Artist of the Month: Father David Denny
Steeped in the traditions of desert spirituality, Father David Denny is an earthy mystic. His writing and homilies beautifully and carefully articulate the deep harmony between mysticism and love of the world. The via negativa—that ancient and often misunderstood Christian tradition of seeking God through emptiness, stillness, darkness—could not have a kinder, clearer spokesperson for our time. For several years he has been unofficial pastor to Image’s Glen Workshop, and has recently served as a guest speaker for Seattle Pacific University’s MFA program, delivering homilies that reflect on writers such as Simone Weil, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and T.S. Eliot. There is nothing vague or dreamy in the meditations he offers, rather humor, wonder, and an intellectual heft that nevertheless does not make intellect a supreme end. Equally at home with ancient and modern art, poetry, and spiritual writing, drawing on poets from John of the Cross to Auden, he reminds us that the desert and the darkness are not bleak, hopeless places, but mysterious sources of life where emptiness and stillness open the way for the Beloved to enter and allow the soul to open to God. Father Dave demonstrates in his life and writing that a call to the desert is also a call to the world, that an earnest seeking after God in silence and emptiness is the natural corollary to a profound, intimate love of the created order, and that beautiful work of human hands is not an impediment to the soul’s stillness but a pathway to it. In 2006, with Tessa Bielecki, Father Dave founded the Desert Foundation, which studies the world’s traditions that grow out of desert spirituality and fosters conversations around those traditions. Father Dave shows us that, when they are pursued with energy and reverence, the path of emptiness and the path of love meet.

Read his essay from "The Matter of Devotion: A Symposium on Art, Liturgy, and the Stuff of Worship," in Image #49, here.

GregoryWolfe.com is Live and Kicking
Claiming that “I am not sure I have the wherewithal to launch a blog,” Image editor Gregory Wolfe has nevertheless just hung his shingle out in cyberspace with a brand new website: www.gregorywolfe.com. Handsomely designed by Joel Ertsgaard and featuring visual art from artists who have been featured in the pages of Image (including Alfonse Borysewicz, Mako Fujimura, Erica Grimm-Vance, Wayne Forte, and Jim Morphesis), the site contains a whacking great amount of Wolfeana. The “Life” section includes a bio, CV, news page, and photos (dignified and undignified). The “Works” area includes excerpts from and reviews of Wolfe’s books, plus online essays, interviews, and audio clips. In “Talks” he lists a number of his lecture topics, sets out his speaking schedule, and provides details on how to book him to speak for your event. Under the heading of “Passions,” Wolfe has taken some time to write about his interests: the “Art” section provides links to Image and the MFA program at Seattle Pacific University, while “Faith” relates his involvement in the international Catholic lay movement known as Communion and Liberation, and under “Incarnation” he shares links and thoughts about the tradition of Christian Humanism. We’re biased (of course we have to be... we work for him) but we think it’s pretty cool. Greg wants to offer special thanks not only to Joel and the contributing artists, but also to Dominic Williamson who built the site and to Rachel Ellis and Sara Arrigoni, who helped him put it together. Check it out when you get a chance.

Go to GregoryWolfe.com.

Saint Francis and the Wolf by Jane Langton, Illustrated by Ilse Plume
Although we don’t often review children’s books, there are times when we feel moved to recommend a work whose artistry and language go deeper than the typical fare for kids these days. In Saint Francis and the Wolf, Jane Langton breathes new life into a charming story from the Fioretti, the medieval collection of stories about St. Francis of Assisi. The tale recounts the legend of Gubbio, where the townspeople have closed their gates in order to shield themselves against a wolf that has been terrorizing the town. Unable to function because of crippling fear, farmers and millers and bakers close up shop, and the town quickly descends into poverty. When word of their plight reaches the nearby town of Assisi, a young friar comes to their aid. Called “blessed one” by the townspeople, young Francis is accompanied by a flock of songbirds, the traditional emblem for this patron saint of animals. Rendered in a spectrum of jewel-like tones, Ilse Plume’s illustrations are the highlights of this book. Scenes glow with the touch of her colored pencils, which playfully gild the edges of her drawings with flowers and birds. Together, Plume’s vivid colors and Langton’s clear prose illuminate this story of violence mollified by tenderness, of fear conquered by faith. In the end, it is St. Francis’s love that calms the wolf and forges an unlikely bond between the wolf and the townspeople, facilitating a happy, if temporary, return to the peace of Eden. In essence, that’s what we hope children take away from this book—a strengthened ability to see the potential harmony of faith and nature that Francis embodied, to feel a longing for the reconciliation that restores the unity of all living things.

To learn more about this book, click here.

Margaret Avison, RIP
Canada recently lost one of its pre-eminent poets, Margaret Avison, who died on July 31st. Image is proud to have published poetry by Avison and an extensive interview with her. Born in Galt, Ontario, in 1918, she began work on her first collection as a Guggenheim fellow in Chicago. Twice she has won Canada’s highest literary honor, the Governor General’s Award, for Winter Sun (Routledge) in 1960, and for No Time (Brick Books) in 1989. One of her last collections, Concrete and Wild Carrot (Brick Books), was the Canadian winner of the prestigious Griffin Poetry Prize in 2003. She is also an officer of the Order of Canada. George Bowering, Canada’s first poet laureate, has called her “the best poet we have had,” and at the presentation of the Griffin, the judges’ citation stated, “Margaret Avison is a national treasure. For many decades she has forged a way to write, against the grain, some of the most humane, sweet, and profound poetry of our time.” Her Pascal Lectures at the University of Waterloo were published in 1993 as A Kind of Perseverance (Lancelot). A recent online post speculated that “if Avison were not regularly defined as a religious poet and publicly identified as a Christian, her passing might have commanded greater attention.” We don’t know if this is true or not, but there is no doubt that she was a world-class poet and person of faith.

