Photo: Bob Regier in his home studio holding a print of “Mennonite Flight from Russia.” Photo by Gordon Houser. 

In the fall of 1962, Maynard Shelly, editor of The Mennonite, brought Bob Regier, the General Conference Mennonite Church magazine’s art editor, a series of Bible studies by Pieter de Jong, then a professor of systematic theology at St. Andrew’s College at the University of Saskatoon, called “Strangers in the Bible.” Regier decided to illustrate the articles with original wood-block prints.

Now those prints have a second life.

Regier, who worked for The Mennonite from 1957 to 1963 before heading off to graduate school and later coming to Bethel College in North Newton, Kansas, to teach art, is now retired and on the art committee of Bethel College Mennonite Church (BCMC) in North Newton, where Regier lives.

Regier has long created liturgical banners for his church as well as for other congregations. BCMC had built an addition in recent years, and the art committee was looking at artwork that might be displayed in the church more permanently. At the same time, the committee didn’t have much money. Regier mentioned the prints he had made more than 50 years earlier, and “The Migration Series” was born.

Regier still had access to the original wood blocks, which had been stored at Kauffman Museum in North Newton. The committee decided to make new prints from the five blocks and offer additional impressions from three of the blocks for purchase, unframed, at $100 each. The pieces are printed by hand on Japanese rice paper, which Regier says is a good archival paper. Eighty percent of the income from sales will go to support the art budget of the church and 20 percent will be designated for Mennonite Central Committee refugee work.

The series of prints “seems relevant to what’s going on today,” said Regier in an April 3 interview. The prints are titled “The Departure of Abraham,” “The Diaspora,” “Crossing the Red Sea,” “The Crucifixion” and “Mennonite Flight from Russia.”

You can see Regier’s work at www.bobregier.com. To place an order for a print, contact Monica Lichti at 316-283-3667 or office@bethelcollegemennonitechurch.org. The prints will be available after June 1.

Click on the images below to see all prints in “The Migration Series”: