Artist of the Month: G.C. Waldrep
The poet Donald Revell has written of G.C. Waldrep's poetry: "Christopher Smart and Hart Crane applaud these poems in Heaven because the Earth of these poems is true." That's it exactly: the underlying tension that drives Waldrep's poems is their earthy mysticism. As in his poetry, so in his life: Waldrep spent many years living in an Amish community in North Carolina, though he is now moving through various residencies and academic posts. Again, note that rhythm in his experience: he lives in a community seeking peace by loving the land, and then he inhabits communities that seek peace by loving language. Words and the Word: tilling the soil in order to make the world bear fruit. You could spend as much time with Waldrep's first poetry collection, Goldbeater's Skin, as you could with a hefty nineteenth-century novel. And you should.

Visit our Artist of the Month page on Waldrep here.

First Church of the Higher Elevations by Peter Anderson
When lover of mountains Peter Anderson goes on a hike, he sets out to listen for the voice of God. It's in the high and lonely places of the American Southwest-the Sangre de Cristos, High Uintas, Wasatch, and other ranges-that he finds the stillness he's looking for. In First Church of the Higher Elevations: Mountains, Prayer, and Presence, Anderson writes through the very act of walking-following in the tradition of Thomas Merton and John Muir-describing the mountains through the eyes of a naturalist, hiker, conservationist, and mystic, and paralleling inward and outward landscapes in lively prose with rolling rhythms and consonance. On his and his wife's daily walks up from the cloud-covered valley of Salt Lake City into the surrounding foothills, he writes: "There were times when a little elevation gain was enough to free us from the heavy gray light of the inversion. So too there were times when walking prayer was enough to lift, at least momentarily, an inversion that had hidden the horizons in that big thicket of thoughts, emotions, and memories that I had come to think of as an inward landscape." Each chapter has a different take on what Anderson calls "the scripture of place"-and reserves equal reverence for the mysteries of memory, imagination, and the physical world in which they are manifest. This is no work of airy mysticism: there is a wiry toughness and physicality to Anderson's prose. Without sentimentalizing, he shows us the night-blooming primrose, the coyotes, the names and contours of particular mountain ranges, and the hard facts of what the shape of the land does to the air, water, and creatures that move over it. (The world of the city is present, too, in the distance, with its bustle of politics and sports; the Utah Jazz and the Bureau of Land Management both make minor but consistent appearances.) Anderson also draws on the rich and varied spiritual history of the landscape he explores throughout. Mormons, Native Americans, Spanish Catholics, modern Carmelites, Quakers, and beat poets all appear on the trail. The result is a book that feels profoundly, eclectically American.

First Church is available from Ghost Road Press.

The 2005 HopeArts Festival
The 2005 HopeArts Festival is near! The HopeArts group in Austin, Texas is a ministry set apart, aimed specially at church members who are interested in engaging their faith through the arts. It covers an impressive spectrum of form as well, offering programs throughout the year for writers, visual artists, musicians, and those interested in film and theater, to name a few. This year, HopeArts' three-week summer festival will feature performance, visual, and spoken arts, as well as play host to the Ragamuffin Film Festival, which encourages, in its own words, Christians to "move away from a reductionistic and utilitarian aesthetic toward the large country we call creation: an exploration of the full range of human experience. Instead of seeing film narrowly as a way to preach a religious story, we want it to be seen as a way to tell an honest story." HopeArts considers the understanding and practice of art as a way to experience the fullness of creativity, imagination, and beauty of God-a way of thinking we here at Image heartily endorse. The Ragamuffin Film Festival kicks off the Hope Arts Fest on Thursday, July 14 at 7 pm. The art installations and music performances begin on July 15 and end on the morning of July 31.

For a complete schedule of events, click here.

For information about the Ragamuffin Film Festival, click here.

Blue Venus by Lisa Russ Spaar
Lisa Russ Spaar can turn a phrase-"the quiet bruise of thunder," "this opal brooch of sky, / like milk tinged with blood"-so much so that she can dizzy the senses. That her poetry is also propelled by more complex concerns is enough to snap those senses wide awake. In Blue Venus, Spaar draws on a private cache of longing to utter dense, sensuous lines that lash together the body, nature, and a God who inhabits flesh (and other unknown expanses). The combination creates a delicious tremor of loss and recollection that can be felt throughout the collection, as Spaar's thirsty eye skims from the palpable to the subterranean twinge of prayer and pathos. In "Wind," for example, the "dicker" of "magnolia tongues" on a lazy front porch moves softly into the "friction / of this traveler's old news of elsewhere," which in turn wafts a moth toward the "burning lamp.at the heart of this story." It's in that sway and tug that the confession emerges: "If sadness makes me God's prisoner, so be it." Spaar's ability to merge a ripened image with the sharp taste of revelation tells of a wakefulness that both heightens and disquiets, a theme she deliberately explores in the "Insomnia" series. From the sleeplessness of Thomas Merton (published in Image #39), to Virginia Woolf, to the biblical Adam, Spaar conjures the spirits of historical figures to pace the broken edges of their own loss. With verse as her medium, she coaxes their fitfulness to the fine pitch of epiphany. Looking at his infant son-"the wretched red one, all mouth"-during an original wakeful night, Adam casts up the original question, "for such a risk, can God's vast, inscrutable dream / of us, its split galaxy above, ever be forgiven?" Or Murasaki Shikibu, who feels she will not be unburdened by the dawn, even as "the white root of my body awakens / heretic beneath its layered integuments of winter." Spaar is a poet familiar with the dilemma of troubled beauty-a beauty she describes in Blue Venus: "a blown threshold is not a devastation, / but a glimpse of heaven."

