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What the Thunder Said, by Image Artist of the Month Janet Peery Features
Gallery Watch Message Board ImageNews |
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FeaturesArtist of the Month: Janet Peery
Click here for more. Reading with Milton Center Fellow Hannah Notess: February 5, 2009
This reading is free and open to the public. The Art Center Gallery is located at 3 W. Cremona, Seattle, WA 98119. For directions to Seattle Pacific University, click here. For a map of Seattle Pacific University's campus, click here. Call (206) 281-2988 or click here for more information. Scholarships to the Glen Workshop
The final deadline for applications is March 15, and all applicants will be notified by April 1. For more details, go to the Glen Scholarships page. See you in Santa Fe! Pilgrims of Christ on the Muslim Road by Paul-Gordon Chandler
For more information about this book, click here. Practicing Theology: Art & Culture-Making in Contemporary Christianity
For further information call (562) 903-4807. For a full schedule and list of participants, click here. Visit Image at the AWP Conference in Chicago: February 11-14, 2009
For more information on the AWP Bookfair, click here. Application Deadlines for MFA Program and Milton Center FellowshipDeadlines are approaching for two of Image's programs: a world-class MFA program and a yearlong postgraduate writing fellowship. Seattle Pacific University MFA Program: February 15 The MFA at SPU is a creative writing program for apprentice writers--both Christians and those of other traditions--who not only want to pursue excellence in the craft of writing but also place their work within the larger context of the Judeo-Christian tradition of faith. Current faculty mentors include Robert Clark, Leslie Leyland Fields, Jeanine Hathaway, Bret Lott, Gina Ochsner, and Jeanne Murray Walker. Students work with faculty mentors during the year by exchanging manuscripts and critiques, and they attend two intensive ten-day residencies each year: one in the summer alongside Image's Glen Workshop and one in March on Whidbey Island, north of Seattle. The deadline to apply for summer 2009 admission is February 15. Click here for more information, including a link to the online application. The Milton Center Postgraduate Fellowship Deadline: March 15 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. Gallery WatchRuth Weisberg: Selected Works
For more information, call (323) 938-5222 or click here. Reel Religion: A Century of the Bible and Film
Click here for more. Broke at Clearstory GalleryThe Clearstory Gallery in Spokane proudly presents a new exhibit, Broke. Whether it means penniless, reduced to fragments, or just plain inoperative, Clearstory’s latest show wrestles with the frailties of our humanity, how the wrecked parts of our lives reveal the extent of redemption. Artists include Whitworth University art faculty and selected Whitworth students. Opening night is Friday, February 6, between 5 and 9 p.m., complete with hors d’oeuvres, a coffee bar, and live music. Clearstory Gallery is a Fine Art Gallery with a vision to connect people to God through the influence of image, color, and form. Broke runs through May 1. The gallery is located on the Life Center Campus at 1202 N. Government Way near Spokane Falls Community College. For more information, click here. Message BoardIf 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. Faith, Art and Poetry in a Post-Christian Culture: February 27-March 1, 2009 What are the challenges for artists who speak prophetically to our time? Join us for a weekend conference exploring this question, with a special focus on the art and poetry of David Jones (1895-1974). Jones's unusual and compelling visual and poetic work explores the "sacramental" practice of the artist in a contemporary world torn by violence and cultural fragmentation. This residential weekend conference will begin at Georgetown University Library Special Collections for the opening of their exhibition on "David Jones and His Circle" and the screening of Derek Shiel's documentary film on David Jones. Saturday and Sunday will feature conversations with international experts on the life and work of this artist, poet, prophet. With their help we will explore the implications of a sacramental approach to art and poetry in our time, reflecting on how such a vision might shape and inspire our own work. $295 includes accommodations, meals and program tuition. The conference is jointly sponsored by Georgetown University Library and the Cathedral College at Washington National Cathedral. For more information or to register online click here or contact College