Surreal South, edited by Pinckney Benedict and Laura Benedict

Issue #169 | May 6, 2009

Features
Artist of the Month: Pinckney Benedict
Testimonies and Un-Testimonies: Rewriting Your Spiritual Story
The First Cover: An Image 20th Anniversary Feature
Inseminating the Elephant by Lucia Perillo
The Trinity Arts Conference: Art and Change
Reach Job Seekers with ImageUpdate’s Message Board

Gallery Watch
Dee Van Dyke: Sealed/Revealed
Makoto Fujimura: Olana

Message Board
Christians in the Theatre Arts: June Conference in Orlando
Illuminating the Landscape of Faith
Call for Art Submissions
Weekend Symposium with the New York C.S. Lewis Society

ImageNews
Image Readings: Gina Ochsner
Image Nominated for UTNE Independent Press Award
Sixth Annual Denise Levertov Award Goes to Eugene Peterson
The 2009 Florence Seminar
Subscribe to Image in Print

Features

Artist of the Month: Pinckney Benedict

Drawing on his West Virginia upbringing, Pinckney Benedict writes fiction grounded in the Appalachians, a world of clear-eyed, dappled beauty and also of terror, violence, eeriness, and magic. Benedict’s prose is fluid and elegant, and when he wants to, he can entrance us with the loveliness of the natural world—but what interests him more is a stronger poison. In his fiction, the serene forest glade is usually backdrop to events that are strange, unsettling, and dangerous. It’s no surprise, then, that he is co-editor (along with his wife, thriller-writer Laura Benedict) of a story anthology called Surreal South. With Benedict, the graceful, muscled prose is always taut with a sense of threat, and in his woods and hills we encounter things more terrible and severe than we could have imagined. Though his characters are often misfits (and it goes almost without saying that he is one of O’Connor’s heirs, as well as a student of Joyce Carol Oates), Benedict does not allow us to hold ourselves at a distance from the people of these old mountains. He instead draws us into their world line by line, paragraph by paragraph, patiently unfolding stories that, for all their weirdness, are profoundly, enduringly human.

Click here for more.

How was the art selected for the front cover of the pilot issue of Image way back in 1989? This is the subject of a brand new web-exclusive feature on the Image website—one of the many we will be posting all year as we celebrate Image’s 20th Anniversary. In this particular feature you’ll discover why the mysterious, symbol-packed Black Glass Still Life with Fish, Pear, and Skeleton by Massachusetts artist Steve Hawley was chosen for that issue. The page begins with a short memoir by Image co-founder Gregory Wolfe about the process of choosing Hawley’s painting: “Black Glass Still Life emerged as the obvious candidate for Image because it was simultaneously traditional and an edgy, modern work. In a sense it is a combination of still life, trompe l’oeil, and the ancient liturgical art forms of altarpiece and triptych.” Wolfe continues: “That the painting was edgy, multi-layered, and innovative was perfect, for we wanted Image itself to be all those things.” Following Wolfe’s comments is an excerpt from Harold Fickett’s lengthy profile of Hawley from issue #1. In the excerpt, which explicates Black Glass Still Life, Fickett touches on the many symbolic elements in the painting, including the black glass itself—a surface that is both dark and reflective. If you look closely you will see that in the glass is a reflection of the artist himself. Fickett notes: “We see not a reflection of the artist’s world this time in the black glass but his own image. In this self-portrait he seems to be contemplating the sorrow of what he has chosen to show us, and his look reveals how moved he is by the condition of mortality he shares with the viewer.”

Read the whole feature here.

Testimonies and Un-Testimonies: Rewriting Your Spiritual Story
A Forum with Hannah Notess on May 21, 2009

Join Hannah Notess, Image’s 2008-09 Milton Fellow, for a University Ministries Forum and discussion about storytelling and “testimonies” on Thursday, May 21 at 1 p.m. in Demaray Hall 150 at Seattle Pacific University. If you’re raised as an evangelical Christian, you’re supposed to be an expert at telling your story. From an early age, you’re expected to have a testimony, a story of how God saved you from a life of sin and sadness, and gave you a new life of joy and gladness. But what happens if you don’t have a testimony? What if your story just doesn’t fit the before-and-after mold? Maybe it’s time to throw out the before-and-after testimony and look for new ways of telling our stories. Milton Fellow Hannah Notess’s writing has appeared in Image, The Christian Century, Slate, and Crab Orchard Review, among other journals. She will discuss her search for unconventional stories of faith as a writer and as editor of Jesus Girls: True Tales of Growing Up Female and Evangelical, a collection of essays forthcoming from Cascade Books in 2009. This event is free and open to the public. For more information, call (206) 281-2988, or click here.

