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Image
on Amazon
You can subscribe to Image on Amazon.com these days. We don't
particularly recommend that technique—subscribing through our 800
number or our website are probably better ways to go. But insofar as Amazon
is something of a "public square" marketplace, consider telling
others what you find in our pages—they have a ranking option and
other forms of feedback on the page where Image is featured.
See Image
at Amazon.
Introducing
the new Image Links Section
We've added a new resource to our website that we hope you will find
interesting and useful. The brand new Image links section is a
place where we've compiled some of our favorite resources for faith and
the arts on the Internet. If you have ever wanted to pick Image's
brain, here's your chance. Our ambition is to make the Image website
the single most comprehensive informational guide to the relationship
between religious faith and contemporary art and literature on the Internet.
In our links pages, you will find a wealth of resources in this area,
from literary and cultural magazines to graduate programs to sites about
individual writers, composers, filmmakers, and much, much more. We have
tried to make the links page accessible and easy to navigate, as well
as comprehensive and engaging, in hopes that it will be a place you will
enjoy visiting often.
Begin your exploration
of Image's links page here.
 The
Art of the Commonplace
Wendell Berry
Few contemporary writers have offered as much wisdom to their readers
as has Wendell Berry-a writer who has achieved both literary greatness
and prophetic stature. Over the course of his decades-long career he has
traced, in every conceivable genre, the intersecting threads of environment,
place, humanity, and God. His new book The Art of the Common Place:
The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry compiles 21 of the author's prose
pieces that reflect on the importance, essence, and increasing degradation
of rural life in America and the Western World. Berry's insistence on
the immanent and dire importance of our need to alter our agrarian practices
is alarming at times. However, Berry's magic is to balance the peril facing
our natural world with the possibility and hope a spiritual life provides
us. This helpful and relevant anthology of essays will provide Berry's
new and longtime readers with plenty of political, philosophical, and
spiritual sustenance. Additionally, no reader will be able to walk away
un-implicated in some of the most essential questions of our time.
More
from Counterpoint Press...
 Oldspeak
Interview with Image Editor
Oldspeak is an online journal that features conversations on the
latest social and religious issues as well as interviews with leading
writers and commentators, such as Lauren Winner (Girl Meets God)
and Nat Hentoff. Recently our own Image editor, Greg Wolfe, was
interviewed with a focus on delving into the meaning and cultural significance
of Christian humanism. In the interview, Wolfe explains his own understanding
of Christian humanism and its relevance to practical matters of art, politics,
and religion. Often in Christian circles we tend to deviate in opposite
directions on one of two extremes: either focusing on the "empathetic,
human issues" or on the "moral, ethical backbone" of our
religion, Wolfe says. When we isolate one extreme to the detriment of
the other, we fail to live up to the balance found in the Incarnation.
Christ walks the line that humans are called to tread, showing compassion
by meeting us in the places of our utter humanity, and at the same time
calling us to a higher commitment to moral truth. Christian humanism,
according to Wolfe, is trying to achieve this balancing act, "like
walking on a tightrope." Isolating either the divine or the human
aspect of Christ is perhaps the easier way to create a crusade in politics
and, indeed, religion. But Christian humanism is the call to forge a synthesis,
finding that place where the "the vertical and the horizontal axes
of our existence" intersect. When we walk this tightrope we are transformed
as artists, as citizens, and as Christians. Thus, the call of Christian
humanism has important religious and social implications. After reading
the interview, you should familiarize yourself with Oldspeak itself-a
site well worth looking into.
Read the interview
at Oldspeak.
 Buddy
and Julie Miller - The Wonderful Third Voice
Buddy and Julie Miller have been the "first couple of Americana"
for years. In a supporting role, Buddy has played, sung, or written with
Bill Mallonee, Midnight Oil, and is currently the guitarist for Emmylou
Harris's traveling band, Spyboy. Julie, an accomplished singer/songwriter
herself, has worked with Harris, John Hiatt, and Hank Williams III among
others. Though both Buddy and Julie have worked side by side on their
solo albums, this is their first release as a pair. The instrumentation
is sparse, yet the arrangements travel the retrospective highway of American
traditional music in such a way as to transform each piece into a vast
expanse. Bringing an incredible aptitude for harmony, the Millers sing
seven songs by Julie, and covers of such singers as Utah Phillips and
Bob Dylan. While Dirty Water is the only co-written song, the album
showcases both Buddy and Julie in a way that highlights their unity. It
is this togetherness that allows the vocals on the album a sense of transcendence
or, as Julie says, "that wonderful third voice." The album is
noticeable for its sense of balance-from the deep anguish of Rock Salt
and Nails to the twangy rendition of Wallflower, to Rachel,
a song about the first victim of the Columbine tragedy that maintains
a remarkable sense of hope amidst tragedy. In an apparent way, the album
investigates spiritual themes, something Julie continues to do though
she has moved beyond the "Contemporary Christian" music scene.
"It was a precious thing, going around the world and meeting believers…[but]
you're really singing to the choir…after a time or two it was constricting."
Asked about timing and inspiration, Julie has said songs come when she's
vacuuming. "'Want to know how many vacuums we have,' Buddy asks,
grinning. 'Four. That's where the songs come from. Aspiring songwriters,
get a good vacuum cleaner.'" In 2002, the Americana Music Association
awarded Buddy and Julie Miller the "Americana Album of the Year."
Additionally, Buddy released "Midnight and Lonesome" in October
2002. By early January it had been #1 on the Americana chart for 7 weeks.
(All quotes: The Tennessean)
Visit Buddy
and Julie Miller.
CIVA
Conference: Images of the Body: Sacred, Personal, Public
Christians
in the Visual Arts (CIVA), in conjunction with the Gordon College Art
Department, announces the biennial CIVA Conference Images of the Body:
Sacred, Personal and Public, June 26-29 at Gordon College in Wenham,
MA. The western tradition of body representation is a topic that recent
artists and scholars have revisited and critiqued. For more than twenty
years, contemporary artists have been referencing the body as a battlefield
of political and social consciousness. Many important artists have given
us raw images of the body that would seem to lay the axe to received traditions
of the "body-beautiful." Is there a shared vision of human beauty
and significance any longer? Moreover, in these times is there a distinctive
Christian witness to be borne with regard to representing the body? Are
there alternatives to the polarities of prettiness (nineteenth century
European academic realism) and the deadpan, raw representations of the
human visage often seen in the modernist era? Is there a "third way"?
These and other questions will be addressed at the CIVA 2003 Conference.
For information on
registration and exhibition entry, please contact Rosemary Scott-Fishburn
at Christians in the Visual Arts or go to the website.
Continuing
Art Exhibits
Featured in past issues of ImageUpdate, the following exhibits
are still running.
Hope Chapel Stations
of the Cross Exhibit
Organized by the ministry of Hope Arts in Austin, Texas, this show includes
14 artists' interpretation of the Stations of the Cross. The show runs
through April 18, 2003. Gallery hours are Sundays 9:00am - 1:00pm, and
on weekdays 9:00am - 5:00pm by appointment. Learn
more about Hope Arts at their website.
Follow the link to view
the artwork in this exhibit.
Ruth Weisberg, Love,
Sacred and Profane
Love, Sacred and Profane continues showing at the Jack Rutberg
Fine Arts gallery in Los Angeles, California, through April 30, 2003.
For more on this exhibit, go to the gallery's
website.
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