He Received a Scholarship to the Acadãƒâ©mie Des Beauxarts
When I outset met Nancy I thought, "She must exist a convert. There's no manner a life long member would ever say that."
That first impression was less well-nigh what Nancy really said and more about what she did. Continue reading "Glowworms for Jesus: the Expressive Arts meets the Enrichment Committee"
Now that I finally have a moment to sit down and write that i story I've been intending to post since last summer, my notes are in a notebook in a storage unit in Orem and I am hiding my cough from the heat with a box of Kleenex and some rooibos tea in an apartment in urban Taiwan. Merely it'south worth relaying the story nonetheless, so y'all'll take to just trust me on the specifics.
Last summer I was very posh and attended frequent lectures at The Bridge University in Provo. If you're not wealthy plenty to take classes at the Bridge, I at least recommend attending their invitee speaker and workshop events. It'due south honestly kind of the best matter Mormon art has going for information technology.
Christopher Immature was fantastic, James Christensen was inspiring, Walter Rane was lecturing the weekend I was leaving the country (fie!), merely my favorite moment so far was getting to attend a presentation by Brian Kershisnik. And the moment I had been waiting for came at the end when he opened it up for questions and answers.
See, I've had this connectedness with Brian Kershisnik's paintings for years. There'due south something about his world inhabited by industrious, celestial Mormon women that just fascinates me. It connects to this Mormon quality that I saw in families in the ward I grew up in in Colorado, but has been harder and harder to notice in recent years. I know a lot of Mormons, a lot of true-blue people, but in that location is a certain quality in Mormon women that seems harder and harder to come by. I don't know what exactly the quality is, but it's shared by Mormon women who abound their ain zucchini and/or clothing their hair in one really long braid and/or dress their children in holiday-themed fabric from the discount rack at JoAnn's and/or have those needlepoint covers for Kleenex boxes in their living rooms. Practice you know what I hateful? The quality isn't defined by whatsoever of these practices of course, but it seems to be present in women who do those sorts of things. Women who take some sort of bawdy connection to the divine, and you would nigh think it's just small-town fundamentalism simply it'due south not considering these women too watch the Discovery Aqueduct. Maybe it's just some sort of surreal Southern Utah mineral that he eats and extrudes in his paintings somehow, and perchance the women in his life that he paints are but nutritionally primed to emit whatever serene righteousness rays it is that I'grand picking upwards from his paintings. But there's something behind it, and Brian Kershisnik knows what it is because he paints it, on purpose, over and over once again.
Well, now was finally my take chances. Here I was, with the man himself, and it was time for me to ask the question that had been burning within me: "Why do all the women in your paintings habiliment dresses?"
He looked startled. His eyes darted back upwards to the screen he had been displaying images on. "Do they?" he asked.
"Yes! They all do! I always imagined in that location was some sort of cultural message buried in that location. I've been wanting to know for years why your women await and so Super Mormon; suspended between centuries."
He flipped through a few slides, verifying that all of his women were wearing dresses. "Hmm," he said thoughtfully, "it looks similar they exercise." He paused, and I sat breathlessly waiting for him to continue with his yard revelation. "I think it'due south because I like to paint patterns and a wearing apparel is a big open space to paint a pattern."
He smiled beneficently at me then took the adjacent question.
In the spirit of egalitarianism and celebration and self-promotion and simply plain awesomeness, I bring you my personal favorite posts from each AMV contributor every bit of correct now just subject to modify based on the whims and vagaries native to the chivalrous dictator that I am and in alphabetical order by offset proper noun because I can't be bothered to remember who joined when or maybe information technology's so I can take the final word although actually when do I non have the final discussion, and also at that place'southward no reason to read too much in to my selections because see the use of the words whims and vagaries earlier in this sentence so if I were to do the same matter next week it could look totally different, and you never know — maybe I will:
- Admin: Bradly Baird on the artifacts of LDS retention
- Anneke Majors: Minerva Cerise
- Eric Russell: In Defense of the Critics
- Eric Thompson: Half Faked
- Harlow Clark: Gadianton The Nobler, Reflections on Changes in the Volume of Mormon, Introduction to Textual Variants Office 4
- Jonathan Langford:
- Katherine Morris: "Bread of Affliction" and Cultural Self-Consciousness
- Kent Larsen: Why we demand Mormon Culture
- Laura Craner: Beware Brother Brigham (a review of the volume past D. Michael Martindale)
- Mahonri Stewart: Of Prophets and Artists: A Household of Faith Or A House Divided?
- Patricia Karamesines: The Rhetoric of Stealing God
- Due south.P. Bailey: The Things We Bring Home
- Theric Jepson: The Hero's Journeying of the Mormon Arts
- Tyler Chadwick: The Tragic Tell of Mormon Morality, Part IV
- William Morris: Damn you Norman Manea!
Feel free to go all nostalgic and hagiographic in the comments. To peruse our archives by date or category, click on the drib down menus over there on the left. Or to meet what each contributor has written, click on Contributors and the "posts" link side by side to his or her name.
