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 Artist of the Month:
Madeleine DeFrees
This is going to sound weird, but bear with us: we think that poet Madeleine DeFrees is the reincarnation of Andrew Marvell. Marvell, whose poetic reputation lives in the shadow of John Donne and George Herbert, is best remembered for "To His Coy Mistress," one of the best pick-up poems ever written, but he was also the author of some of the most enigmatic and provocative poems in the English language, including his "Horatian Ode" and "The Garden." Marvell's ability to invite the mind and heart into a still place-"a green thought in a green shade"-is both cunning and contemplative. A visual equivalent would be the painter Vermeer, the subject of one of Madeline DeFrees's greatest poems. A Catholic nun for thirty-eight years, DeFrees ultimately found that the experience thwarted her true vocation as a poet, yet her life is like a diptych: inside the convent, she sought words that might reach out, beyond a moralistic legalism, to touch the world; outside the convent, her worldly words reach out for a contemplative stillness-if not the blinding light of epiphany, perhaps the equally valuable moment of slowly-dawning wisdom. Whether she is writing a poem about what she shares in common with Marilyn Monroe or about the experience of eye surgery, DeFrees leads us into a garden of green thoughts-still points where time and the timeless embrace.
To go to our Artist of the Month page on Madeleine DeFrees, click here.
 What Gets into Us by Moira Crone
The Fayton, North Carolina, of Moira Crone’s story cycle What Gets into Us is possessed of a strained, dreadful beauty. Its combination of lacquered surface and tortured underside is gruesomely fascinating. Fayton is a land of shirtwaist dresses, sweet tea, wealth, neighborliness, and polite euphemism: “My husband is indisposed. You know what that is?” a woman says to a neighbor girl, meaning that the man is locked in his study with his gun collection and has not shaved or left the house in five days. Both the comfort and the horror of the community is that the residents are always there to look after each other, even at moments like these. Crone’s writing is diamond-polished—hard, cool, and elegant, with splendid flashes of comedy in the finely tuned dialogue. The language persuades without drawing attention to itself. The web of stories stretches from the buttoned-up, sleeked-down fifties through the nineties, when everything has pretty much finished falling apart and even the coastline is eroding, grain by grain. The early stories explore the ethereal conception of southern white womanhood, one that requires women not to see certain things—or at least to pretend not to. Starting very young, girls are taught to appear unaware of sex, money, work, pain, evil, illness, and the inconveniences of the material world in general (their eating at all is a sort of furtive concession to the body, the kind of thing to be done in the kitchen with the help; it’s the servants who are doing most of the practical mothering). A decade or two later, the stories turn to the now young women who are trying to escape Fayton—into art, college, drugs, and the far flung world. A book of connected stories can be difficult to pull off, but Crone makes the form work through a deft use of mystery and suspense. One ghostly figure from an early story haunts the periphery of most of the later pieces: Cheryl Ann Sender is a local darling damaged by the town’s restrictive social codes and culture of secrecy; she turns wild, then leaves. We never learn much about her, but she continues to cross the paths of other characters as far away as Paris. Each time her name is mentioned, there’s a recognition both of the town’s failings and of its successes—because in faraway Cheryl we see glimpses of a profound moral courage. But Crone never allows us inside her head. She remains always in the distance, just out of reach. The mystique of the southern woman lives on.
Available from the University Press of Mississippi here.