Registrar, Joan Roberts at (202) 537-6381 or jroberts@cathedral.org. ImageUpdate subscribers may also get in touch directly with Kathleen Staudt. Tokens: Justice Songs – March 3, 2009 Lee C. Camp, professor of Christian Ethics at Lipscomb University in Nashville, TN hosts what you might get when you combine Garrison Keillor with Bill Moyers, or when Thomas Merton visits the Grand Ol' Opry. Part theology lecture, part cultural analysis, part old-time radio show, part good conversation, part good music, Tokens is a rich exploration of the intersections between faith, music, and culture. Past guests have included songwriters Derek Webb, Julie Lee, and Bill Miller; author interviews with Jim Wallis, Shane Claiborne, and A.J. Jacobs; storytelling of the sort upheld by Leo Tolstoy and Soren Kierkegaard; and musicians like Buddy Greene and Aubrey Haynie. On March 3 at 7:00 p.m. at Collins Alumni Auditorium on the campus of Lipscomb University in Nashville, TN, Tokens episode 5 will feature musicians Vince Gill, Sonya Isaacs, and Buddy Greene; interviews with Will Campbell (author of Brother to a Dragonfly) and Brad MacLean (on his work on death row), and much more. Tickets are on sale at Ticketmaster. For more information, click here. ImageNews -- The Scoop on Our ProgramsImage Readings: Margaret Gibson
This month, hear from poet and memoirist Margaret Gibson on Image Readings. To spend time in the poetry of Margaret Gibson is to be drawn into an especially vibrant kind of stillness. The sense of stillness is almost shocking, the way it trembles with anticipation. Through precise, tender, and earthy language, through meditations of the cycles of the natural world and our place in it, her poems move us into the presence of the holy. Click here to listen. The 2009 Florence Seminar On September 13-20, 2009, Image will gather a small group of inquirers in Florence and Rome to explore the life and achievements of the sculptor, painter, architect, and poet, Michelangelo Buonarroti. In his works we see the dignity of humanity and its fall, the emergence of the individual and the dangers of individualism, and a fierce struggle to harmonize beauty with goodness and truth. Yet for all the conflict and tension in his work, Michelangelo left us with exquisite images of how God’s grace can transform human experience. In Image’s twentieth anniversary year, we’ll return to Italy to explore how Michelangelo’s incarnational vision can inform our own efforts to continue bringing about cultural transformation in our time. Our week together in Italy will begin with a couple days in Rome, where we will visit the Vatican and other sites associated with Michelangelo. The remainder of the week will be spent in Florence, where we will visit the great churches and museums featuring the artist and enjoy exquisite meals at restaurants in the city and the surrounding area. If you’re interested, visit the Florence Seminar page or contact Julie Mullins here to request a PDF or hard copy of the brochure. Register Now for the 2009 Glen Workshop, "Fully Human: Art and the Religious Sense" July 26 – August 2, 2009
Subscribe to Image in Print and Get More Art, Fiction, Poetry, Essays, Interviews, and Every Good Thing If you like reading about great new art and writing inspired by faith in ImageUpdate, and you're ready to get down to reading and seeing the stuff itself, it's time to subscribe to Image. Each quarter our editors comb the world of art and letters to bring you our favorite new work--work that respects transcendent mystery as well as the gritty truth of the material world that bears the divine imprint. A one-year subscription gets you four beautifully produced issues delivered right to your door. Ninety percent of the journal's content is not available on our website, but only through what we call "the sacrament of print." Click here to get the magazine Terry Tempest Williams calls "evocative and inspiring" and Bret Lott calls "the most meaningful literary journal being produced today." ImageUpdatePublisher: Gregory WolfeManaging Editor: Beth Bevis Layout: Anna Johnson Contributors: Beth Bevis, Kendall Goodwin, Mitchell Jung, Mary Kenagy Mitchell, and Julie Mullins ImageUpdate is the biweekly e-mail newsletter from Image, a quarterly print journal that explores the relationship between Judeo-Christian faith and art through contemporary fiction, poetry, painting, sculpture, architecture, film, music, and dance. Each issue also features interviews, memoirs, essays, and reviews. ImageUpdate brings you news about books, CDs, organizations, websites, conferences, exhibitions, and tours--all of which inhabit the intersection between faith and imagination. ImageUpdate will also notify you whenever a new issue of Image is printed, an Image event is upcoming, or new content is posted to our website. Copyright © 2009 Center for Religious Humanism. All rights reserved. |
