Words from the Wise

I have posted these quotations before but they fit so well with Robert Benson’s interview that I decided to give them to you again. Enjoy.

"The poet is not a man who asks me to look at him; he is a man who says “look at that” and points." C. S. Lewis, The Personal Heresy

"My assumption is that the story of any one of us is in some measure the story of us all." Frederick Buechner, Listening to Your Life

Next week: culture expert Dick Staub, author of The Culturally Savvy Christian

Coming soon: a sculptor, a photographer, and more

Robert Benson, Part 3: Digging In

Today I’m concluding my conversation with Robert Benson (www.robertbensonwriter.com), whose books include Between the Dreaming and Coming True (HarperCollins), Living Prayer and The Game (Tarcher), That We May Perfectly Love Thee and A Good Life (Paraclete), The Body Broken (Doubleday), Home by Another Way (WaterBrook), and Digging In: Tending to Life in Your Own Backyard (WaterBrook). He lives in Nashville, Tennessee.

LeAnne: Your definition of the word poet is broader than most standard definitions. How do you define it?

Robert: A poet to me doesn’t just rhyme things. It’s not just a person who works in a certain form. In the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads—William Wordsworth was given credit for having written what Samuel Coleridge probably wrote in the Preface—but at any rate, in the Preface it says that a poet does not see or hear things that nonpoets do not see or hear. It’s just that the poet has the ability to recall what he or she has seen and heard and then recreate it in some way so the nonpoets who didn’t notice it can see or hear it again. And then there is some chance that they can actually notice what they saw and heard.

Being a poet is not about a particular medium. It includes painters and singers, essayists and novelists and landscapers, as far as I am concerned. Teachers and preachers and priests and nurses are poets. If Annie Liebovitz the photographer is not a poet, I don’t know who is. I gave my wife her book for Christmas. It’s breathtaking. If Beethoven was not a poet, I don’t know who is. One does not have to be an artist who works in a particular medium to be called a poet. Poetry becomes a much larger thing and therefore the definition of a poet is a much larger thing.

LM: Let’s talk about your latest book. What are some of the things you’ve learned from Digging In?

RB: My two younger children came to live with my wife (their stepmother) and me when they were 12 and 14 (7th grade and 9th grade). And we had this back yard that had nothing in it. And we had these two kids that we had seen every other weekend for years and taken them on vacations. It’s not like we didn’t know each other or ever spend any time with each other. But we had a way of being together when we saw each other every other weekend and then suddenly we were going to be together 24 hours a day, more or less, so we had to learn everything about each other almost all over again. We had to have structure and rituals and habits and routines. Digging in for me involved all of that. It’s not just about building a fence and building a garden—it’s about building a life together.

I learned that everything I really cared about was in my own back yard. I learned that the real world wasn’t out there someplace, it was in my own yard. Everybody that I loved, everything that mattered, everything holy was all in my own back yard. And I don’t think I ever noticed that before. You know there’s a tendency for all of us to think that the real stuff, the good stuff, is out there somewhere. It was fun to discover that what really mattered to me was about 12 feet from my back door. That’s what I loved the best about it. Also, I discovered my daughter is the hardest working yard worker in the universe, that my wife can actually talk roses into blooming, which is an extraordinary talent, and that my son is really smart and really fun. I learned a lot about patience, a lot about waiting. It was fun.

Coming up next: culture expert Dick Staub

Robert Benson, Part 2: Writing as Art

This week I’m featuring writer Robert Benson (www.robertbensonwriter.com), whose books include Between the Dreaming and Coming True (HarperCollins), Living Prayer and The Game (Tarcher), That We May Perfectly Love Thee and A Good Life (Paraclete), The Body Broken (Doubleday), Home by Another Way (WaterBrook), and Digging In: Tending to Life in Your Own Backyard (WaterBrook). He lives in Nashville, Tennessee.

LeAnne: When I heard you speak at the Mount Hermon conference several years ago, you talked about writing as art. I had been writing for magazines for a while and had attended several Christian writers conferences by then, but that was the first time I’d ever heard anyone in the Christian market refer to writing as art. It was a breath of fresh air. In the Christian market, the message is emphasized more than the art. Is there a way to balance the two?

