Artist of the Month: Linda Hogan
Linda Hogan can teach us a generous vision of nature. In her poems, novels, stories, and nonfiction, she shows a love of the created order that exists not at the expense of love of humanity, but as a fuller expression of that love. To be human, according to her vision, is to be situated on the planet, and to be sensitive to its moods, its angles, its secrets, and its kinds of life—animal, vegetable, and even mineral. Hogan possesses the skill of standing in awe of the earth’s mysteries, a sensitivity to the grace present in nature. Her language—careful, polished, serene, and strange—shocks us awake to the grandeur around us, and reminds us of our part in it. Hogan shows us our smallness, yes, but also our giftedness, our blessedness. This is not a fearful smallness, but the smallness of humility before something wildly, mightily alive.

Click here to read….

Danielson: A Family Movie
Daniel Smith is perhaps the strangest and most compelling figure to be making something approaching Christian pop music these days. J.L. Aronson's film, Danielson: A Family Movie (Or, Make a Joyful Noise HERE), tracks Smith and his brothers, sisters, parents, friends, and well-wishers who form the bizarre and reverent fractured-pop band the Danielson Famile. (The spelling, like many things about the band, from their nurse's uniforms to onstage choreography, is strangely purposeful.) In a winningly low-budget, intimate fashion, Aronson chronicles Smith's early days as an art student at Rutgers to the release of 2006's critically lauded Danielson album Ships with footage of the band in concert, rehearsal, prayer, and family get-together. Christians unfamiliar with Danielson may find the world portrayed by Aronson refreshing…or just weird. Smith is so sincere and single-minded about his desire to make art that reflects God's glory, and the family is so close-knit and loving, but their music just isn't for everyone. As one concertgoer in the film remarks, "I'm in a metal band, and they freak me out." Smith's oddball lyrics (example: "How'm I lookin' in your frilly bonnet/with a diamond on it/I guess I better go"), his high-pitched squeak of a voice (some compare him to Frank Black of the Pixies, which doesn't begin to describe it), and his penchant for visual flair (the nurse’s uniforms, performing inside a giant tree costume, an act in which he dresses as a door-to-door salesman) will be off-putting to some. But the sheer passion of Danielson, the love, faith, and sincerity, so sorely lacking in the vast majority of Christian pop music, is something the music world—and maybe just the world, full stop—dearly needs. As Smith himself says in the film, during a conversation with independent music producer Steve Albini: "I wish there was… a real Christian music scene. I wish there was a real one. Because they would be selling CDs for eight dollars, they would be giving full artistic license, encouraging creativity. They would be really doing things Christ did and continues to do." That strange creature called Contemporary Christian Music ain't it. But Smith is right when he adds that true "Christian music" isn't confined to office blocks in Nashville: "It exists all over the place." It does, thank God.

For more information about Danielson: A Family Movie, click here or purchase the DVD.

Learn more about the Danielson Famile here.

Remnants (A Fable) at Pacific Theatre
Set in Poland and Canada between 1925 and 1946, Remnants (A Fable) brings the biblical story of Joseph back to the stage in a modern interpretation. Written by leading Canadian playwright Jason Sherman, winner of the prestigious Governor General’s Literary Award, Remnants revisits Canadian history while addressing the recurrent problems of anti-Semitism and intolerance. The play follows a man named Joseph Dubczanski from his humble yeshiva to a post of prominence in the Canadian government. Prone to daydreaming while his brothers put in long hours at their father’s tailor shop, Joseph receives both the physical and emotional brunt of his brothers’ pent up anger. When Joseph is forced to learn the family trade, his brother Judah, the family’s firebrand, accuses him of spying for their overly critical father—an accusation that eventually lands Joseph in the work camps in Depression-era Canada, forced into exile. With evident leadership skills and a gift for interpreting dreams, Joseph manages to earn both the respect and resentment of his co-workers. Resourceful to a fault, he continues to conceal his Jewish identity amidst a series of providential promotions, eventually becoming the Prime Minister’s beloved advisor. As the story reaches its climax, the Prime Minister asks Joseph to send a boatload of European Jews back to their homeland. When Joseph arrives on the scene, he is shocked to discover the boatload of refugees includes his brothers. Directed by Ron Reed, and co-produced by Pacific Theatre and Trinity Western University, Remnants (A Fable) is an Emerging Artist Showcase, and features Pacific Theatre’s apprentices, Kirsty Provan, Elizabeth Pennington, and Tina Teeninga, along with, Laura van Dyke, John Voth, and Jacqueline Youm, among others. The play features scenery and lighting by Stancil Campbell and costume design by Jessie award winner, Nicole Bach. Remnants (A Fable) will continue at Pacific Theatre in Vancouver, BC until June 9, 2007.