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In her fiction, Janet Peery presides over an elegant banquet. A writer’s writer who explores themes of flight, renewal, and remaking in the American West, she writes prose that is satisfying, varied, and delicious. Her gift is for choosing the perfect image, one that imbues flesh and landscape with a dense spiritual and psychological weight, and for arranging her sentences with a sense of timing and proportion. The tang of her characters’ personality is balanced against the rich lyricism of her language, but always with a restrained touch: there are no overly heavy sauces here. Literary without being obscure, her scenes are delightfully surprising but always gracious and hospitable: readers can count on her to provide a good chair to sit in. Peery is as deft and confident with the hard, concrete details that make a scene real as she is with the tenderness and ruthlessness at the heart of the human condition.
Join us at Seattle Pacific University’s Art Center Gallery on Thursday, February 5, 2009 at
7:30 p.m. for a reading with this year’s Milton Center Fellow, Hannah Notess. A poet and nonfiction writer, Notess recently received an MFA in Creative Writing from Indiana University. She will read from her poetry manuscript, "The Disaster Tourist." Notess’s poems come from a posture of humility, and are enlarged by the religious sensibility rather than limited by it. They are full of great affection for the people she encounters, for the land, and for the community. In addition to writing poems and essays, Notess works as a freelance editor and is editing a collection of personal essays about growing up female and evangelical. Her poems have appeared in The Christian Century, Crab Orchard Review, Rattle, Relief, Ruminate, and Slate, and are forthcoming in 5 AM, Measure, and Mid-American Review. Hannah Notess will be spending the academic year in residence at the Milton Center at Image and Seattle Pacific University, working to complete her first poetry collection and teaching creative writing classes. 
Thought about attending the Glen Workshop? Cursed the economic fate that prevented you from going? Every year our generous donors help give a leg-up to Glen Workshop participants. This year, we have scholarships to offer writers, artists, and songwriters thanks to such generous donors as singer-songwriter Kate Campbell, Chrysostom, The Master’s Artist, and City in Focus of Vancouver B.C., which is offering a scholarship to a Canadian attendee. 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 
In his inauguration speech, President Barack Obama addressed the Muslim world, speaking of “a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect.” This is also the ambition of Paul-Gordon Chandler’s new book, Pilgrims of Christ on the Muslim Road. Chandler presents us with the life of an unlikely protagonist: Mazhar Mallouhi, a Syrian novelist who describes himself as a “Sufi Muslim follower of Christ.” Chandler explores a new path between two faiths by recounting Mallouhi’s life journey and work. His hope is to show how Christ, “whom Islam reveres as a prophet, can close the gap between the two religions.” After coming across an Arabic Bible, Mallouhi became engrossed; in a one year period, he read through the Old Testament thirteen times and the New Testament twenty-seven. He also came to revere Gandhi, who “remained fundamentally a Hindu in outward things, but...Christ-like with his inner life.” But Mallouhi quickly found himself alienated from friends, shunned by family, and even exiled by the Syrian government for his engagement with Western religion. For many years, he struggled to balance being an Arab Muslim culturally and a follower of Christ spiritually. Mallouhi’s affinity for storytelling led him into the literary world, where he discovered a natural way to “communicate his new faith to his fellow Muslims was to write novels with a spiritual theme.” In his recent work, Mallouhi’s focus has turned to “re-presenting the Christian Scriptures as the ancient Middle Eastern writings they are, returning them to their authentic cultural origin today.” Chandler, an American Episcopal priest who grew up in Muslim West Africa, offers similar guidance for Christians ministering to Arab Muslims. From Chandler and Mallouhi we learn that the best way to serve Christ on the Muslim Road does not involve stripping away a Muslim’s identification with Islam, but allowing them to serve as salt and light within their culture.