Margaret Avison’s poetry appeared in Image #30, an interview with her appeared in #45, and a review of one of her collections was published in #51.

Seattle Pacific University MFA Program Graduates its First Cohort
The low-residency MFA in Creative Writing program at Seattle Pacific University is proud to announce the recent graduation of its first cohort at this summer’s residency. The graduates include three fiction students—Jessica Brown, Matt Gallant, and Chad Gusler—five Creative Nonfiction students—Ann Conway, Kelly Foster, George Linn, Nancy Nordenson, and Brian Volck—and two poetry students—Rebecca Kasparek and Mary Van Denend. At their final residency this summer, held alongside Image’s Glen Workshop, the MFA graduates gave craft lectures, read from their manuscripts, and participated in the program’s first graduation ceremony. An adaptation of the commencement address, delivered by the MFA program director Gregory Wolfe, will be published as the editorial statement in the next issue of Image. Reflecting on her experience in the program, graduate Nancy Nordenson says, “This is a sacred journey. What a surprise that has been! I thought I was entering the program to learn to write, and it turned out I was learning to live.” Congratulations, writers!

See photos from the residency here. For more information about the SPU MFA program, click here.

Don Swartzentruber: “Pop-Mennonite”
Bluffton University is currently hosting Don Michael Swartzentruber’s “Pop-Mennonite,” an exhibit of paintings, drawings, comics, and audio that incorporates church bulletin clippings, Disney characters, comic book images, and old Mennonite hymns. Combining folk art with a touch of surrealism and a unique sense of humor, Swartzentruber explores Old Order Mennonite tradition and its weird resonances with pop culture. He began creating "Pop-Mennonite" in 2001 with the support of the Indiana Arts Commission and National Endowment for the Arts. The show runs until September 23 in the Grace Albrecht Gallery at Bluffton University. A reception for the artist will be held from 2-4 p.m. on September 23 in the Sauder Visual Arts Center. The exhibit and reception are free and open to the public. The gallery is located at 1 University Drive, Bluffton, OH and is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays and from 1-5 p.m. on weekends.

Click here for more information about the artist and his work. For information about the gallery, click here.

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The Invisible Dignity Project: September 22 – November 17, 2007
Opening on September 22 in Winnipeg, Canada, the Invisible Dignity Project is a series of events highlighting, through art, music, and dialogue, the oppressed dignity of people who are made invisible in our communities. The imagination and energy that provokes us is rooted in Christian faith, which calls us to lift the veil between us and them. Throughout the week of September 22-29, 2007 we will open an art exhibit, worship and celebrate through visual and performing arts, discuss the concept of art and human dignity at a theoretical and a personal level, talk to school children about art and creating art, pray and fast for victims of human trafficking and break that fast at week's end in a concert of spirit and support for the marginalized and victimized in our city and around the world. After the opening week, there will be ongoing related events throughout the fall and winter—check the website for more.

Image's Glen Workshop Featured on Public Television
Image and the Glen Workshop are featured on a new broadcast of Religion and Ethics Newsweekly, a national public television program produced by WNET Television in New York. The segment was recorded at our recent Glen Workshop, which was centered on the theme—“God of the Desert: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam through the Prism of Art.” Featuring speakers from all three traditions, this year's Glen evoked intense discussion and, for many, new horizons. Its purpose was to challenge Christian artists to discover how beauty and art might enable us to better understand the other religious traditions that trace their lineage back to Abraham. The Religion and Ethics Newsweekly crew, led by senior correspondent (and poet) Judy Valente, filmed extensively in workshops and plenary sessions over a two-day period. At a time when ideological politics and celebrity dysfunctionality dominate the airwaves, we're proud that a national television program sees Image's mission and programs as newsworthy.

View the segment here.

New Gear on Sale Now at the Image Store
Just in time for the Glen Workshop: two new T-shirts are available from Image’s store at Café Press (plus tote bags). The first features Barry Moser's wry, loving portrait of Flannery O'Connor, our unofficial patron saint, who wrote that “In the novelist's case, prophecy is a matter of seeing near things with their extensions of meaning and thus of seeing far things close up. The prophet is a realist of distances.” A mission statement for Image if we ever heard one. The back of the shirt (which comes in both men's and women's cuts) says “The Realism of Distances.” This design is also available in a tote bag. The other shirt uses a paraphrase of a line from Graham Greene's incandescent novel The Power and the Glory: “Hatred is just a failure of the imagination.” The back has the logo and theme of this year's Glen Workshop, which focuses on art and the imagination as a lens through which to view the three great western faith traditions—and as a means to overpower hate. The previous generation of shirts, with Dostoyevsky's mysterious dictum, “Beauty will save the world,” is still available, too, in a variety of styles. Plus: mugs, buttons, hats, and more.

Get yours here .