Artist of the Month: Daniel Tobin
When a poem called "Homage to Bosch" by Daniel Tobin arrived at the Image editorial offices ten years ago, we instantly knew that we were in the presence of a major talent. (We're happy to say that it became the lead poem in Tobin's collection, Double Life, from LSU Press.) "Homage" took on one of the most enigmatic masterpieces of Western art: Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights, that teeming, anarchic canvas, in which the saved and damned enact dozens of allegories and fables. Tobin's response to such a chaotic and baffling work is measured and revelatory. A typical stanza: "The sufferings of the damned and the saved, how alike they are- / as if the Almighty sharpened his blade for all equally / and the arms extended in universal blessing / were only the austere gesture of some bitter judgment." Whether he is tackling a large-scale subject, like Bosch or St. Bartolomé de los Casas (the saint known as the "Protector of the Indians"), or penning a lyric, Tobin knows how to mix gravity with levity, the downward pressure of sin and suffering with the unbearable lightness of grace. One minute he's quoting Simone Weil, the next he's uttering a "Brief Elegy for a Subdivision." Well, perhaps it's no coincidence that he should see in Bosch a kindred spirit. Daniel Tobin's poems are earthly delights, indeed.

Go to our Artist of the Month page on Daniel Tobin.

Suzanne M. Wolfe's Novel Given Christianity Today Award
Image executive editor Suzanne Wolfe's novel, Unveiling, has been singled out for an Award of Merit by Christianity Today (CT). In the fiction category, the top award went to Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson, which also won the Pulitzer Prize. Here's how CT describes the criteria for their book awards: "This year we received 327 nominated titles from 52 publishers. CT staff selected the top five books in each category, and then panels of judges (one panel for each category) determined the winners. In the end, we honor 23 titles that bring understanding to people, events, and ideas that shape evangelical life, thought, and mission. We also include our judges' comments on the winners." Unveiling has just been issued in paperback, and in a Dutch edition. The hardcover is available through the Image Store. Congratulations, Suzanne!

Read all of CT's 2005 Book Awards online.

Order your copy of Unveiling now from the Image Store.

The Crime of Living Cautiously
Luci Shaw
Upon reading the title, you'd be justified in thinking: What's wrong with exercising a sensible dose of caution? But in her latest book, The Crime of Living Cautiously, renowned poet and friend of Image Luci Shaw suggests that cautiousness is often a disguise for boredom and timidity. With Jesus' parable of the talents under her belt, she dares to call Christian tameness criminal. Contrasting cautiousness with adventure, she draws from the repository of biblical risk-takers who changed the course of history by giving up security in order to achieve something extraordinary. God calls us to adventure, she says, and as one can glean from her poetry, Shaw is experienced with both risk and its necessary complement: faith-a catalyst for risk-taking to Shaw's way of thinking. Pushing the limits and expanding the imagination are not only her life's work as an artist; they also define her life of faith. One gets the sense that Luci Shaw is never bored in her Christian experience. Renowned poet, lecturer, active Episcopalian, and grandmother, there's little about her that could be called tame. Her book is mostly personal, conversational-she's candid in sharing moments of self-doubt and fear as well as of inspiration and faith. Each chapter includes questions for reflection and discussion, launching it into the category of Christian inspiration that serves well for personal or group study. The real gem of The Crime of Living Cautiously, though, is its glimpse into the inner workings of the poet's mind. She says that good art is created "when beauty and risk interact," revealing that the creative process of writing has been just as much of a risk for her every day as the bungee jumping episode she describes in the first chapter. As with that literal leap of faith, fulfilling the various callings in our lives demands trust, sets off a bit of an adrenaline rush, and eventually proves that the payoff is well worth the risk.

Just released, The Crime of Living Cautiously: God's Call to Adventure is published by InterVarsity Press and can be found at www.ivpress.com.

