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Artist of the Month: Sam Fentress
Synthar: Evenings and Weekends
Breath for the Bones by Luci Shaw
Erling Hope: A Tourist Trapped in a Local’s Body
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The Milton Center Postgraduate Fellowship
Scholarships to the Glen Workshop
The 2008 Florence Seminar

In the seventies and eighties, we saw our share of roadside religious signs from the back seat of our family’s Datsun station wagon. As you speed by in your car, there’s a temptation to distance yourself from people who make billboards that say things like Are You Telling Anyone about Jesus Christ? and Obey God or Burn. But when Sam Fentress looks at America, he does not roll his eyes. For the last twenty-five years, on the highways, rural roads, and city streets of forty-nine states, he has been photographing religious signs—on barns, freeway underpasses, telephone poles, and storefronts, in stencil, hand lettering, neon, spray paint, marquee type, and stencil. And not with the dispassionate or ironizing eye of a documentarian. Instead, by deploying all the tools of photography—meticulous composition, depth of field and landscape, the play of light, the isolating effect of the frame—Fentress gives these messages a dignity that is chilling. As you page through Bible Road, the book that collects over 150 of these photos, the cumulative effect becomes haunting: Sam Fentress sees a passion in America that transcends regionalism, kitsch, and denomination. The fervor appears everywhere, in cities and in the country, blue states and red. Seen through Fentress’s lens, the messages—Thou God Seest Me; The Eyes of the Lord Are In Every Place Beholding Good and Evil; or just Jesus painted on a cracked wall—become so starkly poignant that we can’t dismiss them as quirky backwoods religion or a product of the chaotic lives of the urban poor. The buildings and landscapes testify that life in our country is not easy, though occasionally it is painfully beautiful. The landscape is ravaged and glorious; the signs are weather beaten; the cities are clotted with advertisements, trash, and decay; the paths to the doors of the small rural churches are grown high with weeks. Everywhere, under all circumstances, people are moved to make signs. At times, the images provoke a smile (Mower Sales / Salvation Is Free), but in Fentress’s eyes, the gestures are never pathetic. He dwells on these acts of writing with loving attention and without condescension. As Paul Elie writes in the introduction, by photographing these signs, Fentress transfigures them.

In this season of last caucuses and primaries, with the names of presidential candidates on our tongues and a foretaste of change on our lips, the pop-indie band Synthar has come out with just the album to match that extra kick in your step—or that worried furrow of brow—that may accompany this historic time. Synthar’s debut album, Evenings and Weekends,is a genuine, synthesized consideration of change and transformation. Its sound lies somewhere between electronica and folk—as the Jackson Free Press says, Synthar has taken “synth-pop into singer-songwriter territory.” Synthar is an internet band: its members—spread around the world from Shaoxing, China, to Jackson, Mississippi and from New York, New York, to Stanford, California—huddled their laptops together to create an irresistibly catchy mix of Moogs, vocoders, guitars, and sad, understated vocals. The tracks of Evenings and Weekends range from themes of changes in landscape—“Hurricanes” is lead singer Johnny Bertram’s firsthand response to Katrina and Rita—to the hiccups and tragedies of relational change in “My Heart Is a Beating Drum,” “Stabbed by an Unseen Blade,” and, most traumatically, “The Phone Call.” Synthar also asks us to question how our dollars and cents impact the world. In “The Robots Among Us” they warn that “in the land of milk and honey / where we walk the thin line between / what we need and greed” there are “robots among us” who “don’t understand the warmth of human touch”—and the song builds to a chilling climax when the robots join in the chorus. But most extraordinary is Synthar’s uncanny juxtaposition of generally dark, meaningful themes with spritely, upbeat melodies. The combination of thoughtful lyrics with playful synthesizing and vocal harmonies results in moments of happy-pop-bliss, making Evenings and Weekends an album that is not just smart, but indeed, as they sing in one of their happier tracks, gives you “the urge to dance… dance the morning away / and when the day finally turns into afternoon / you’ll flip the record and dance to new tunes!” Because Synthar is an independent band in the truest sense, the best way to buy Evenings and Weekends is directly from them on their website (ours even came with a handwritten “thanks.”) Plus, the handsome CD and packaging are individually screen printed by hand.

According to Erling Hope’s daughter, he is “a tourist trapped in a local’s body.” A somewhat cryptic statement, perhaps—but it also has the whiff of truth to it. Sculptor and crafter of liturgical art and furnishings, Erling Hope describes himself as “a perpetually lapsing Quaker. And devoutly so.” He also says of his work: “Some furniture is meant to hold things of this world, some furniture is meant to hold ideas and experiences of the Spirit. Some furniture is meant for the body, some for the soul. And not all of it is meant to be comfortable.” If all this seems just a bit too complicated, just take a look at the work—that will immediately place some of these paradoxes into a comprehensible context. Hope’s liturgical pieces serve the needs of worship so well precisely because the exquisite craftsmanship evident in them is itself an expression of devotion. (For the clerk of Peconic Bay Quaker Meeting, he sure knows how to create liturgical pieces that emerge out of “higher” church traditions, such as the Stations of the Cross.) Like the best sculptors, he makes you fall in love with his materials all over again—and in his case, this is predominantly wood. We happen to have an especial interest in Hope’s non-liturgical work, where his imagination has free rein. Take a piece like “Texture 1: How Words Work.” Here two overlapping mahogany hands are inlaid with a series of brass escutcheon pins. The pins are in Braille and spell out a poem. “Stand” consists of a series of carved mountain laurel pieces of varying sizes and heights placed in a rough circle in a field: it is both a miniature grove of trees and a collection of diverse human beings, each curving stick hinting at the individuality each of us has been endowed with. So what does “a tourist trapped in a local’s body” mean? Perhaps it means that Erling Hope is both a pilgrim and deeply rooted in place, at home in the world and yet a stranger in a strange land.