Robert: There are writers and there are authors. Writers write sentences; authors make books. Writers write enough sentences that go together that they finally end up a paragraph. And then they end up a story, then a chapter, and then [writers] end up with a book that looks remarkably like this thing that is made by people who are authors. They look so similar it’s really hard to tell the difference but they are not the same thing. One is a message packaged in such a way that it can be sold on the shelf where people sell books. It’s propaganda, or it’s instruction, or it’s how to, or it’s teaching, or whatever else. It’s not art. It’s not writing. It’s not done by writers—it’s done by people who own typewriters. Those are two different things. Does that make sense?

Now I’m not making a value judgment. There is no value judgment being made by me about authors who write books, who have messages that they want to get out that end up being packaged between a hardcover and a spine. That’s a lovely way to do something. I’m glad for those people.

But writing is done by artists who learn the craft, find their voice, and figure out what it is they have to say that no one else has to say. That crowd of people is a smaller crowd of people. For one thing it’s a very hard life. My life is lovely—I’m not whining or complaining—but it’s not easy work. The hours are terrible. There’s a quote that goes like this: “Most people aren’t writers and very little harm ever comes to them.” But the people who are writers—it’s not an easy thing to do. It’s the only thing I would do. But if you’re going to do it, the art is all that matters.

And if you want to write, there are two questions you ask of your work. You write something and when you get to the end of it you ask, “Does this scare me to death?” Does it scare you because it’s so self-revelatory and honest that you’re afraid someone will think less of you? Does it scare you because you think it’s so out there and pushing the edge so hard that you’re afraid you’re going to get into trouble? Because if you start down this rabbit hole, the book that comes out the other end of this is going to be really scary? Does it scare you because you think you can’t sell it to anybody because you think it might be too good? So the first question is: Does it scare you?

The second question is: Does it make you gasp? Nearly everything that was ever any good scared the writer to death. And it made them gasp. It was breathtaking. It’s scary to go into the room because you’re afraid you’re going to mess it up. You think, “Oh, I’m so close to something, if I could just get it right. I can hear this in my head and if I could just get it close to right.”

Now if the answer to both of those questions—does it scare me to death and does it make me gasp—is yes, it doesn’t guarantee that what you’re going to end up with is actually any good. I will say this: if the answer to either of those questions is no, then the chances of ending up with anything that’s any good are slim and none. If you get one no or two nos, then I can guarantee it’s not going to be any good. But the craft, the work, the profession, whatever word you want to use, is in those two questions.

Generally my sense has always been that art is best served if [the message] is basically ignored. Because if you get [the art] right somebody will put it between two covers. Because editors are dying to read artistic work again. They got into this business because they read one of those and it changed them and it shaped them and they grew up saying, “I want to be a part of that.” And when they find one, they will put it between two covers. And nobody knows but you who made it, the audience that you manage to find, and the person who bought it from you.

The reason these books are not published a lot in religious markets is because not enough religious writers have the nerve and the gumption and the discipline and the dedication to write them. If you hang around religious publishing and people who write in this area long enough, you’ll hear someone start complaining that the stuff being published is not very good, that nobody publishes artistic work. The reason nobody publishes the artistic kind of work is because not enough of it is being written.

Which now gets us back to the original question—the part about the message. If you want to make art that is somehow connected to your faith, the trick is not to make it good Christianity—the trick is to make it great art. The reason you don’t get great art from writers who happen to be Christians (I prefer that way of saying it to the phrase “Christian writers”) is because they don’t have enough nerve or enough discipline, or they don’t work hard enough to find their voice, or they don’t actually learn their craft, or they don’t make things that scare them, or they don’t make things that make them gasp. They fall down not on the theology or the message side; they fall down on the art side.

It’s too easy for those of us who try to do this kind of work to say, “The market’s not interested, the publishers aren’t interested, the stores aren’t interested.” It’s just too easy. We’re letting ourselves off the hook. What we have to do is write something great. Most of us give up too soon and blame it on [publishers] and say they don’t want it. And it simply isn’t true.

More from Robert Benson on Monday.

Robert Benson: Getting to Original Work

Robert Benson (www.robertbensonwriter.com) writes and speaks often on the meditative life. His thoughts have been featured on NPR’s national program “Studio 360.” Known for his warmth and creative style, he invites readers to seek and savor the sacred that is to be found in the ordinary of our lives. His books include Between the Dreaming and the Coming True (HarperCollins), Living Prayer and The Game (Tarcher), That We May Perfectly Love Thee and A Good Life (Paraclete), The Body Broken (Doubleday), Home by Another Way (WaterBrook), and Digging In: Tending to Life in Your Own Backyard (WaterBrook). He lives in Nashville, Tennessee.

