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 Artist of the Month: Jim Morphesis
Painter Jim Morphesis creates works suffused with passion. Not passion in the superficial sense of “enthusiasm,” but in something closer to the dramatic, scriptural meaning of the word. When you encounter his work you have to brace for some pain, for the suffering and sin and violence and awareness of mortality that characterize our human experience. Morphesis says he paints “flesh and bone,” which makes sense, because it is in the human body that suffering leaves its marks. Skulls, heart, torsos, the crucified body of Christ: all of these appear in his paintings. The very application of paint itself is fleshly—thick, built up as if over a long period of patient endurance. Whether he is drawing on biblical narratives or classical myths, Morphesis works within the great tradition of Western art, interweaving his meanings so that form and content become one. The new body of work is even more challenging, because it draws directly from the imagery of the packing house. Yet nothing is gratuitous in these pieces: if the viewer is willing to trust the artist, the journey into darkness and pain will be rewarded by a powerful sense of human dignity and even hope. That’s where that word passion comes in: as in the Gospel, Morphesis knows that passion doesn’t mean mere passivity: true human passion, as Christ modeled it for us, involves an active leaning in to what the world brings us. The great Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa once said that “the artist is the one who does not look away.” Jim Morphesis does not look away. Neither should we.
Visit the Artist of the Month page on Jim Morphesis here.
Register Now for the 2008 Glen Workshop!
“The Artist and the City: Art and Faith in the Public Square”
 July 27 – August 3, 2008
The Glen Workshop is an illuminating conference on the arts and religion, where participants practice and strengthen their craft and vision in community. This weeklong event combines the best elements of a workshop, an arts festival, and a symposium. By exploring this year’s theme, “The Artist and the City: Art and Faith in the Public Square,” participants will share a common ground for discussion during the week. Morning workshops are small enough to allow the faculty to give close attention to each participant—to beginners as well as those advanced in their craft. This year’s faculty includes poets Margaret Gibson and Daniel Tobin, fiction writer Valerie Sayers, photographer Kathy Hettinga, illustrator Barry Moser, assemblage artist Barry Krammes, playwright Mark St. Germain, musicians Linford Detweiler and Karin Berquist of Over the Rhine, and spiritual writer Ann McCutchan. A seminar class, “Art, the City & the Beloved Community” will be led by Tim Rollins. For artists and non-artists alike, the seminar is a forum to explore the workshop theme in more depth through discussion and hands-on collaborative art making. Afternoons and evenings at the Glen feature faculty readings, lectures, and presentations. Each evening concludes with an ecumenical worship service that incorporates the arts, led by pastor Debbie Blue. Free time offers participants opportunities for writing, conversation, hiking, and exploring the stunning scenery and cultural treasures in and around Santa Fe. Surrounded by the stark, dramatic beauty of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, the Glen is hosted at St. John’s College campus and is within easy reach of the rich cultural, artistic, and spiritual traditions of northern New Mexico. Please note that class sizes are limited: don’t wait too long to register!
To register for the Glen Workshop, or to find out more information, click here. A brochure will be printed and mailed in mid-January. If you are on the Image subscriber list, you’ll automatically receive a brochure. If you’d like to have one mailed to you, send us an e-mail by clicking here.
 Run in the Fam’ly by John J. McLaughlin
In this ambitious debut novel, winner of the Peter Taylor Prize, John J. McLaughlin tells the story of Jake Robertson, a young man caught in the welfare system at the burnt-out end of the Regan-Bush era. Jake is fundamentally decent, sensitive, and observant (an ideal first-person narrator), and wants to do right by his girlfriend and her son. The welfare system being what it is, and the job options being worse, Jake is pulled inexorably toward the legacy of violence and crime passed to him by his father, Curtiss. Curtiss is a brutal and volatile man who also has moments of humor and charm, which make Jake’s thorny attraction and loyalty to his father credible if maddening. Curtiss is the book’s central mystery, and his infuriating mix of cruelty and mercurial affection is beautifully and believably drawn. In him, you can see the ghost of a boy who may once have been like Jake. The book’s landscape, the Flatlands neighborhood of Oakland, is described in keen and loving detail, giving the weight of a serious social document in the way of Emile Zola or John Updike in the Rabbit books. The work is at once a commentary on the limitations of the American welfare system and the deadening round of urban poverty, and a portrait of the universal psychodrama of fathers and sons, as well as a page-turner (Jake is soon tempted to undertake a risky criminal venture for the sake of his family). The first-person prose is brisk, lyrical, and convincingly native to the young man telling the story, a gentle soul forcibly and tragically layered over with street toughness. The work is an example of a new American realism that pairs a longing for justice with an understanding of literary craft, and Richard Rohr calls McLaughlin “a remarkable new writer of extraordinary vision and courage.” Alongside its social and political theme, the book also holds out a profound truth as necessary in our age as in any other: that through humility and suffering, we meet God.
