, Astrid made good on her word when Roger received an offer to join the faculty of Biola. The family moved to southern California, and eventually settled in Fullerton.

For 10 years Roger taught at Biola and pursued art in the LA area and nationally, while Astrid taught in the Fullerton School District for 10 years and completed a Master of Arts in Elementary Education. More commissions propelled Roger's art forward, and in 1993 he received the much-prized grant for an artist's residency at Yaddo, the famous artists' think-tank in Saratoga Springs, NY.

"I encouraged Roger, when an opening came up on the art faculty at SPU, to approach it as a practice interview. It was a real surprise to him when he got the job," Astrid reports. "And it really came a year too soon." Kyle had one more year of high school, and Astrid had won an arts education grant to bring artists into her elementary school classrooms. Accepting the offer meant a year of separation.

“It was hard for Roger and me to be apart. It cemented our love for each other. We recognized we are better as a team than apart," reflects Astrid.

"In hindsight, God weaves things together when we're not looking," Roger muses. "My years in graphic arts put me in a position to set up the design program at SPU. I could teach visual communication, which is applied art, and I could teach sculpture, which is fine art. You almost never find this combination in one person."

"As an out-of-state teacher trying to transfer into the system, I knew it would be hard to get a job," recalls Astrid. But she received an offer at one of the only schools with an opening at the time, Hay Elementary School, right on Queen Anne.

In her first weeks, Astrid met Anne Baumgartner, who had a daughter in Astrid's class. When Astrid learned Anne is an artist, she lost no time recruiting Anne to help replicate the art curriculum she had developed in California. The quality and creativity of Anne's work in the classroom impressed Astrid, and she began encouraging Anne toward a bigger vision. Now Anne is teaching at SPU, inspiring elementary education majors in the uses of art in their elementary curricula.

"The epiphany of my life came a year later, in 2004, when I was chosen to go to Norway with the Seattle-Bergen sister city teacher exchange program," Astrid quietly adds. Astrid was born in Bergen, and moved to Seattle with her parents when she was three years old. "I spent seven weeks in Norway coming alongside teachers at all grade levels because I was fluent in Norwegian." She delighted the Bergen students while delighting herself speaking Norwegian.

This past summer, the whole Feldman family returned to Europe where Roger installed his latest work at Castle Mittersill in Austria, while giving a workshop on installation art for the Evangelical Arts Conference. The Feldmans combined this commission with a family adventure, taking Kirsten, 25, and Kyle, 23, to visit their relatives in Norway.

"I understood, early on,” says Roger, “that you can only go as far as your spouse will let you, in any venture, if it's a relationship as opposed to dominance. Every time I end up in a book, or get some award, it's us. We're a team. When I am questioning moving forward or I feel overwhelmed, she's the counterbalance who says, 'You can do this.' She's the encourager who sees the signs and gives me perspective." s

"The journey isn't over yet, where are You really taking us?" Astrid queries enthusiastically, imagining what God will do next. Embracing adventure and 30-plus years of exquisite sacrifice, each for the other, characterizes their steady progress and amazing fruitfulness, against seemingly impossible odds. It's a God thing.