Many of the famous artists that made their manner into history books start broke into the the public consciousness when they were featured the Paris Salon, an annual exhibition of the French regime's Académie des Beaux-Arts. The Salon functioned every bit the official sanction of the art world and could brand or break a painter'due south career.
The strength of the Salon's influence is perhaps most evident in the drama that ultimately tore down its authority "" the Salon de Refusés of 1863 in which many "refused" artists, among them the radical impressionists like Manet and Whistler, exhibited work that the Academy had sneered at. The Salon eventually splintered and waned in importance, only the concept of the juried show lives on. Each twelvemonth, the Springville Museum of Fine art holds a Spring Salon, which is not exclusively Mormon art, simply is definitely Utah art, and it is my personal belief that the Jump Salon is where Mormonism's burgeoning Manets and Davids may well kickoff evidence upward.
I'm going to end the analogy there, though, considering I don't want to speculate about what on earth a Utah Salon de Refusésouth would wait like.
The 85th almanac Utah Leap Salon is on brandish in Springville until July fifth and I hereby exhort you with all the feeling of a tender stranger from the internet to become yourself there and have it in. Information technology's a wonderful exhibition every year, simply this year it'due south particularly grand.
Continue reading "Museums, Fantasy, and the Redemption of Naked Ladies: a review of the SMA'southward Spring Salon"
(this is the showtime in a serial of six posts on the Pillars of Mormon Art)
…thou shalt non make unto thee whatsoever graven images, or any likeness of any affair that is in heaven higher up, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
(Exodus 20:4)
This little verse has acquired more turmoil in art and in history throughout the monotheistic world than maybe whatever other. Information technology characterizes Islamic art, which for centuries has avoided the depiction of whatsoever living beast, for the fright that the artist who tried to create was usurping the role of the I true Creator. Information technology characterizes the turmoil in Byzantium, it crops up once more in the Protestant reformation, which sees Netherlanders whitewashing their cathedrals to separate themselves from their Catholic Belgian cousins. Its subsequent transformation into anti-religious fervor is the battle weep of the French revolutionaries, the Bolsheviks, and the Communists in China. In more than recent years, it rears an impious head as the Taliban government of Afghanistan destroys awe-inspiring Buddhist sculpture.
And true-blue Latter-day Saints discover themselves alternately sympathizing with both viewpoints.
Continue reading "Mormon Fine art and Graven Images"
Half-dozen Theological Pillars for the Art of God's People
Now, if that'south not a daunting title, I don't know what is. It was plenty to pique my curiosity, though, and I left work early on Friday, November seventh to attend Vern Swanson'due south thusly-named presentation at the Biennial Art, Belief, Pregnant Symposium, Picturing the Divine, at the BYU Museum of Art.
Swanson is one of my favorite Mormon Art Curmudgeons, and not a very curmudgeonly ane at that. He'due south a wacky art guy, yes, just he's downright jolly. The afternoon presentations were express to a half 60 minutes, and unfortunately then was the culmination of the mean solar day – the console word featuring Swanson, painter Brian Kershisnik, painter/professor Bruce Smith and BYU-H faith professor Keith Lane. A exam in Chinese class had prevented me from attending Kershisnik's keynote oral communication in the morn, and I was broken-hearted to hear more while nosotros had all these fantastic Mormon Art brains together in ane room. But the limited time was well-spent, and I was left with all kinds of buzzy little concepts floating around in my brain, not to mention the cramp in my mitt from trying to get as much as I could into my piffling screw-spring notebook.
While the presentations were all independently interesting, I've decided to share my thoughts on them all in one over-arching framework. And Swanson provided such a framework very handily – his presentation focused on what he called the six pillars of Mormon art. I would similar to break my comments, interspersed with what the presenters had to say and examples and commentary from the contemporary Mormon fine art world, into vi dissever discussions, to be published here – well, permit's exist realistic – whenever I go the take a chance to write them. The first one volition appear within the week.
As an introduction, nevertheless, hither are the half-dozen pillars defined by Swanson:
- The Bible'southward injunction confronting graven images
- Wisehearted fine art equally "curious workmanship" and "cunning wisdom"
- The Book of Mormon's view of art as a sign of arrogance
- "In that location is Dazzler All Around" – decorative and collaborative art
- Art as a showpiece – proof of greatness
- Art as an agent for "softening one's center"
I look forward to discussing them with you.
On Saturday, November 29, I participated in activities at the Barefaced Arts Festival in Bluff, Utah. This little boondocks of just a few hundred people really knows how to throw a party. I took my eighteen-yr-onetime son, an aspiring writer, to this celebration of the arts, sciences, and the human spirit, and having him with me deepened my pleasure in the outcome immensely. He'due south already a office of the unusual Barefaced community via his participation in a Shorinji Kempo class held there weekly, only this was his outset experience with a writing workshop and open up mic reading. Keep reading "Scientific discipline, Fine art, and Spirit at the Bluff Arts Festival, Part I"
I wasn't planning on doing another post on Ensign fine art, but the September outcome has another four folio spread — this i featuring harvest-themed piece of work. What I find interesting is that the characteristic, which is titled "A Fourth dimension of Harvest" doesn't focus on what one thinks it would (or at to the lowest degree what I thought it would). It'due south not about D&C 4:4, non almost the harvest as missionary piece of work metaphor, but rather it's actually about the harvest season — complete with quotes from Presidents Monson, Hinckley and Kimball on the joys of growing your own food.
