Artist of the Month: Gary Miranda
Each of Gary Miranda’s poems is a world of motion, both animal and intellectual. They bound, twitch, shift, and bloom with affection toward time-bound humanity and the objects and ideas that entrance us. Effortless (or at least effortless-looking) and alive, full of wit, energy, and movement, they invite the reader to participate in a dance. Miranda’s poems are the kind Scott Cairns calls sacramental: they create the experience they’re talking about. In an interview (in Image #46), Miranda describes his sense of a poem as a living thing, an animate thing, a grace given rather than earned. But a poem is no slight work in his eyes: “One of the great tasks of poetry,” he says, “is to find better names for God.” A poet, translator, teacher, parent, and screenwriter, his career trajectory reflects an unusual kind of humility toward writing. When asked about poetry as a sacred calling, he quotes Rilke, whose poems he has translated: “The Spirit wants only that there be flying. As for who happens to do it, in that he has only a passing interest.”

To read an interview with Gary Miranda from Image #46) click here.

Click here to go to Gary Miranda’s Artist of the Month page.

Image Receives Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts
Image has been awarded its third Access to Artistic Excellence in Literature grant by the National Endowment for the Arts. Image is unique among literary publications not only for its focus on religion and art, but for its high production values. Celebrating eighteen years of publication, the journal has earned a reputation that allows the editors to solicit material from the world’s leading writers and artists. The NEA award to Image supports writers’ payments, printing costs, and promotion of the journal to a wider readership. With a total circulation of over 4,000, Image is among the top five literary quarterlies in America, by paid circulation. To be recognized a third time by the NEA is a great affirmation of Image’s mission to contribute to culture in a meaningful, transformative way.

Find out more about Image and its programs here.

Bible Road by Sam Fentress
Only five of Image’s 50-plus back issues are out of print, and the issue that most people long to obtain is #16—which contains Annie Dillard’s “Notes for Young Writers” and the feature on Sam Fentress’s photographs of roadside religious art. Well, issue #16 is still out of print, but many of Fentress’s photographs, taken over a two-decade time span, have now been collected in a beautiful coffee-table book entitled Bible Road. Reviewed on Newsweek online and covered by CBS Sunday Morning, the book is gaining more than an art-book readership. An architectural photographer, Fentress has traveled across forty-nine states to record the various ways in which religious belief is conveyed to passersby on American roads. The range of emotions and attitudes Fentress has captured give the lie to the notion that the only form of roadside art is the apocalyptic or moralistic admonition. He has found plenty of those, such as the words painted on a stone (“Obey God or Burn”). But he has also discovered humor, pathos, desperation, and love. We have a number of favorites, such as the spray-painted graffito “God Says Faith without Work Dead” [sic] and the collision repair center known as “Glorified Bodies.” Don’t get the wrong idea: these photographs are not casual snapshots. Fentress has a gift for framing each sign, allowing us to see it in a larger context, whether that involves a gritty urban streetscape or stark plains with enormous, looming skies. Paul Elie, in his graceful foreword, says: “The conventional wisdom says that signs at the roadside are there as messages for the journey. But Fentress’s work suggests that they have been put there because the side of the road is the only open space left, the place where life in America today seems the largest and the least worked-out.” Thanks to Sam Fentress’s passion and talent, that open space is now a little more available to all of us.

To view some of the photos, go to the book’s website.

Purchase Bible Road here.

Rickie Lee Jones – The Sermon on Exposition Boulevard
Rickie Lee Jones burst onto the music scene in 1979 with her self-titled debut and went on to win the Grammy for Best New Artist in 1980. In addition to a sustained career experimenting with different musical genres, she has starred in—and composed for—a number of films. And now Jones has created an album that Uncut magazine calls “her best album in three decades.” The Sermon on Exposition Boulevard is a rich tapestry of sounds and words. Given her last studio album, The Evening of My Best Day, it is also somewhat of a surprise, even to Jones herself: “I saw it as an end of my work. I didn’t know what would be next.” What came next was a turn towards the sacred. Inspired by The Words, a modern rendering of Christ’s words translated by her friend, Lee Cantelon, The Sermon on Exposition Boulevard was set to be a spoken word album backed by music. By the time the first session was completed, however, Jones had used the text, added material, and improvised two songs. The original plans were soon scrapped in favor of the new Jones-led vision, a stellar performance that bears comparison to the best of Lucinda Williams, Tom Waits, Julie Miller, Van Morrison, and Victoria Williams. Shifting seamlessly between pop songs (“Falling Up”), beautiful meditations (“Gethsemane”), and the experimental and improvised (“Donkey Ride”), the songs aim for the heart of both the gospel and the listener. “The song ‘Where I Like it Best’ (based on the Lord's Prayer) seems to have the most powerful impact,” Jones says. “People get it, from the first bars of the song. It makes me think that people are longing to pray, and are so damaged by their brush with religion.” Growing up, Jones occasionally attended a local Catholic church, but was never baptized, and has made it clear she does not consider herself a born-again Christian. Nevertheless: “We have Christ’s [words] among us, speaking through each of us, if we choose to listen,” Jones said recently in an interview. “In spite of so much distortion of His will and meaning, they reverberate clearly in the good work of so many Christians who may not even know they are followers.” Jones is currently on tour in Europe.