Purchase tickets from Pacific Theatre.

Mud Flap Girl’s XX Guide to Facial Profiling by Nicole Hardy
In her debut chapbook, a collection of Shakespearean sonnets titled Mud Flap Girl’s XX Guide to Facial Profiling—and yes, that’s the mud flap girl you’re thinking of, buxom, silver, and ubiquitous—Nicole Hardy gives voice to a low-art profile, an American icon few would think to expect much from in the way of reflection (intellectually, anyway). But Hardy’s, Mud Flap Girl, developed in part at the Milton Center weekly writing group, emerges sassy, ambitious, and giving no quarter. She knows she must make the most of the perfectly molded space her notoriety affords her, and she’s thinking outside the silhouette with a mixture of brass and savvy critique. She styles herself at once “shameless, nameless, naughty and fast” and a “satirist, philosopher, and one- / hit self-mythologizing pioneer.” She contemplates art from Lichtenstein to the Venus de Milo (a “Priceless, marble Barbie”) to Farrah Fawcett’s red swimsuit poster, offering to teach them all a thing or two from her viewpoint in two dimensions: a platonic constancy that those made of flesh can only hope to emulate. Amidst the playful classical allusions and irreverent takes on pop culture, the poems flirt with deeper questions, putting a new twist on virtues—the power of an image and how it should be used; maintaining integrity; working with what you have (“whether or not you were born with it”). In “Mud Flap Girl on Mass Conversion,” she envisions “A land where no woman is measured by / her bustline,” where “the pantyclad pillowfight fantasy” and all it represents dwindles, dismissed with a final roll of the eyes. Has this silver silhouette merely been waiting for women to imagine between the lines, to reclaim the icon within? Mud Flap Girl invites interpretation, but she’s not giving anything up or away: “there’s a catch: / this bombshell body’s got a mind to match.”

To purchase this book or visit Nicole Hardy’s website, click here.

Wait, You Said You’re Not Going to the Trinity Arts Conference?!
Lucky for you, there is still time to register for this fabulous interdisciplinary arts event in Dallas, Texas, held June 7 to 10. Besides Image editors Greg Wolfe and Mary Kenagy, speakers include nonfiction writer Lauren Winner, collage artist Mary McCleary, theologian Ralph Wood, and singer-songwriter Doug Burr. This year’s theme, “For All the Saints,” will focus on the role of the believing community in the lives and practice of artists—both fellow travelers in the here and now and the great cloud of witnesses in the sweet by and by. This conference in itself is a great model of an artistic community, lovingly planned, with a homegrown feel and a rollicking, welcoming atmosphere.

For more, visit www.TrinityArtsConference.com.

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Masterpiece Project 2007: A Summer Arts Program for High School Students
If there were a Glen Workshop for high school students, it just might look something like the annual week-long Masterpiece Project, a residential summer arts program for rising 9th- to rising 12th-graders. A program of Masterpiece Ministries, which was co-founded in 1995 by Image’s own Glen Workshop instructor, the calligrapher Tim Botts and his wife Nancy, along with long-time youth workers Gordon and Sherrie Rogers, the Masterpiece Project week offers instruction in creative writing, dance, drama, film, music, and visual arts. Masterpiece seeks to validate creativity as a genuine gift from God, foster the pursuit of excellence in creative expression, and provide programs for exploring the arts within the context of Christian community. All workshop instructors are educated and skilled artists working professionally in their fields, and they incorporate their Christian faith experience into their studio classes. This year's theme "Idols or Icons?: Authentic Light" will be explored during the Project week, July 22 - 28, 2007 at Cumberland University in Lebanon, TN, just 45 minutes east of Nashville. Scholarship assistance is available. For more information, please visit www.masterpieceministries.org, e-mail
info@masterpieceministries.org, or call 615.453.2038.

