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 Robert Deeble: This Bar Has No One Left
Robert Deeble's music (Image Update #43) has been described as "wistful folk-pop, sparsely arranged, gracefully performed, and achingly beautiful to behold." With Deeble's recently released six-song EP, This Bar Has No One Left, "edged in darkness" could be added to the description. Summarized by his label as " an emotional, last call at 2 a.m., slow burning rock record," the album continues the stripped-down instrumentation that carried his previous album, the much acclaimed Thirteen Stories. With lyrics that tell the tales of washed-up, stranded, and lonely people, Deeble's voice edges ever lower, growling and groaning as the album descends into the vacancies of his characters' lives. From the piano-centered "Face Down on Concrete" to the nearly whispered and bass driven delivery of "In a Cigarette Voice," Deeble continues to draw comparisons to the vocals of Lou Reed and lyrical geography of Leonard Cohen. Though the EP is anchored in darkness, its collage of misfits and addicts continue to search, and in that search to come upon a bleak hope. The EP was recorded in Portland, Oregon at Type Foundry Studios by Adam Selzer (M. Ward). Other musicians on the album include Rachel Blumberg (drums), Amanda Lawrence (viola), Todd Corbett (bass), and Kris Rosentrader. Among others, the Seattle-based Deeble has performed with Low, Pedro the Lion, Rosie Thomas, Victoria Williams, The Vigilantes of Love, and Over the Rhine. The EP is available through quality music stores, including pastemusic.com and Deeble's label, Fractured Discs.
Visit Robert Deeble online.
 Image Anthologized
Every year, Image is proud to publish some of the highest quality writing in the country, and it always gives us an extra boost to be anthologized alongside the best periodicals in the world. So, we wanted to alert you to a few recent "Best of" collections that have selected Image pieces for inclusion this year. (Editors of these collections choose writing from The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, and First Things, to drop a few big names.) For starters, Books & Culture editor John Wilson chose two pieces that were originally published in Image to be included in The Best Christian Writing 2006: Greg Wolfe's editorial statement from issue #41, "Picturing the Passion," and Paul J. Willis's piece, "Spokane: a Triptych," from issue #40 are gathered with essays by Bill McKibben and Lauren Winner, an interview with Eugene Peterson, and pieces by Virginia Stem Owens, Frederica Mathewes-Green, Nicholas Wolterstorff, and many others. Second, the latest edition of The Best American Spiritual Writing includes Richard Chess's poem "Kaddish" from Image #42. Everything in this volume is worth dipping into, with notable entries by Robert Cording, Patricia Hampl, and Thomas Lynch. Finally, Garret Keizer's poem "Hell and Love," originally published in Image #40, appears in The Best American Poetry of 2005 among the exalted company of Tony Hoagland, W. D. Snodgrass, and Adrienne Rich. Be sure to check out these cameo appearances if you haven't read them in Image yet, and while you're at it, acquaint yourself with other excellent poetry, nonfiction, and spiritual writing from the past year.
For The Best Christian Writing 2006, click here.
For The Best American Spiritual Writing, click here.
For The Best American Poetry of 2005, click here.
 Robert Gober: The Meat Wagon
Gober, one of the most important artists of his generation, along with chief curator Matthew Drutt, rummaged through the Menil's archives to put together an allsorts exhibit combining the artist's own work with pieces from the Houston-based museum's extensive collection. The three-room installation juxtaposes surrealist line drawings, clothing, waxy body parts, disjointed wooden Christs from medieval Europe, stacks of bound newspapers (not salvaged, but painstakingly printed by the artist), clothed mannequins, and more. Children's legs with tiny socked and sandaled feet burn like logs in a fireplace; a barred window opens to a blue-lit sky; and, in the farthest room, viewers can peer through a grating set into the floor to see water draining through a stainless steel aperture in the center of a pale torso-a sight at first chilling, even repulsive, then somehow cathartic. The installation is by turns moving, eerie, meditative, uncomfortable, and wondrous. One comes away with a sense of uneasy reverence. The title is taken from museum co-founder John de Menil's letter to his executor, in which he describes his wishes for his funeral. He writes that he wants to be buried as a Catholic, "with gaiety and seriousness." After describing his wishes, the letter concludes: "These details are not inspired by a pride, which would be rather vain, because I'll be a corpse for the meat wagon." It's easy to see why Gober, a cradle Catholic wrestling with issues of the body, identity, sexuality, purity and impurity, lit upon that peculiar phrase.