A few years ago, I heard Robert Benson speak at the Mount Hermon Christian Writers conference. As the keynoter, he spoke for an hour or so every evening. He talked a lot about his story, about faith and art and writing and prayer. His words both renewed my vision of doing something different with my writing and motivated me to dust off my softball glove.

Robert’s a huge baseball fan, and when he read from his book The Game, I remembered my own love of softball growing up. I thought of how my big sister and I would spend summer evenings in the back yard with our parents teaching us to field grounders, snag flies, and hit the ball. Those memories are so gorgeous to me that they take on a hazy sort of glow, soft around the edges. I enjoyed reliving them.

One afternoon about halfway through the conference, I saw Robert in a courtyard with a small group of young people. He was throwing a ball with an attendee who had the foresight to bring her glove to the conference with her. The fact that it had never occurred to me to pack my own did not deter me. I walked up and asked, “Can I play?” He grinned and said, “Sure. You can use my glove.” As the young writer and I threw a few, we all talked about our favorite baseball teams and about our writing. Pretty soon, Robert needed to leave for a meeting and I needed to find a quiet place to put pen to paper.

What Robert said that week inspired me and continues to do so even now. Last month, I had the opportunity to sit down with him and have a lengthy conversation about writing and art. He was in town for ICRS, the International Christian Retail Show, for the release of his new book, Digging In: Tending to Life in Your Own Backyard. Because we talked for quite a while, I have more material than I usually do and will be featuring him this week as well as next Monday. It’s a pleasure to share his insights with you.

LeAnne: When you spoke at the Mount Hermon conference, you talked about three things that writers should do. What are they?

Robert: I was taught and I believe that a writer has three jobs: the first is to learn the craft, the second is to find their voice, and the third is to figure out what they have to say. It’s hard for one writer to speak for all writers, because writers operate differently. However for most people the first pile of stuff you write is easy because you’re running on pure talent. It comes out of pure talent, pure joy, and pure exuberance. If you want to figure out how to make a living of this—I love art for art’s sake, it just doesn’t pay very well—then at some point you have to be paid to do it. Otherwise you don’t have time to do it. And if you want to be paid to do this, you’re going to have to learn the craft.

The way to learn the craft is to do it every day on a disciplined, organized, rigorous basis. Do it and get better at it. I knew I wanted to write books when I was 13 years old. I spent 15 years writing corporate communications copy, figuring that if I could ever get a guy to pay me by the hour to write sentences, then I’d learn to write sentences well enough to get somebody to read them if I ever got them published in a book. You’ve got to learn the craft and the only way to learn it is to do it all the time and, frankly, see if somebody will pay for it. If nobody will pay for it, and nobody will listen, nobody will run your columns, nobody will run your essays, you haven’t learned it. Getting the first one published is easy. It’s the next one and the next one and the next one and the next one that aren’t necessarily based on true talent—they’re based on craft. Learn the craft.

The second thing is you have to discover your voice. It takes a while to figure out your voice and the only way to do it is to keep working until you begin to sound like no one else. I discovered I had my own voice within about a six week period of time. When you write corporate communications copy, your job is to take a company’s story and write it in their voice so that when a prospective client or customer reads it, it’s a Rand McNally way of talking or a Wheaton College voice. You have to learn those voices and write the way those companies talk. So, I was turning in some work to six of my best clients and they all kept throwing it back saying, “It doesn’t sound like us.” At the end of six weeks, I was thinking maybe I couldn’t do this anymore. Then it occurred to me: It all sounds like me.

You discover a way that you have—a lilt, a rhythm, a pace, a structure—and it doesn’t sound like anyone else. A lot of times, especially for young writers, the first crowd of compliments is “oh, that reminds me of Fred Buechner” or “that reminds me of Annie Dillard” or “that sounds like…” We don’t actually need an Annie Dillard, we don’t actually need a Fred Buechner, we don’t need a Thomas Merton. We already have one of each. You can tell you’ve begun to find your voice when people no longer say “oh that sounds like...” It’s really a subtle kind of thing. Every once in a while someone will say something nice and compare something I do with someone I admire and that’s a lovely thing. But if it happens very often, it occurs to me that I’m not working very hard, and I’ve gotten sloppy and lazy.