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 e-mail to gwolfe@spu.edu.

The Substantially Catholic summer seminar is an intensive five-day experience on the campus of Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York designed to strengthen the competence and comfort of faculty committed to engaging the Catholic intellectual tradition in their course work. Substantially Catholic seminars take a thematic approach in considering the Catholic intellectual contribution in particular academic disciplines. English literature and biology/psychology are the featured disciplines for the 2008 Substantially Catholic seminar and “suffering” is the unifying theme. Participation is open to all faculty members seeking to enhance their knowledge of Catholic content and approaches in either of these two fields. For more information and to register, visit the Substantially Catholic website at: www.marist.edu/community/sc/ or call (718) 823-8565. The deadline to register is April 15, 2008.

Luci Shaw will be the featured guest on the March 9 broadcast of Grace Matters, the radio ministry of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. In this 30-minute program the Rev. Peter W. Marty, Grace Matters host, interviews Luci Shaw on "The Crime of Living Cautiously." Shaw is a poet who understands life to be full of adventure and risk. She joins the program to help distinguish faith from fear, and both from fanaticism. Shaw is the author of numerous books such as The Secret Trees and God in the Dark. Her most recent poetry collections are Water Lines and The Green Earth. Grace Matters is currently heard on 175 radio stations in the United States, on the American Forces Network and in several other countries. Podcast and streaming audio versions of the program can be downloaded at www.gracematters.org one day after the airdate.

Visit www.gracematters.org and click on "Program Guest Interviews" for background information on upcoming and recent guests. Contact Barbara Andrews, 800/638-3522, ext. 2439, for more information about this program

Houston Baptist University seeks a full-time faculty member in Creative Writing with the ability to teach fiction, non-fiction, and freshman composition. Candidates must have a PhD in English or Rhetoric or an MFA in Fine Arts, a history of publications in nationally recognized journals, an excellent teaching record, and a commitment to quality teaching. They must be active professionally and able to demonstrate expertise in appropriate and current instructional pedagogy; be enthusiastic about the prospect of developing curriculum in creative writing courses; be willing to participate in department and university activities; and be committed to the goals and values of a Christian liberal arts university. For more information, go to www.hbu.edu/jobs. Qualified candidates should send curriculum vita, official transcripts from all undergraduate and graduate work, and a completed Academic Appointment Application available online at www.hbu.edu/jobs to Office of Academic Affairs, English Search Committee, Houston Baptist University, 7502 Fondren Road, Houston, Texas 77074. Direct questions to pthompson@hbu.edu.

The Milton Center postgraduate fellowship brings emerging writers of Christian commitment to Image, where their primary goal is to complete their first book-length manuscript in fiction, poetry, or creative nonfiction. During their time at the Center, fellows will have a rich experience of literary and spiritual community; they will interact with the editorial staff of Image and the English department at Seattle Pacific University, participate in the Friday writer's workshop, and enjoy the lively literary scene in the beautiful Pacific Northwest.

For more information and to download an application, click here.

Thought about attending the Glen Workshop? Cursed the economic fate that prevented you from going? Every year we’re staggered by the generosity of donors who help give a leg-up to Glen Workshop participants. This year, we have more scholarships to offer writers and artists than ever, thanks to CIVA, The Master’s Artist, friends of Don Murdock, singer-songwriter Kate Campbell, The Paul and Eileen Mariani Fellowship for Poets, and City in Focus of Vancouver B.C.  Special Note: Because workshops are filling fast, we’ve tweaked our scholarship policy. You do not need to send a $100 deposit to apply for a scholarship. You may apply to any class, even if it's closed for registration (see the course descriptions page). We’ve reserved a limited number of spaces in each class and some housing (triple and double dorm rooms) for scholarship winners, and will do our best to give recipients their first choices. However, if you wish to guarantee a spot in a workshop, even if you do not win a scholarship, you must register for an available workshop and pay the $100 deposit. 
The final deadline for applications is April 1, and all applicants will be notified by April 15. For more details, go to the Glen Scholarships page. See you in Santa Fe!

To register for the Glen Workshop, or to find out more information, click here.

On September 14 -21, 2008, Image will gather a small group of inquirers in Florence, Italy, to explore what has been called “the first Renaissance,” a remarkable moment in the cultural history of the West. Together we will investigate the ways in which three great late-medieval figures—Dante Alighieri, Giotto, and Saint Francis of Assisi—renewed the culture of Europe and left a legacy of Christian Humanism that continues to nourish and inspire. And we will ask how their vision of art and faith can speak to the work of cultural transformation in our time. The seminar includes visits to the great churches and museums of Florence, lectures by some of the world’s leading authorities on the Renaissance, a field trip to Assisi where we will encounter the living spirit of St. Francis, wonderful meals, and time to enjoy each others’ company. If you’re interested, visit the Florence Seminar page, download the Florence Brochure PDF for more info, or contact Julie Mullins here.