Community, Craft, & Education: Image Events

Each year Image holds events locally, nationally, and internationally that showcase outstanding visual artists and writers and bring the Image community together to explore the role of art and faith in our culture. Through workshops, readings, concerts, lectures, and a study tour to Florence, Italy, Image invites attendees to experience art that renews the soul, work alongside some of the finest contemporary artists, and build camaraderie with other believers.

The Image Seminars: Oahu

In the tradition of Image’s Florence Seminar, this event will bring a small group of inquirers together for a time of reflection, conversation, and personal enrichment. Our theme will be “The Habit of Attention: Renewing the Heart in an Age of Acedia.” Acedia is the ancient term for spiritual indifference and the subject of Kathleen’s latest book, Acedia & Me. During our time together on Oahu we’ll take on the issue of acedia as both a personal and a cultural challenge. We will delve into the ways art and faith can move us beyond the distractions of media hype and pop culture and reawaken us to the world.

The Glen Workshop

The Glen Workshop is a week-long summer event featuring classes taught by nationally known poets, writers, and visual artists, and also serves as an illuminating conference on the arts and religion. The week allows developing artists time to practice and strengthen their craft while forming year-round friendships with other artists of faith. The Glen Workshop is the only national summer workshop that focuses on developing outstanding art and literature by religious believers.

The Image Seminars: Florence

Late each summer, Image gathers a small group of inquirers in Florence, Italy, to explore the astonishing outpouring of art and culture that came to be known as the Renaissance. There the group investigates the ways in which the artists and writers of this period struggled to render an incarnational balance between things human and divine. The seminar includes visits to the great churches and museums of Florence, lectures by some of the world’s leading authorities on the Renaissance, a field trip to a nearby hill town like Arezzo or Assisi, wonderful meals, and time to enjoy each others’ company.

Seattle Events

Based at Seattle Pacific University, Image sponsors concerts, lectures, readings, and film screenings on campus and in the city. Each spring, the Denise Levertov Award, named for a major twentieth-century poet who made Seattle her home, is presented to an artist or creative writer whose work exemplifies a sustained engagement with the Judeo-Christian tradition. Recent recipients include poets Madeleine DeFrees, Pulitzer Prize-winner Franz Wright, award-winning spiritual writer Kathleen Norris, and fiction writer Bret Lott.