So you’ve got to learn the craft, find your voice.

And the last part is this: you have to figure out what it is that you have to say, preferably that no one has either said or has to say, stories you can tell that no one else can, the stuff you care about that nobody else seems to care about. Annie Dillard said in The Writing Life (I’m paraphrasing): “A writer looking for subjects does not look for what other people love but for what he alone loves.” In the Christian publishing market, I suppose that any of us who can write sentences can probably write Bible studies. I suppose I could do that but then no one will tell the stories that only I can tell.

What I’m interested in is a writer who says, “These are the things that only I can do,” whatever it is. It’s how you get to original work. For me as a writer, for me as a reader, for me as a participant in conversations with other writers about writing, original is all that matters. Publishing doesn’t actually matter. Original writing matters and the only way to get that is to learn the craft, to find your own voice, and to find out what it is you have to say—the stories you have to tell that no one else will tell or can tell. Everything else is derivative.

More from Robert Benson on Thursday.

Katherine Gant, Part 2: Freedom Through Surrendering the Gift

Today I’m concluding my interview with dancer Katherine Gant, who has danced with Classical Ballet Memphis, Ad Deum Dance Company (www.danceaddeum.com), Project Dance (www.projectdance.com), Ballet Magnificat! (www.balletmagnificat.com) and more. Katherine continues to teach and dance and is a founding member of the Atlanta Christian Dance Community (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/atlchristiandance).

LM: How has your faith affected your passion for dance?

KG: I once danced for my own glory and satisfaction but it left me feeling very empty. When I realized that my gift of dance comes from the Lord and can be used by Him, a whole new world opened up. The burden of perfectionism that comes with this art form vanished and a new freedom to simply dance came. I deeply desire to help all dancers find the freedom that comes from surrendering their gift of dance to be used by Him.

LM: Have you found that other Christians don’t understand why you are involved in the arts?

KG: It is tough to address dancing within the church to other Christians. They are always opposed simply because they have never been shown what the scripture says about it. My favorite verse to take them to is Psalms 149:3: “Let them praise His name with dancing.”

LM: What would you say to encourage other artists who are trying to live their faith and their art in the world?

KG: I think Christian artists really struggle with being artistic and still being a Christian. I think too often we try to separate the two when really they go hand in hand. If we are truly hidden in Christ, all we say, do, write, dance or speak will reflect Him, even our art. We shouldn’t focus on asking “Is this Christian art?” but on listening with our heart and fleshing out what He has shown us deep inside.

Note: Katherine is Event Coordinator for New York-based Project Dance’s inaugural event in Atlanta to be held in Centennial Olympic Park on Sept. 22, 2007. The event, which occurs over a three-day weekend, includes dance classes, motivational forums, networking and a free all-day dance concert held in the heart of the city.

“The purpose of the free dance concert is to share our talents with the people of Atlanta and to communicate a message of hope and healing through the language of dance,” explained Cheryl Cutlip, founder of Project Dance.

Project Dance was born out of a desire to serve the people of New York directly after the events of September 11th and it has managed to do just that for the past six years.

Next month, at the first event in Atlanta, about 200 dancers will gather to take part in the festivities. Although the weekend is designed to give participants the opportunity to perform and take dance classes, Project Dance also strives to inspire dancers as artists and individuals. All of the activities over the weekend focus on faith and personal growth.

Katherine Gant: Blessing through Dance

This week I’m featuring dancer Katherine Gant. Katherine received her dance training in Memphis, Tennessee, under the direction of Pat Gillispie at Classical Ballet Memphis. Trained in the RAD syllabus, Katherine graduated with honors, RAD’s highest mark. During her years at Classical Ballet Memphis, Katherine performed many leading roles and was Assistant to the Artistic Director. She also performed as a guest with Yuma Ballet Theatre as Cinderella in Thom Clower’s “Cinderella.” In 2002, Katherine joined Ad Deum Dance Company as an Apprentice and was promoted to Company Member later that year (www.danceaddeum.com). While with Ad Deum, she performed works by Steve Rooks (formerly principal dancer with Martha Graham Company) and performed at Project Dance in New York City (www.projectdance.com). [Note: I featured Steve Rooks on the blog last month: www.christiansinthearts.blogspot.com/2007/07/steve-rooks-part-2-god-given-honor.html] Katherine then went on to dance with Ballet Magnificat! under the direction of Kathy Thibodeaux. Since moving to Atlanta in 2005, Katherine has continued to teach and dance throughout the Atlanta metro area, including being a founding member of the Atlanta Christian Dance Community (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/atlchristiandance). Katherine and her husband David have two children, Elizabeth and Caleb.