Near of the works featured (7 paintings, 1 sculpture and ane quilt) are from the Museum of Church History. Three focus on the fruits of the harvest in the abode; the rest on the bodily activeness of harvesting.
There is one painting that grabbed me, in particular, and I wasn't surprised to observe that it was by J. Kirk Richards. I have been a fan of his piece of work ever since reading an LDS Today profile of him dorsum in 2003 (although I recollect that that'south actually a shortened profile and that at that place was a fuller, earlier 1, featuring more of his work, posted on an before incarnation of the LDS Today Spider web site from perchance 2000 or 2001). Continue reading "Harvest paintings in Sept. Ensign"
Announcing the Minerva Teichert Invitational Prove, August 15-16, in Cokeville, Wyoming. Cokeville is Minerva's hometown.
Wyoming artist Charles Dayton, the show's organizer as well as one of its participating artists, says, "We have been able to exhibit twenty-30 Minverva Teichert originals from the families' and friends' collections."
"Periodically," he remarks, "someone volition bring a painting to the show that has never been publicly displayed."
The show's goals include beingness "the least pretentious art show that artists and patrons will attend all yr" and placing Teichert's paintings "in the context in which they were created." Attendees will "accept an opportunity to visit her home (with murals still on the walls), run into her family, friends and students and breathe in the temper of this cowboy community."
Events include:
- Tours of the Teichert dwelling
- Minerva Teichert painting exhibit (public and private collections)
- Presentation past Julie Rogers — Painter of the pioneer experience
- Friday evening silent sale and barbeque
- Plein air demonstrations past Michael Ome Untiedt, noted Colorado artist
- Artist demonstrations Friday and Saturday
For a schedule of events and lodging data, go here. The site will be updated every bit arrangements are settled.
Dayton remarks that Minerva was "a remarkably generous woman. My grandmother once commented on how much she liked a large floral painting so Minerva gave it to her."
For a peek at Charles Dayton's original western and wildlife paintings, go here. A descendent of Mormon pioneers who colonized the high-mountain valleys in Idaho, Utah and Wyoming, Dayton left an organizational consultant career to pursue his destiny equally a painter of western scenes and wildlife.
To read more about Dayton'southward life and what motivates his fine art, go hither.
To meet an online gallery exhibit of Julie Rogers' art, go here.
To learn more about Michael Ome Untiedt and his piece of work, go here.
I'd been reading medieval Japanese literature for a few weeks (ah, the joys of going back to schoolhouse) and really didn't have time to pick up a novel, but information technology was a bit of an emotional and social necessity. So I walked downward to the library on a warm summertime evening a few weeks ago and looked for a copy of That Hideous Strength, the third and last book in C.S. Lewis'southward space trilogy. I own a copy of my ain, but most of my books are in a storage unit of measurement until I tin finally live somewhere that allows me to have furniture. It vexes. Merely I digress.
I fear the connexion here may seem tenuous. Lewis is not, later all, a Mormon author, every bit much as nosotros'd long to appropriate him. But neither was the fine art exhibition I had looked forwards to really Mormon art. Come to recall of it, the only Mormon factor in this entire train of thought is me. Let's see how far-fetched we can become.
The near contempo exhibition to open at the BYU Museum of Art is quite a departure from their previous featured exhibitions. Beholding Salvation was a drove so doctrine-centric that information technology seemed to pay no heed to any sort of artistic cohesion. Not that I'k criticizing – there is room for this unique curatorial approach, particularly in the particularly insular Utah art scene. It was extremely popular with the viewing public, even (specially?) those who don't usually consider themselves office of the Fine art Aristocracy. Concluding year, they featured Pageants in Paint, a huge retrospective of Minerva Teichert's piece of work. Once more – clearly Mormon fine art – merely it was an exhibition that featured wonderful scholarship and a thematic cohesion that's nice to meet at the MoA. Last week, their newest exhibit opened: Turning Point: The Demise of Modernism and the Rebirth of Meaning in American Fine art. This exhibit makes no claims to be Mormon, nor does it take into consideration at all the doctrinal or even cultural foundations of Mormonism. It only happens to be in Utah. And it's fairly successful, for what it is. It makes a clean, concise, didactic piffling statement nearly what happened to the Art Establishment in the 60s. It re-hashes Clement Greenberg. They even managed to become a Frank Stella piece on loan and it's awful pretty. The exhibition as a whole is every bit as thought-provoking equally minimalist statements and cultureless attempts at conceptual art tend to exist. Which is, to say, it is entirely broke of meaning and soul and information technology casts a dramatic spotlight across the gulf that separates Mormonism as a worldview from the secular fine art institution.
Continue reading "Mormon Art in Belbury"
Source: https://motleyvision.org/tag/visual-arts/
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