Darren Chittick decorates with art supplies

Circling Issue #7, featuring Darren Chittick

Darren Chittick is a bricoleur. He has been the pastor at The Church Within since 2014, and he also teaches wheel throwing at Fountain Square Clay Center, weaves on and off looms, and, with his husband Frank, is slowly turning their garage into a functioning makerspace. Darren and Frank recently got rid of their guest bed and are creating a multi-use studio space for fiber art and bricolage of all sorts indoors, too. Darren is applying his love of “making” community-rich experiences into a retreat for makers, creatives, and artists in Oaxaca, Mexico called “Make, See, Do.” Darren, Frank, and their dog, Boss, all live in Indianapolis' Brookside neighborhood in the midst of house plants galore, vegetable gardens for the humans (and squirrels), and native plants for pollinators. 

I met Darren at his church, early on a Monday morning. He showed me around the art gallery he and his congregation have created in their sanctuary, and we sat down to talk about his touchstones. Throughout our co…