Hosted by the Biola University Department of Art, this art symposium is an annual event that encourages stimulating and thoughtful dialogue on contemporary art and Christian faith. This year’s symposium features art historian James Romaine and Image editor Gregory Wolfe. Wolfe will be giving a keynote address, “A Theology of Culture-Making,” on March 6, and other talks throughout the weekend. In addition, the symposium features presenters and panelists from a variety of artistic disciplines, including visual artists, musicians, composers, and art professors. The schedule is packed with talks and panels that explore the relationship between faith and the making of art. Saturday evening features a reception with hors d’oeuvres and the opening of an exhibition entitled Objects of Grace, which will include the art of David Adey, Lynn Aldrich, Lael Corbin, Summer Meritt, Gwen Pool, Duncan Simcoe, James Skalman and Patty Wickman. This event has always been free and open to anyone wishing to attend. However, donations of any size are highly recommended to help defray expenses. The symposium takes place Friday and Saturday, March 6-7, 2009 at the Calvary Chapel at Biola University. Biola is located at 13800 Biola Avenue, La Mirada, California 90639. 
The annual conference put on by the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) is an event we look forward to every year. This year’s AWP Conference takes place February 11-14 at the Hilton in Chicago. Pre-registration has closed, but passes can be purchased on site in Chicago. If you’re not attending the conference but will be in the Chicago area, you can visit the Image booth on Saturday, February 14, when the Bookfair will be open to the public (we’ll be located at Booth #231). We’ll have information about Image and its associated programs, including the low-residency MFA program at Seattle Pacific University. You can also get discounted back issues, half-price subscriptions, and a free “Realist of Distances” button. Please drop by if you’re in the area. We love meeting our readers face to face.
The Jack Rutberg Fine Arts Gallery presents Ruth Weisberg: Selected Works, featuring paintings and works on paper spanning several decades. The works in this collection explore universal themes of childhood, maternity, spirituality, and personal memory. Weisberg is the Dean of USC’s Roski School of Fine arts and a former Fulbright scholar; her work was featured in Image issue 
The Museum of Biblical Art in New York seeks to foster an understanding and appreciation for art inspired by the Bible, which it does in a unique way in the new exhibition, Reel Religion: A Century of the Bible and Film. The exhibition will feature more than 80 classic posters from both American and European cinema that have drawn inspiration from biblical narratives, as well as a display of original costumes and related film memorabilia. Reel Religion aims to link the history of film to biblical stories and show how filmmakers have looked to the Bible for stories of compelling emotional material since the advent of film. Filmmakers’ liberal additions of sex, violence, and theatricality to spice up traditional Bible stories will be addressed, as well as the posters’ ability to walk a fine line between high art and commercial advertising. The exhibition will feature public programs such as lectures, film screenings, concerts, and a fair for children and their families. Reel Religion: A Century of the Bible and Film will run from February 6-May 17.
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, "Fully Human: Art and the Religious Sense," 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 Marilyn Nelson and B.H Fairchild, fiction writer Valerie Sayers, sculptor Lynn Aldrich, illustrator Barry Moser, painter Joel Sheesley, playwright Mark St. Germain, musicians Linford Detweiler and Karin Bergquist of Over the Rhine, and spiritual writer Lauren Winner. A seminar class, "Culture Making: Meaning in the Material World" will be led by Andy Crouch. For artists and non-artists alike, the seminar is a forum to explore the workshop theme in more depth through discussion and in-class creativity. 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 