For more information and to buy the album, click here.

Caring for Mother by Virginia Stem Owens
If ever a story defied narration, this is it. In Caring for Mother, Virginia Stem Owens writes about her mother’s slow disintegration, mental and physical, at the hands of Parkinson’s disease. Owens’s account is both honest and restrained—she does not exaggerate her mother’s virtues or downplay her faults; nor does she gloss over the hard questions for the sake of delivering an inspirational, just-in-time-for-Mother’s-Day message. Instead, the experience of reading this book is a little bit like living through a catastrophe—there are times of deep sadness and anger as Owens watches her mother gradually lose her ability to walk to the bathroom, for instance, or when she forgets how to speak familiar words. And there are bouts of impatience as she deals with her mother’s delusions and depression. There are also periods of theological and philosophical wondering—in one chapter, she consults Greek philosophy, Hebrew scripture, and medical texts, all for the answer to her urgent question: what is the self, and can it be lost with the disintegration of one’s mental capabilities? In other chapters, Owens lets us in on her mother’s strange delusions: we read about the people who lurk outside her bedroom window, about the neighbors who conspire to burn down her house, about the strangers who fill the attic with tar and about the mud that is seeping up through the carpet. Caring for Mother is fascinating, not only in its description of a mysterious illness, but also in its refusal to resolve some of the hardest questions. In her struggle to understand what her mother is going through, Owens pores over medical encyclopedias and magazine articles; she learns how to interrogate doctors and specialists. But when all else fails, the act of care-giving itself becomes an act of love—a burden, but also a blessing. Caring for Mother will hit bookstores at the end of this month, but you can preorder your copy at Amazon.com by clicking here.

Click here to read “The Hour of Our Death,” a chapter from the book that was published in Image #26.

Reading with Milton Center Fellow Jessica Murphy
May 23, 2007 at 7:30 p.m.
On Wednesday May 23 in the Library Seminar Room at Seattle Pacific University, the 2006-2007 Milton Fellow Jessica Murphy will give a debut reading from her novel-in-progress about a young woman forging her way in turn-of-the-century Boston. Jessica has spent the academic year in residence at the Milton Center at Image and Seattle Pacific University working on her first book-length manuscript and teaching creative writing classes. The Milton Center, based at Image journal, exists to nurture writers of Christian commitment and literary excellence. In addition to the fellowship, the Center also sponsors a weekly writer’s workshop. Jessica Murphy holds an MFA in fiction from Emerson College. Her fiction has been published in Memorious, her nonfiction has appeared in Poets & Writers and The New York Sun, and she regularly interviews authors for The Atlantic Online.

This event is free and open to the public. For more information, call (206) 281-2988.

For directions to Seattle Pacific University, click here. For a map of Seattle Pacific University's campus, click here.

Erica Grimm-Vance at Bellevue Gallery
Through May 26th, Bellevue Gallery in Vancouver, B.C. is featuring the work of Erica Grimm-Vance. In a series of 5' x 5' panels incorporating such varied media as texts, gold, ECG readings, maps, and wax, Grimm-Vance explores the identity and physicality of art and the body. She also engages issues of textuality and the negotiation of meaning, referencing Heidegger, Derrida, Wittgenstein, and Rilke. ''I'm interested in the body,'' she says. ''More than the sexual body, my focus is about the body in its brokenness and the existence of suffering in the world.'' The gallery is located at 2475 Bellevue Ave, West Vancouver. Its hours are Tuesday-Friday 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m., Saturday 11 a.m.-5 p.m., and by appointment.

For more information call (604) 922-2304 or visit www.bellevuegallery.ca

The S-Word
The Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels presents in its Art Chapel the exhibition The S-Word: The State of ‘Spirituality’ In Contemporary Art. This group collection is an excerpt of a larger exhibition held at The Judson Gallery of Contemporary and Traditional Art in Los Angeles (featured in ImageUpdate #108. The works all share the theme of spirituality, but were not specifically produced for devotional purposes or a sacred environment. The exhibition includes the work of artists Lynn Aldrich, Sandow Birk, Rob Clayton, Einer & Jamex de la Torre, Daniel Martin Diaz, John Frame, Laura Lasworth, Ruth Weisberg and Patty Wickman. A discussion will be held with the curator and several artists Saturday, June 30, 2007, 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. in Cathedral Building Room 6. Advance reservations are required: call Judson Studios at (800) 445-8376. The exhibit runs now through Friday, August 24, 2007. For more information, contact info@olacathedral.org or (213) 680-5200, or visit www.olacathedral.org.