LeAnne: How did you get involved with Project Dance? What do you do?

Katherine: In 2003, I attended Project Dance’s New York event as a member of Ad Deum Dance Company and I fell in love with the idea of dancers from around the world coming together to bless a city. Since then, I have become friends with Cheryl Cutlip, Project Dance’s founder, and I felt called to bring Project Dance to Atlanta. I am now the Event Coordinator for the Project Dance’s inaugural event to be held in Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta on Sept. 22, 2007.

LM: Tell me about your dancing and teaching in Atlanta.

KG: I teach for Atlanta Ballet and I am a dancer/director of Refuge Dance Company, which is made up of mostly members of the Atlanta Christian Dance Community.

LM: You are a founding member of the Atlanta Christian Dance Community. What is the purpose of the group?

KG: Our purpose is to build and grow the network of Christian dancers and other related artists in and around the metro Atlanta area. It is very easy to get discouraged, thinking that you are the only one out there doing your type of ministry. The community provides a safe place for artists to gather, collaborate and encourage one another.

More from Katherine Gant on Thursday. Next week I'll be talking with essayist Robert Benson.

Robin Parrish, Part 2: INFUZE

This week I’m featuring Robin Parrish, founder and editor-in-chief of INFUZE Magazine (www.infuzemag.com), a unique intersection between art and faith. In addition to his work at INFUZE, Robin has written two novels in a trilogy: Relentless and the newly-released Fearless.

LM: So give me a few examples of some people you’ve featured who stand out in your mind.

RP: Some good outside the box examples: one of my favorites—we’ve interviewed him twice now and we post news about him frequently as well—is an actor named Doug Jones. He’s one of those actors with a loyal following and nobody knows who he is. If you ever see him in person you’ll never forget him. He’s very tall (about 6’ 6”), very skinny and lanky. Doug’s a Christian. He’s a character actor and usually plays characters under very heavy makeup. He has done a lot of small bit parts and this year he really broke out and did some big things. He was the title character in Pan’s Labyrinth. He was the Silver Surfer in the Fantastic Four movie. Right now he’s filming Hell Boy 2. He plays the character Abe Sapien, an aquatic character.

Don’t let that name Hell Boy throw you off. That’s another movie with a lot of great redemptive ideas in it. It’s a fable. It’s outside the box. It’s not realistic, it’s not theology. But I can’t imagine any Christian watching that movie and being offended by it. There might be a little bad language and a little cartoony violence so if that’s over your boundaries, then don’t go. But there’s nothing that is in any way offensive to Christianity. It’s respectful of it, actually.

We talk to author Ted Dekker all the time. He’s got tons of fans who read our site. He’s a great example because he is in the Christian industry but he’s starting to appeal to [people] outside of the industry. And he’s interested in the things we love to talk about. He’s very big into asking the big questions in life. He’s creating this rich mythology with the books he’s writing now. We’re fascinated with this stuff. There are characters with superheroic powers. We’re very big on superheroes at INFUZE because superheroes are almost always an allegory for our human need for Christ to save us.

LM: Let’s talk about your own books. I’m really intrigued by this idea of serializing your novel on INFUZE. How did that come about?

RP: I was trying to find a way to get back to my first love of writing when I first created INFUZE. I wanted to use these great contacts I have so I knew it had to be a media website. But I also knew I had to get into publishing original stuff ourselves: creative works, short stories, poems, and artwork. I’ve wanted to write a novel forever but on a practical level I knew I needed a deadline to make it happen. Without a publisher as pressure there was nothing to make me do it. At the time I was into 24 and Lost—serialized TV shows and comic books—so it just seemed like a natural idea to do a novel in installments. I did a chapter every other week and it would come out every other Friday. That was the book that eventually got turned into Relentless, my first novel. In the original book there were 18 chapters—they were much longer than they are in the book now because I wanted it to feel like you were getting a full installment of a TV show like 24. I always tried to end on a little cliffhanger to keep you hanging until next time.