 Jim White: Searching for the
Wrong-Eyed Jesus
Jim White is anything but predictable. Ordinary questions about life are something he only glimpses in the distance of his rearview mirror before driving on. A sample lyric from his latest album is typical: “If Jesus drove a motor home, I wonder would he drive pedal to the metal, or real slow?” Fittingly enough, White himself could be the punch line for a joke that goes something like this: “What would Flannery O’Connor have sounded like if she’d been a male alt-country singer?” In the mid-nineties, after many years away, White returned to his Florida roots: “As I traveled around the world, I became more dissatisfied with my search for God. I couldn’t find God wherever I went…. I was sort of looking for the golden tooth in God’s crooked smile. So I came back to the south looking for that.” Mining southern mythology, White made his debut with Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus in 1997. He continued to chronicle the gothic peculiarities of junkyards, highways, diners, and churches on his subsequent highly acclaimed albums No Such Place (2001) and Drill a Hole in that Substrate and Tell Me What You See (2004). In the late ‘90s, British film director Andrew Douglas came across White’s Wrong-Eyed Jesus. Intrigued by his haunting portrayal of the South, Douglas and a film crew set out to see if such a place existed. The resulting film, also named Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus, was recently released on DVD. Winner of many festival awards, the film travels the back roads of the South in search of its music and faith. With White as the film’s narrating tour guide, the film showcases scenes and characters that appear to be the living embodiments of O’Connor’s fiction. Along the way, the viewer also meets many musicians and storytellers, including Johnny Dowd, The Handsome Family, Harry Crews, 16 Horsepower’s David Eugene Edwards, Rev. Gary Harrington, and the Singing Hall Sisters. Without a hint of sarcasm or irony, the film leans into an investigation of faith. Though seemingly uncomfortable with his roots in the Pentecostal church, White confesses: “Here, you feel the presence of the Spirit. You may not like it. It may be wearing the costume of crazy religious people, wild hillbillies, or whatever, but it’s real and it’s alive, and it’s awake. Welcome to Jesus Central.” When asked by the BBC about his own faith, White answered with typical quirkiness: “By viewing the world through the church, intensely, passionately, with spirit and mind, I see the world through a pair of what I call Jesus glasses. If I take the Jesus glasses off, I'm blind.” Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus is now available on DVD, another offering of Jim White’s beautifully peculiar brand of mystery and manners.
Find out more about Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus here.
 The Poetry of Robert Siegel
Robert Siegel's poems are expeditions. Setting out into the natural world to encounter the unfamiliar—or sometimes the all-too-familiar—they beckon us to marvel over the simple, strange things that lie directly in our path. All sorts of creeping things fill Siegel’s new collections, The Waters Under the Earth (2005) and A Pentecost of Finches (2006). (Finches makes a survey of Siegel’s poetic career from The Beasts and the Elders on.) In each, Siegel (Image #1, 7, 13, 30, 36) lays bare the peculiar configuration of our human substance, body and soul, by studying the other life forms pressing in upon the senses. His wondering eye rests on a giraffe, “a shambling tower of desires” inviting “whoever knows what a leaf aims at to climb to the heaven / of green waterfalls and ropey spaces.” Delight in that vaulting neck, “Solomon’s strong tower,” turns to recoil at the silverfish, a low creature “delicate and indecent, / sexual and cleopatric,” feeding on “what we’ve already been … the fingernail, the grease from a pore, / used toothpaste, a detritus of whiskers and dead skin.” The lesson here is that we cannot escape what we have discarded. At the same time, there is enough in a frog’s “litanies of ascending summer” to reawaken the “intimate, singing auricles of the heart.” Siegel’s unspoken anthem is that only as the human world interlaces with the natural do we come to know, with the fisherman, “that for once I have really connected … with the waters under the earth.” Other, more elliptical meditations bear these poems into even deeper water. “Carrying the Father” offers an intimate homage to the humor and tenderness of the deceased, now just a shade rising “from a small gesture, tine of a rake, or ghost / of a burning leaf” to keep alive the “dark / dear past from which all shapes come.” The mythic and biblical take more overt hold in other places, as when Mary sees the familiar jars and bits of food on her table grow “brighter, more distinct, themselves” just before she glimpses the holy visitor out of the corner of her eye, or when the image of Grendel, “lurker from a watery cave where flames die,” emerges out of our own faces. With eyes prepared by the simple attentions of these poems, Siegel coaxes us to peer deep—into creation and into ourselves.
For more on Robert Siegel, click here.
To buy a copy of The Waters Under the Earth, click here.
For a copy of A Pentecost of Finches, click here.
 Don Murdock, R.I.P.
Those who have been lucky enough to visit Laity Lodge, a retreat center located in a river canyon in the Hill Country of Texas, know just how special a place it is. To get there you drive a couple hours from San Antonio, and eventually down some dusty switchbacks to the Rio Frio. Then you drive on the river bed (yes, the limestone bottom is hard enough) for half a mile until you come to Laity Lodge itself. But the natural beauty of rivers and canyons, turtles and wild turkeys is only half the story. The rest of the tale centers on a dynamic retreat center, founded by the Butt family in 1933, that has developed over the years into a haven that offers not only rest and an opportunity to reflect on scripture, but also the stimulation of retreats that use literature and art as pathways to spiritual growth. Laity has drawn the likes of Madeleine L’Engle and Eugene Peterson to lead retreats there, and the Chrysostom Society, a group of Christian creative writers, now holds its annual gathering at the Lodge. At the vanguard of this movement was one of the most gracious, loving, and visionary gentlemen one might ever hope to meet, Executive Director Don Murdock. When Don passed away in March after a two-year struggle with cancer, a wave of grief and thanksgiving passed over the large community of those who had met him at Laity Lodge. Image editor Gregory Wolfe, who had been invited by Don to serve as a consultant for the Lodge’s art program, says: “Don was a consummate bridge builder. He reached out to gifted artists such as Ginger Geyer and Brenda Kingery, and enlisted their help in putting Laity’s new Cody Center for the Arts to good use, especially with the establishment of a permanent visual art exhibition space. He had many constituencies to serve, including some that were a little uncertain about the value of the arts, but he managed to bring everyone he served along on a journey of discovery. My hope is that his legacy at Laity will be emulated at retreat centers and seminaries around the country.” Don is survived by his devoted wife, Carol, who was his partner in all things.