At the Menil Collection in Houston through January 22.
Support the Taproot Theatre Company and see the West Coast Premiere: The Trial of Ebenezer Scrooge
In 1976, Scott Nolte and his wife, Pam, founded Taproot Theatre Company in a city that boasted a high interest in the performing arts, film, and books ... and the worst church attendance per capita among the nation's major cities. Scott says of Seattle, Washington: "Twenty-eight years later, I can't say that the scene has changed much at all - except that the expanse between churched and unchurched' and liberal and conservative seems wider and more divisive." All the more reason, he says, for TTC "to bridge the gap." The company thrives "to explore the beauty and questions of life while bringing hope to our search for meaning." As a theater working up from a biblical grounding, Taproot labors to keep itself an open crossroads and unifying hub for a wide audience. Nolte says, "It's a God-calling to create theater and nightly mini-community to reflect on and celebrate ideas, language, and emotion. It's also a responsibility to balance our pursuit of artistic quality and honesty with the process of how productions are nurtured and who we are as a cadre of believers, artists, technicians and administrators." This month, Taproot Theatre Company produces the West Coast premiere of The Trial of Ebenezer Scrooge by Mark Brown, a comedic twist on the Dickens classic. Having given his "transformation" sober thought, Ebenezer Scrooge charges Marley and the Christmas spirits with kidnapping, assault, and battery. It seems certain he's reverted to his old disagreeable self, a reversion that bears the contemporary question: can the goodness and grace of Christmas overcome the age of victimization and frivolous lawsuits? The Trial of Ebenezer Scrooge runs November 18 through December 30. All performances are held at Taproot Theatre at 204 N. 85 th St. in Seattle.
For more about Taproot, click here.
Sacra Conversazione
The Barrington Center for the Arts at Gordon College presents Sacra Conversazione, featuring the art of Tanja Butler and Tyrus Clutter. Butler, assistant professor of art at Gordon, and Clutter, adjunct professor of art history at Gordon, have merged their talents to each exhibit two series of literal and contextual altarpieces-and hold a conversation between them. Christians in the Visual Arts (CIVA) director Tyrus Clutter gathers his inspiration from the tradition of Italian altarpieces, constructing his altars in the basic form of the originals. Set into the pieces are contemporary portraits of sainthood, the vulnerably nude and clothed figures of C.S. Lewises, Flannery O'Connors, and others. Bruce Herman, director of the Barrington gallery, says Clutter's intentions are "more to create a sophisticated quotation of liturgical artifacts than to actually make art used in a worship service. His work often constitutes a humorous yet reverential commentary on modern-day heroes of literature, theology and the arts." Tanja Butler uses oil on panels to create a more abstract context for devotion in art may be used to deepen the worship experience. Herman comments that "she comes out of the modernist, expressionist tradition on a formal level, yet strives to achieve the authenticity and humility of a Fra Angelico in her desire to have her art serve God and Church." Both artists share the reverent desire to represent meaning greater than their own aesthetic vision. To join the conversation, visit the Barrington Center for the Arts at Gordon College now through December 2.
For gallery hours and other information about Sacra Conversazione, click here.
Gallery Watch
Wayne Forte: Recent Paintings
November 19 through December 10, Wayne Forte (Image #13, 38) will hold an exhibition of his recent paintings at the Southern California Arts Projects and Exhibitions (SCAPE). A reception for the artist will be held November 19, 5 to 8 pm. For more information, call (949) 723-3406.
NextNext Visual Art
Curated by Dan Cameron, Senior Curator at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, the 2005 NextNext Visual Art presents a dozen Brooklyn artists who have created dynamic new projects in a range of media specifically for spaces in the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The exhibition will be on view from now through December 17 in Brooklyn, NY in the following locations: the Diker Gallery Café, Natman Room, and Lepercq Space in the BAM Peter Jay Sharp Building; and in the Harvey Theater in conjunction with BAM's live performances during the 2005 Next Wave Festival. For more information, please call (718) 636-4101, e-mail BAMart@BAM.org, or go to BAM's website.
Upcoming
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