To buy Blue Venus, click here.

For more about Lisa Russ Spaar, click here.

Glen Workshop: A Few Spaces Still Left!!!
For those of you who may think it's too late to sign up for this summer's Glen Workshop in Santa Fe, New Mexico, we've got good news! There are a still a few places left, in the following workshops: Mixed Media (visual art), Watercolor, Poetry, Playwriting, and the Seminar on Native American Art. The dates are July 31 - August 7, 2005. The theme this year is "This Great Unknowing: Drawing Near to Mystery."

To register, feel free to call us at (206) 281-2988 or register directly online (starting here).

For general information about the Glen, click here.

2005 Image Conference: New Web pages up; brochure available
We promised to get you more details about the 2005 Image Conference in July, and we're pleased to say we're as good as our word. Now you can go to the Image website to find registration information, a schedule of whens and wheres, and to bask in the glow of our brand new conference brochure, which we'll be mailing out later this month. Held in Houston, Texas November 10-13 and featuring keynote speakers Kathleen Norris and Nicholas Wolterstorff, "The Matter of Devotion: Art, Liturgy, and the Stuff of Worship" will include all the hallmarks of an Image conference-nationally renowned artists and thinkers for plenary talks, music and dance performances, an art exhibition, and several special services featuring distinctive forms of worship, both ancient and new. Hope to see you there this fall!

For more information about the 2005 Image Conference, 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.")

Come Hear Tom Kimmel, Jan Krist, Pierce Pettis and John Smith in Seattle!
Seattle's Tractor Tavern is a common spot to catch live music shows anywhere between five to seven nights a week. Depending on the evening, one could hear rock, alternative country, Celtic, folk, blues, jazz, bluegrass, and other sundry sounds. When we found out that Tom Kimmel, Jan Krist, Pierce Pettis and John Smith would be playing at the Tavern, we had to get the word out to other Seattleites. These musicians will be doing a song writers in the round on July 21 at the Tractor Tavern-5213 Ballard Ave NW, Seattle, WA 98107. Tickets are $12.

For more info on the Tractor Tavern, go to:
http://tractortavern.citysearch.com/

Angel Face Poetry Journal
From 1995 through 2001, I edited and produced the poetry journal Blue Violin, but for Angel Face I wanted to try something different. Since I am now devoted to the rosary, and have written a book of poems based on the mysteries of the rosary, I decided to arrange the poems in Angel Face according to the pattern of the rosary (according to the Mysteries). Poets need not be Catholic to submit. I have published Jewish and non-Christian poets, as well as Protestant and Catholic poets. I want to see many different viewpoints-secular or religious poetry-but please no rhyme, nothing preachy, negative, or derogatory. The first issue of Angel Face is available for sample. Cost is $6 postpaid. Please make checks payable to myself, Mary Agnes Dalrymple, the editor and publisher of Angel Face (otherwise the bank will not accept the check). I am currently seeking poetry for the second issue and read submissions year-round. Sorry, I can't consider e-mailed submissions or respond to submissions that come without an SASE. Simultaneous and previously published submissions are okay with proper notification. Send work even if you are not sure if it fits the rosary prayer pattern. Detailed guidelines and rosary information can be found at my website: www.maryanka.com. Interested poets can also send an SASE for guidelines. To submit send up to 5 poems (typed please), plus SASE, to Angel Face, c/o MaryAnka Press, P.O. Box 102, Huffman, Texas 77336.

Getty Research Institute Announces its 2006-07 Grant Theme: Religion and Ritual
The Getty Research Institute invites applications from researchers in the arts, humanities, religious and theological studies, and anthropology-as well as other disciplines-whose projects bear upon the problem of religion, ritual, and the visual arts. No force in human life has motivated the production of art more than religious belief. Yet within post-Enlightenment thought about the visual arts there has been difficulty in coming to grips with the significance that sacred objects and spaces have held for their original beholders, not only as instruments for spiritual observance but also as forms of cognition over a much wider sphere. At a moment when religious belief is only fitfully visible in the intellectual realm, the Getty Research Institute will focus in 2006-2007 on the interrelation of religion and the visual arts, both taken in the broadest senses. The application deadline is November 1, 2005. For general inquiries, email griweb@getty.edu.

For more information about the 2006-2007 theme, click here.

For application information, go here.

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.

Subscribe to Image On-line and Curl Up with a Luci Shaw Book-Only While Supplies Last
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: order Image on-line now, and for the first fifteen new subscribers, we'll throw in a book by wise, fluent, childlike, and adventurous poet and spiritual writer Luci Shaw-just to thank you. (If you're not one of the first fifteen to subscribe, we'll cancel your order and won't charge your credit card. No harm, no foul.)

We're offering Luci's three most recent books, all reviewed in past issues of ImageUpdate: The Green Earth: Poems of Creation, Water Lines: New and Selected Poems, and The Crime of Living Cautiously: Hearing God's Call to Adventure. (You can state a book preference when you order, and we'll try to honor it, but we can't guarantee your first choice: it's a Luci Shaw potluck!)

Click here to order a one-year subscription under the special offer, or here to make it a two-year subscription. We'll mail the book right away, and your subscription will start in three to six weeks. (If you try the link above and see a note that says the item you have selected is presently unavailable, that means we sold out. Sorry. But you can still subscribe here, without the special offer.)

This offer is only available with internet orders for new personal subscriptions and is limited to the first ten customers. Thanks to Luci Shaw.

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/

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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