Peter La Grand: Falling Down in Place
Peter La Grand was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and spent much of his early youth relocating as his family moved from place to place. He learned to play the guitar in high school and started turning out his own songs. At the age of twenty, La Grand bought a van and became itinerate once again, lighting out across America and performing wherever he could. He spent the next years playing with a hodgepodge of bands, including David Wilcox, and one year playing Dobro for Bunkbed Nights. After years of songwriting, La Grand has recently laid down ten tracks for his debut album, Falling Down in Place. Recorded with the intimacy of a conversation, the songs detail the lives of people who long for escape. The album begins with "When the Colors Die," a song filled with imagery of endings that mirrors the narrator's reminiscences of lost love. In perhaps the album's most beautiful song, "Proposition," the narrator's yearning transcends the nearly whispered delivery to achieve a palpable ache. Voicing one of the album's central themes, the song concludes: ".so tonight let's escape / we'll sneak out-you lead the way," a theme that is taken further on the album's title track, "Falling Down in Place": "Whether or not you can escape, you cannot afford to stay." The desire for escape, however, falls short of creating one. In La Grand's final song, "In Memoriam," all attempts at flight end in a state of disarray. Left without resolution, the characters have by no means escaped. Trapped, and frustrated by their impotent attempts to extricate themselves, they have completed their slow, paralyzing falling down in place. Whether their final position is that of permanent desolation or of resurrection is not known. The album itself is concerned only with honesty in the vein of an old blues song: in the face of despair, with only a vague hope for reversal, it portrays life simply as it is. Filled with the muted sounds of accordion, violin, bass, and percussion, La Grand has crafted a debut that evokes a night spent pacing in the woods. Haunting and dark, with only obscured light from above for guidance, the songs cohere into a work that dwells in the sorrow that so often marks our lives. Currently based in Vancouver, B.C., La Grand will spend the next year playing concerts throughout the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia in support of the album.

Visit Peter La Grand online: www.peterlagrand.com.

The Big Love by Sarah Dunn
We are sometimes struck by the desire to read chick lit. It usually happens around Memorial Day weekend when there is nothing better to do. But often, as with those fake candy orange slices you can buy at gas stations, a chick lit novel is not as gratifying as it seemed in your imagination once you're actually reading it. Which is why we're so happy to find a book like Sarah Dunn's The Big Love, a chick lit novel we never once wanted to fling into the path of the neighbor's lawnmower. The book obeys the basic genre conventions: there are dinner parties, coworkers who theorize entertainingly about penises, and a likeably flawed and somewhat self-absorbed heroine who starts out by being dumped by The Bad Boyfriend and is thus launched on her quest. But here's the twist: she's an ex-evangelical Christian. And she likes to talk about it. She's astute about the psychology of sex within the subculture, especially the weird limbo experience of post-college singleness, and deliciously, hilariously bitter about the church dating scene. On the other hand, though she's left the church behind, her relationship with it is still complicated and sort of affectionate ("I don't like to be in the business of blaming the church for things that have gone wrong in my life. ... My feeling is that the rest of the world is happy bashing evangelical Christians and there is no need for me to pile on"). And she admits near the end of the novel that she feels like she's on the run from God. Her heart is restless, she says, but she can't seem to go back. "Not just yet," she says. Since the Augustinian thread isn't picked up again, and since (warning: spoiler ahead) the requisite guy-problem also ends on an ambiguous note, one wonders if this might be the first book in a series. We hope so, because Dunn's novel reads less like fake candy orange slices and more like...an orange.

For more, click here.

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 email to gwolfe@spu.edu.

(For a complete catalogue of continuing events and announcements supplied by Image Update readers, check out "What's New Elsewhere.")

The Art, Faith, and Social Justice National Conference: A Call for Papers
Marquette University's Department of Performing Arts and Office of Mission and Identity is hosting the Art, Faith, and Social Justice National Conference in collaboration with Alverno College and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Peck School of the Arts. The event will be held on Marquette University's campus in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The conference welcomes submissions for papers, panels, and bare bones performance presentations to be held on Thursday, November 10 beginning at 9 am through Saturday, November 12, 2005 at 12 noon. We invite artists and scholars of all disciplines to come together to discuss the multi-faceted diamond of art, faith, and social justice in transforming our civilization. Send one-page proposals to Phylis Ravel, Artistic Director/Chair, Department of Performing Arts, Marquette University, Post Office Box 1881, Milwaukee, WI 53201-1881 or email to phylis.ravel@marquette.edu. Please include your name, address, email, contact numbers, institutional affiliation, and autobiographical information.

The website for information regarding registration, conference events, lodging, travel, and other information is available at www.marquette.edu.

Call For Poetry Submissions: Oneiros Press
Oneiros Press announces its 5th Annual Poetry Broadside Contest. It is looking for poems under thirty lines, postmarked by June 30, 2005. Previously published work is OK. The final judge will be Kathleen Pierce. Please send $5 for the first three poems and $1 for every poem thereafter. Please make checks payable to Oneiros Press and include a SASE for an announcement of the winner. The winner will receive Letterpress publication of the winning poem, twenty-five free Letterpress copies, and one free copy of the judge's signed, numbered, Letterpress broadside.