For directions to Seattle Pacific University, click here. For a map of Seattle Pacific University’s campus, click here.

Inseminating the Elephant by Lucia Perillo

Lucia Perillo’s prescription for a pain-filled world is simple: “So long as there is suffering / there should be also baby elephants,” she recommends in the title poem of Inseminating the Elephant, her latest collection of poems out from Copper Canyon Press (click here to read this poem). Perillo’s poems are always swerving between elegy and delight. The cosmopolitan range of poetic subjects that evoke these tones includes the last living passenger pigeon, Sylvia Plath’s hair, Elvis impersonators, and Transcendentalism. Perillo even takes her own wheelchair-transported body as a subject, because “it is interesting / to see the wheelchair maneuvered backward / into the van.” She gazes as unflinchingly at the frailty of her own flesh as at a lab rat dissection, which evokes the realization that “the spiderwebstuff holding us here is thin.” The closeness of death evident in all these poems only makes their life more vibrant, and life itself seem more miraculous. “They found the missing bride and she is living,” Perillo writes in the poem “Breaking News,” and the news is that “Sometimes survival strikes us dumb / with the improbable story of resurrection.”

Click here to buy the book.

The Trinity Arts Conference: Art and Change

The Trinity Arts Conference in Dallas, held this June 11-14, has always been one of our favorite Christian arts events of the year. It offers lovingly chosen themes, intimate community, provocative lectures, warm and useful workshops, and a challenging and supportive environment for Christian artists—a group that the conference organizers know can often feel doubly estranged, both from the church and art worlds. This year looks to be no exception to the rule of thoughtful excellence. The theme, “The Gift of the Unknown,” will explore the ways that art can expand our carefully ordered view of the world. Though the recognition that our boundaries are arbitrary can be deeply unsettling, the unknown can also be a blessing, as it keeps our curiosity alive and our purpose fresh. Art prevents us from being lulled by our own limited horizons, keeping us attentive to what lies beyond them: the enigma of others and the inscrutability of God. Speakers and performers will include: singer-songwriter Doug Burr, a Paste Magazine four-to-watch artist; Sedrick Huckaby, a Yale-trained painter whose work is in the Whitney Museum and Boston MFA; Image and Christianity Today film blogger Jeffrey Overstreet; fiction writer and Image managing editor Mary Kenagy Mitchell; and Image’s own Greg Wolfe, a Trinity Arts Conference mainstay, who will offer the cultural long view. Says painter Ed Knippers, a past speaker: “Trinity Arts Conference is rich in thoughts and ideas. It explores and nourishes the life of the mind with care and enjoyment. It is like a happy family coming to an evening meal.”

Get a place at the table: book your calendar for June 11-14. For more information go to the conference website or write to info@trinityartsconference.com.

Reach Job Seekers with ImageUpdate’s Message Board

If you’re looking to fill a job opening, we encourage you to take advantage of the Message Board section of this newsletter (check it out below). When you post an announcement in ImageUpdate, you’ll reach thousands of readers who are interested in the intersection of art and faith—for free! And the Message Board section is for more than just job listings. We also welcome posts about local events, conferences, prizes, calls for papers, and more. Submit your messages by sending an e-mail to imageupdate@imagejournal.org.

Gallery Watch

Dee Van Dyke: Sealed/Revealed

The International Arts Movement (IAM) proudly presents Dee Van Dyke’s exhibition of painted scrolls, Sealed/Revealed. Van Dyke’s show opens Thursday, May 7, 2009 at Space 38|39 in midtown Manhattan. There will be with an opening reception from 7-9 p.m. on May 7, and the show will run for two weeks. Based in New York City, IAM gathers artists and creative catalysts to wrestle with the deep questions of art, faith, and humanity in order to inspire the creative community to engage the culture that is and create the world that ought to be. IAM is located at 38 West 39th Street, 3rd Floor (between 5th & 6th Ave). For more information, click here.

Makoto Fujimura: Olana

The White Stone Gallery proudly hosts Makoto Fujimura's newest exhibit, Olana: Psalms of Ascent. Crafted with the ancient Japanese technique and materials of Nihonga, the paintings in this exhibit are devotional imagery made in the last two years. Fujimura describes his latest work as “a personal devotional journey between art and faith,” as well as his homage to Hudson River painters. Makoto Fujimura's work has appeared in exhibits across the United States and Japan, as well as in the pages of Image. Click here to see his Artist of the Month page. Olana: Psalms of Ascent runs through June 21, with a cocktail reception on Friday, May 22 from 7-9 p.m. where Fujimura will read from his latest book. White Stone Gallery is located at 4219 Main Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

For more information, click here.