Call for Poems
The Anglican Theological Review, a quarterly journal of theological reflection, seeks submissions of poetry. We are committed to publishing the best work we can find, and in particular those transformative poems that reveal an awareness of the depth and breadth of Christian tradition, whether explicitly or not. For more information and complete submission guidelines, please visit Anglican Theological Review online. You may also email the Poetry Editor, Sofia M. Starnes, or write to the following address: Sofia M. Starnes, Poetry Editor, Anglican Theological Review, 4951 Burnley Drive, Williamsburg, VA 23188.

Talmud: Ben Zion and Marc Chagall Exhibit
Talmud, a collection of the art of Ben Zion and Marc Chagall, is now on display at John Knox Presbyterian Church until June 17. This exhibit brings together the Biblical work of two of the most important Jewish artists of the 20th Century. Even though Talmud deals traditionally with text and not image, these images are commentaries on the text of Scripture in the best of the Talmudic tradition. The exhibit is on loan from Christians in the Visual Arts (CIVA) and the collection of Edward and Diane Knippers.  John Knox Presbyterian Church is located at 109 SW Normandy Rd in Normandy Park, WA. For more information e-mail Brian Moss at bmoss@jkpcusa.org.

Women's Spirituality Writing Workshop in Provence with Sheryl Cornett
Heart of Provence Writing and Photography Workshops Celebrate The Spirit of Women. Bastille Week, July 14-22, 2007. Live in a 16th century chateau in the heart of lavender country and write in the shade of a medieval convent where the Sisters still tend gardens, sing vespers and welcome travelers. Re-discover your voice in this deeply spiritual setting. Limited enrollment! Booking now! Click here for more information or e-mail judithreitman@earthlink.net.

Schloss Mittersill Summer Arts Conference: July 6-14, 2007
This year, the Schloss Mittersill Arts Conference celebrates its 10th anniversary. The conference, held at a castle in Austria July 6-14, 2007, has for its theme this year “A Thin Space: Conditions for Creativity,” referencing both the experience of creating out of a place of want (the painter whose family never acknowledged her gift, the violinist who plays a cheap instrument, the dancer with physical injuries, or the poet who lacks formal education), and the distance between the visible world and the invisible, between our earthly sphere and God's. Conference-goers will examine themselves and the consequences of living within these spaces—how working under adverse or '”thin” conditions is often the context from which the most powerful art emerges, or how at certain times the veil of separation between our reality and God’s has been thin enough that pilgrims, saints and artists have glanced through the veil and reported amazing discoveries. The conference will feature its standard mix of plenary talks, workshops, concerts and performances—Murray Watts is the featured speaker—with a few added surprises. If you have registration or travel questions, please contact Schloss Mittersill at info@schlossmittersill.org. For questions regarding the program, contact Steven Purcell at sd_Purcell@hotmail.com. And for more details, workshop information, and directions, please visit the Arts Conference page.

Erica Grimm-Vance’s series of 5' x 5' panels, incorporating such varied media as texts, gold, ECG readings, maps, and wax, will be at Bellevue Gallery in Vancouver, Canada through May 26.

The S-Word. The Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels presents The S-Word: The State of ‘Spirituality’ In Contemporary Art through August 24. For more information on the exhibition, contact info@olacathedral.org or (213) 680-5200, or visit www.olacathedral.org.

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 here, call 877.277.CITA, or e-mail admin@cita.org for more info.

Still Time to Register for the Glen!
If you’ve been thinking about attending the Glen Workshop this summer, now is a good time to sign up. There are still slots open in Songwriting, Playwriting, and the Seminar: Peoples of the Book. As of today, the Fiction, Drawing, Poetry, Calligraphy, Mosaic, and Spiritual Writing workshops are full—however, we’ve opened up free waitlists, 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. 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.