Upon a Peak in Darien: Call for Submissions
Christian poets in North America, especially on the West Coast, are encouraged to submit one or two poems to be considered for inclusion in a collection of verse by American and Australian Christian poets. The focus for this collection will be the Pacific Ocean, the vast watery divide and brooding presence that stretches between our two continents. The title for the collection will be Upon a Peak in Darien, after Keats' well known sonnet ('On First Looking into Chapman's Homer') and will hopefully provide a means of bringing closer together the Pacific Rim poetic communities of both North America and Australia. If you would like a poem or poems to be considered for this collection please submit entries as a Word Attachment to Dr. Peter Stiles at pstiles@trinity.nsw.edu.au. All entries for this collection must be received by Friday, 24th June, 2005. Contributors should include a short biography of no more than 50 words. This is a non-profit venture and all decisions regarding the choice of poems rest with the Editor.

Subscribe to Image On-line and Read about Family Prayer
If you love the kind of art, music, and writing you read about in ImageUpdate but don't yet subscribe to Image in print, we want to extend a special offer to you: subscribe on-line now, and we'll throw in Circle of Grace: Praying With-and For-Your Children (regularly $25)-just to thank you for subscribing.

Circle of Grace: Praying With-and For-Your Children is a book about how to make prayer a natural and meaningful part of family life. Full of wisdom and common sense, it includes a series of essays by Image editors Greg and Suzanne Wolfe (parents of four), following by an anthology of prayers old and new on topics from pets to world peace, Holy Days to the first day of school. It includes Aztec and Nigerian prayers, prayers of Thomas a Kempis, e.e. cummings, the authors' own kids, and many more. Read more.

Click here to order a subscription. When you get to the "Payment/Shipping" screen, in the "Shipping Instructions" field, type in the words "Special Offer: Circle of Grace." We'll mail you the book right away, and your subscription will start in three to six weeks.

This offer is only available with internet orders for new personal subscriptions and expires June 15, 2005.

Kathleen Norris to Headline Fall Image Conference
Mark your calendars! The twelfth annual Image Conference will be held November 10-13, 2005 in Houston, Texas. This year's theme: "The Matter of Devotion: Art, Liturgy, and the Stuff of Worship." Speakers will include Kathleen Norris, author of Dakota and The Cloister Walk; philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff, author of Art in Action; Thomas Lynch, author of The Undertaking; poet Robert Cording; Seven Dance Company; and visual artists Alfonse Borysewicz and Wayne Forte. (More speakers and presenters will be announced in due course.) In his essay "Trumpets, Ashes, and Tears," Wolterstorff describes the "one-plus-six rhythm" that calls believers together to worship on one day each week, then disperses us to do our work in the world for the other six. He describes the complicated tension in our religious heritage that opposes sacred and profane, worship and work. Is worship meant to strengthen us as we return to work, or are our daily pursuits merely a prologue to our devotion? How should the quotidian experiences of joy, suffering, and repentance be given flesh in the language, music, architecture, and visual art that create both the environment for worship and the liturgy that takes place there? The 2005 Image Conference will explore these questions, with particular reference to the ways that art provides the sacramental link between the sacred part of our week and the workaday world of diapers and spreadsheets, shoes and books. A distinguished group of artists and scholars will examine issues including the changing relationship between worship and contemporary culture, both high and low, the ways in which fine art and liturgical art influence one another, and the renewal movements in both traditional and emerging churches.

Stay tuned for more information in the coming weeks and months:
http://www.imagejournal.org/conference/

Announcing Image's Glen Workshop 2005
"This Great Unknowing: Drawing Near to Mystery"
July 31 - August 7, 2005

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, "This Great Unknowing: Drawing Near to Mystery," 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 illustrator Barry Moser, playwright Arlene Hutton, poets B.H. Fairchild and Andrew Hudgins, mixed-media artist Barry Krammes, Navajo painter Elmer Yazzie, and many others. Afternoons and evenings at the Glen feature faculty readings, lectures, and presentations. Each evening concludes with an ecumenical worship service that incorporates the arts. This year's musicians-in-residence, Karin Bergquist and Linford Detweiler of Over the Rhine, will be giving a concert as well as playing during worship throughout the week. 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 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!

A brochure will be printed and mailed in early February. 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.

In the meantime, to begin your exploration of the Glen Workshop, click here.

And for a personal perspective on the Glen experience, read Roz Dimon's brief reflection here.

Image Forum: Let Your Voice Be Heard!
As a quarterly journal, Image doesn't have a "Letters to the Editor" section that you see in periodicals that appear more frequently. We've always regretted that, because through our pages--and programs like the Glen Workshop and the Image Conference--we've been striving to build community, to stimulate a larger conversation in artistic and religious circles, both in this country and around the world. Now, thanks to some hard work on our webmaster's part, we've launched the Image Forum, a full-featured online message board system. You now have the chance to post and respond to a host of message threads. Write a virtual Letter to the Editor. Start a thread in any of several different forums devoted to particular art forms. Share your work with others. Let us know how to make the Forum better. Let your voice be heard!

http://forum.imagejournal.org

Subscribe (and a whole lot more) Online
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