Message Board
Post here to reach thousands of readers interested in the intersection of art and faith. We welcome messages about job listings, local events, conferences, prizes, calls for papers, and more. Submit your messages by sending an e-mail here.

Christians in the Theatre Arts: June Conference in Orlando

Illuminating the Landscape of Faith

Call for Art Submissions

SPAC Art Gallery at Seattle Pacific University is putting out a call to artists for a show October 1-31, 2009 entitled Self Absorbed. The show theme is self-portraiture. Work can be in any medium. For more information, send a self addressed envelope to Cheri Wilke, Art Department, Seattle Pacific University, 3307 Ave W Seattle WA 98119 or email cheri@spu.edu. Deadline for submissions: May 15, 2009.

Weekend Symposium with the New York C.S. Lewis Society

ImageNews — The Scoop on Our Programs

Image Readings: Gina Ochsner

Set in far-flung locations, Gina Ochsner's stories make distant things present and real, never exotic or gimmicky. Hers are real stories about likeable, wounded, resilient people who feel as if they could live next door to you, though in fact they live in the Czech Republic, or Siberia, or Texas, or Alaska. In this month’s Image Readings, Gina reads a short story called “The City of Mausoleums.” Click here to listen.

Image Nominated for UTNE Independent Press Award

We've said it before: there's nothing better than working hard to do a job well... except, perhaps, when your efforts get recognized. That's just happened to us: the super cool digest magazine for the culturally aware, Utne Reader, has nominated Image for the Utne Independent Press Awards (They also nominated us in 2000, 2003, and 2005.) Every year Utne's editors nominate journals and magazines that, in their words, "make us laugh, cry, wonder, argue, read aloud, act out, photocopy, and even, truth be told, buy personal subscriptions." In the world of independent periodicals, this is about as close to Oscar territory as it gets. The editors announce the winners in the July/August issue. Our category is "Spiritual Coverage”--which is an odd term, but perhaps there’s something to it (we’re certainly sending up a prayer!).

To go to the 2009 Independent Press Awards site, complete with all the nominees, click here.

Sixth Annual Denise Levertov Award Goes to Eugene Peterson

Join Image journal and acclaimed writer Eugene Peterson for the 2009 Denise Levertov Award lecture and reading and a celebration of Image's Twentieth Anniversary. Peterson, a contributor to Image and author of the bestselling The Message, will give a reading and commentary called "Intently Haphazard," about how the arts have formed his vocation as a pastor and writer, at University Presbyterian Church on Saturday, May 16, 2009 at 7:30 p.m. The event is free and open to the public and will be followed by a reception and book signing. Peterson is an SPU alumnus and Professor Emeritus of Spiritual Theology at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia, and founded Christ Our King Presbyterian Church in Bel Air, Maryland, where he pastored for twenty-nine years. He is a pastor and spiritual writer who has written more than thirty books, including A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, The Contemplative Pastor, and Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading. In his most recent book, Tell It Slant: A Conversation on the Language of Jesus in His Stories and Prayers, Peterson invokes Emily Dickinson's words: "Tell all the truth but tell it slant — / Success in Circuit lies / Too bright for our infirm Delight / The Truth's superb surprise." Throughout his work, Peterson has insisted on the centrality of the imagination to the life of faith. He suggests that God's revelation comes through the ambiguities and nuances of story and lyric poetry—highly charged language that calls on our active participation and response for its full meaning to be grasped. With Dickinson, Peterson believes that "the Truth must dazzle gradually" through language that helps us move past "preconceptions, prejudices, defenses, stereotypes, and fact-dominated literalism" into "the language of...the Other." The Levertov Award is presented annually in the spring to an artist or creative writer whose work exemplifies a serious and sustained engagement with the Judeo-Christian tradition. Past recipients include poets Madeline DeFrees and Franz Wright, nonfiction writers Kathleen Norris and Thomas Lynch, and fiction writer Bret Lott. The event is co-sponsored by the Seattle Pacific University English department, the SPU MFA in Creative Writing, and University Presbyterian Church.

To RSVP for this event, click here. For directions to University Presbyterian Church, click here. For more information about the event, click here.

The 2009 Florence Seminar
What a Thing is Man? The Christian Humanism of Michelangelo  

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.

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