To learn more about Laity Lodge and its Cody Center for the Arts, click here.
Gallery Watch
Mary McCleary: After Paradise
After Paradise, an exhibition of artwork by collage artist Mary McCleary, will be held at the Moody Gallery in Houston from June 3 - July 1. One of our favorite artists, McCleary appears in Image #23—and on the back of our introductory brochure. Visit the gallery at 2815 Colquitt in Houston , Texas, or view the art online at www.moodygallery.com .
Makoto Fujimura: Water Flames and Zero Summer
The Katzen Center presents Makoto Fujimura’s Water Flames and Zero Summer in Washington, D.C. this summer. The exhibit opens May 20, from 6-9 pm, and closes after August 20. The Katzen Center is a spectacular new museum inside the American University arts center, located at 4400 Massachusetts Ave NW. “In attempting to do what is ‘temporary and indefinable,’ Japanese-American artist Makoto Fujimura has managed to create art that is both monumental and human, works that in their fragility point toward hope and permanence,” says Christine Cavallomagno of NY Arts magazine.
For more about the Katzen Center, call 203-885-1300 or go to www.american.edu/museum.
For more information on Makoto Fujimura, please visit www.makotofujimura.com.
 Lydia Bodnar-Balahutrak's Chornobyl -
A Solo Art Exhibition
April 26, 2006 marks the 20-year anniversary of the nuclear plant explosion in Chornobyl, Ukraine. Ten years ago, Lydia Bodnar-Balahutrak visited the Chornobyl Zone with a Ukrainian radio-oncologist for an officially sanctioned one-day visit of the radiation-saturated, fenced 40-mile wide circle northwest of Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine. What she saw and experienced, along with much material gathered and documented since 1986, is at the heart of the selection of artwork in her University of Houston-Clear Lake solo exhibition, Chornobyl. The exhibition features mixed media paintings that combine seemingly contradictory and disparate materials and processes-lead and gold, organic and inert materials, hand embroidery and torching. The thirteen works on canvas, wood, and paper, selected from several series begun after 1986 and continuing through 2005, evoke the Chornobyl cataclysm in its many manifestations. Accompanying the exhibit is the artist's essay, recounting her impressions of the Zone and reflecting on ways it influenced her ensuing artwork. Lydia Bodnar-Balahutrak's solo exhibition Chornobyl is on view from now through May 31, 2006 in the Art Gallery of the University of Houston-Clear Lake, the Bayou Building , Atrium I, First Level. The gallery is located at 2700 Bay Area Blvd., Houston, Texas 77058. Gallery hours are 8 am - 6 pm Monday through Thursday, 8 am - 12 pm on Friday, or by prior arrangement. Visitor parking is provided in front of the Bayou Building. For further information, please call UH/CL at 281-283-3446.
Upcoming
Seeing God: A Call for Entries
Seeing God, a nationally juried show sponsored by The Dadian Gallery of the Henry Luce III Center for the Arts and Religion and the Washington Printmakers Gallery, announces a call for entries. Selected artists will have their work shown at the exhibition from October 23, 2006 to December 15, 2006.
For more information, click here.
NYCITA: At the Crossroads of Theatre and Faith
Join Christians in the Theater Arts June 15-17, 2006 in New York for a fast-paced journey to the intersection between Christianity and theater. A first-rate group of scholars, pastors and artists will offer intellectual challenge each morning in plenary sessions at Calvary Baptist Church 123 W. 57th Street in the heart of New York City. The afternoon will be reserved for a variety of excursions into the city. Over the weekend, we'll explore every facet of theater, faith, and the experience of working and living in the Big Apple.
For more information,
go to http://www.cita.org/cita.html, email nycita@cita.org, or call 877-277-CITA.
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