Click here for more.
 Into Great Silence
Located in the French Alps, the Grande Chartreuse is the mother house of the Carthusian order. As one of the world’s most ascetic monasteries, it has long been the subject of public curiosity. In 1984, German filmmaker Philip Gröning wrote the monastery asking for permission to make a documentary about life within its hallowed walls. Sixteen years later he was given permission to do so, along with specific guidelines: he was to live with the monks, film alone, and use only natural light and sounds. Filmed over a six month period, the award-winning Into Great Silence uses no archival footage or musical score, and what ensues has rightly been called “elemental: time, space, and light… more meditation than documentary.” At 162 minutes, the film allows the viewer a sort of participatory askesis. Without a narrator-guide, the film’s focus becomes the focus of the monks—silence, prayer, simplicity, and God. And journeying alongside the monks into such quietness, the attentive viewer becomes increasingly aware of the tension between true stillness and our enculturated freneticsm. This awareness, then, prepares the viewer not only for the film’s overall impact, but for individual confrontation: interspersed between the daily rhythms of prayer and eating and work are a series of portraits—each silent monk staring straight at the viewer for five to ten seconds. How are you being, they seem to ask. What are you becoming? Near the end of the film an aged and blind monk addresses the viewer: “This is the most important: God is infinitely good, almighty, and He helps us.” Beautifully direct, and offered at the end of such relative silence, one feels the tone of simplicity has been earned. Such beauty, then, lingers over the documentary’s conclusion in much the same way the film has revealed itself: as if a single sustained note had been discovered to contain the very chorus of the world. Special Features on Disc 2 include the chants of the Night Office in its fifty-three minute entirety, additional scenes, a statement by Cardinal Poupard, and a history of the Carthusian order. Additionally, and of particular interest, the disc also contains a behind-the-scenes look at the ancient and secretive art of Chartreuse Liqueur, as well as a full audio gallery of sounds collected during the film.
See the official website for more information. Click here to purchase the DVD.
Coming Soon: A Shiny New Website, Blog, and More....
To kick off the New Year we are preparing to unveil a brand spanking new Image website, one that will marry Beauty to Utility. (Start chilling the champagne.) Nearly everything will be better. Where to start? Well, the site will sport a sharper, cleaner design, and nearly every content page will now have options for printing, e-mailing, and even adding your own comments. The centerpiece of the new site will be a blog about Image’s concerns: art, faith, and mystery. A dozen bloggers, from the young to the not-so-young, with expertise in every art form, and representing a variety of perspectives, will keep incisive and thoughtful posts coming every day. When the site goes live, you’ll have to bear with us for a while, because it will take us some time to migrate dozens and dozens of pages from our huge archive to the new format. But the essentials will be up and running. Stay tuned: we’ll let you know when it goes live.
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Are you an undergraduate or graduate student who'd like to work for Image this coming summer? Or do you know someone who might be interested? The purpose of the Luci Shaw Fellowship is to expose a promising student to the world of literary publishing and introduce him or her to the contemporary dialogue about art and faith that surrounds Image, its programs, its contributors, and its peer organizations. In short, we're looking for summer fellows who share our vision for the place art has in the life of faith, and who are also diligent, meticulous, and responsible about the daily details. There's grunt work galore in this job, but also plenty of opportunities to grasp the vision at the heart of a dynamic arts organization. The Shaw Fellow will also receive a scholarship to Image's Glen Workshop in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Applications are due February 1, and applicants will be notified by February 15. 