If you have information other ImageUpdate readers might find interesting, share it here! Do you have a question that you hope a member of the ImageUpdate community might have the answer to? Ask it here. Have your messages posted by sending an email to gwolfe@spu.edu.

RUMINATE Poetry and Short Story Contests
RUMINATE Magazine invites you to enter our first annual poetry and short story contests. The submission deadline is June 1, 2007; entry fee is $15. $300 will be awarded to the winner in each category and $150 to the runner-up in each category. You may submit up to three poems in the poetry contest. Short stories must be 5000 words or less. Submissions should be attached or mailed as a MS Word document and should also include a bio. The winners will be featured in the 2007 Fall issue of RUMINATE. Each contestant will receive a copy of the Fall issue featuring the contest winners. To submit, go to http://www.ruminatemagazine.com/contests.htm.

Church and Stage
Augsburg College in the Twin Cities is offering a summer course (July 9–August 12, 2007) for actors and directors on integrating theater into the life of the parish. The class, “Exploring Topics in Religion: Church and Stage,” explores issues of faith through the lens of theater, and includes a practicum producing the Manna Fest—a festival of spiritual performance featuring 24 shows at Augsburg College. For more information about Church and Stage, visit www.augsburg.edu/mannafest.

Christians in Theatre Arts Networking Conference takes place June 13-16, 2007 at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. Join us for an extraordinary conference focused on excellence and aesthetics. Register at http://www.cita.org/chicago/Default.htm. Call 877.277.CITA or email admin@cita.org for more info.

Angels of Light: Ethiopian Art from the Walters Art Museum, including icons, manuscripts, and bronze processional crosses, will be on exhibit at The Museum of Biblical Art (MOBIA) through May 20.

Announcing the Fourth Annual Levertov Awardee: Bret Lott
Bret Lott, author of the Oprah Book Club selection Jewel, which sold more than three million copies, will receive the fourth annual Denise Levertov Award and give a reading at the newly expanded Seattle Art Museum on Tuesday, May 8, 7:30 p.m. Lott's fiction explores the beauty and dignity of ordinary things and ordinary people. His characters embody the old-fashioned virtues of modesty, hard work, and staying in it for the long haul. In his nonfiction and public addresses, he exhibits a keen and sometimes wicked sense of humor: he is at once a fervent Christian believer and an irreverent critic of the absurdities of modern culture—both inside the church and out. Publishing fiction since the age of twenty-three, Lott is the author of the story collection The Difference between Women and Men, the essay collection Before We Get Started, and the novels A Song I Knew by Heart, Jewel, and many others. Co-sponsored by the SPU English Department, the Levertov Award is presented annually in May to an artist or creative writer whose work exemplifies a serious and sustained engagement with the Judeo-Christian tradition. The Denise Levertov Award is named for one of the twentieth century's greatest poets. Levertov, who spent her last years in Seattle, embraced the landscape and culture of the Pacific Northwest. Her identity as a Christian believer—a pilgrim whose faith was inextricably entwined with doubt—became another important facet of her work, particularly in her later poetry. The previous recipients have been poets Madeleine DeFrees and Franz Wright, and nonfiction writer Kathleen Norris. The event is free and open to the public.

For more information and directions, click here.

The Image Florence Seminar
This September 15-22, a small group of inquirers will gather in Florence, Italy, with the Image staff to explore the astonishing outpouring of art and culture that came to be known as the Renaissance. Together we will investigate the ways in which the artists and writers of this period struggled to render an incarnational balance between things human and divine. And we will ask how such a thing might happen again...in our time. We have room for two or three more attendees. If you’re interested, check out our Florence Seminar video for more info, or contact Julie Mullins here.

Glen Spaces Going Fast!
If you’ve been thinking about attending the Glen Workshop this summer, now is a good time to sign up. Spaces have been going quickly, so we recommend contacting us soon to guarantee you get your first choice. As of today, the Fiction Workshop with Moira Crone, Drawing from Life with Barry Moser, both Poetry classes, and Spiritual Writing with Ann McCutchan are full—however, we’ve opened up free waitlists for both classes, and there’s always a chance that a spot will open up. Give us a call at the number below or send us an e-mail with “waitlist” in the subject line. Include your name, address, phone number, and the course option you'd like to be waitlisted for. There are still slots open in Songwriting, Calligraphy, Playwriting, Mosaic, and the Seminar: Peoples of the Book. With Pierce Pettis as the musician-in-residence, and special appearances by the likes of Over the Rhine and Sandra Scofield, this is one Glen not to be missed!

To register, check online to see which classes are filled. Then, go here to register or call us at 206.281.2988.