As soon as I put the first chapter up, people started coming out of the woodwork. I even heard from people who had never been big fans of my reviews but they said I could write. Because all of the earlier chapters were still there, I could pick up new readers as we went. We had done a contest for short stories with editor David Long, who has the blog “Faith in Fiction” (http://www.faithinfiction.blogspot.com/). When the book was finished, David, who’s at Bethany House, asked if I would like to publish it. I didn’t have to seek out a publisher, which is an amazing thing that I don’t take for granted.

I pitched him some other ideas and, to my great astonishment, he wanted to make it a trilogy. I wasn’t interested in taking the original story and trying to stretch it out over three books. I felt like it was a good solid contained story as it was so I wanted to add more to it. I went back and reworked it, rewriting and adding a lot of little seeds that would grow and play out in the coming books. It’s not like a book and two sequels. It’s a continuation: the 1st part, 2nd part, 3rd part of this 3-part saga. It’s very much like the Lord of the Rings. When it’s done it will be one big story with a definitive beginning, middle, and ending.

LM: Tell me about your books.

RP: Most of my influences come from TV, movies, and comic books. I suppose that’s why my books are so fast-paced. My editor actually coined the term “bullet-paced” for the first one. The short answer is that my trilogy is “suspense thriller” but in my mind it falls under many categories. There’s a big mythology aspect. It’s set in the modern day but is a step outside of reality. There’s a big cast of characters. It’s got drama, a little romance, a lot of suspense, and a lot of mystery. Mystery is important in any genre. You need some kind of unanswered question, a little hint of mystery to keep people reading. So there are a lot of unanswered questions that eventually we’ll answer.

Robin Parrish: INFUZE Magazine

Born Michael Robin Parrish on October 13, 1975, Robin's earliest writing efforts took place on a plastic, toy typewriter, and resulted in several "books" (most between 10 and 30 pages long) and even a few magazines. After college, he entered the writing profession through a "side door" -- the Internet. More than ten years he spent writing for various websites, including About.com, CMCentral.com, and his current project INFUZE Magazine, which is a unique intersection between art and faith which he conceived of and created 3½ years ago with the help of a private, local investor. (INFUZE is now published by iTickets.com). In addition to being editor-in-chief of INFUZE, Robin has written two novels in a trilogy: Relentless and the newly-released Fearless.

LeAnne: INFUZE “examines the place where art and faith intersect.” What does that mean?

Robin: I’ve talked to many people over the years and have gotten great quotes that helped me formulate ideas about how I wanted to do this. One of the people I talked to said that we were created to create. We were created by a creative Being to be like Him, and one of His greatest qualities is that He is creative. Something powerful happens when we express that. Just like when we worship, when we do something that’s in devotion to him—creativity is an act of devotion.

The thing that most Christians stumble over is that creativity is not relegated only to the Christian market. Plenty of things outside the Christian world not done by Christians still have illuminative qualities. They still shed light on what it is to be human and the magnificence of our existence and why we’re here. You can find purpose and meaning in a lot of things that were not even meant for that and we try to find them. We try to find things with redemptive qualities.

Now we go pretty far across the board. We do cover R-rated movies and we always tell you if it’s an R-rated movie but we’re not a watchdog group. We’re not a parenting group that will tell you, “Don’t go to this movie for this reason.” There’s plenty of that kind of stuff out there and if you want that, go for it. We report what’s good in a movie, what you can take with you that might [make you] feel uplifted and inspired and apply it to your life. It’s not always Passion of the Christ. Sometimes it might be a PIXAR movie or Spiderman movie. The Spiderman movies are some of the most spiritual movies made because they are so powerfully rooted in forgiveness and redemption themes. We cover everything: books, movies, video games, comic books, music, you name it—if it’s a creative outlet, we try to plug into it and see what we can find. And get our hands messy so you don’t have to.

LM: Have you always been interested in culture and the arts and creativity?

RP: Yes. My career in this industry started in covering Christian music for about 11 years in various places. I got burned out with it. I had done over 1000 CD reviews and I felt like I had said everything I wanted to say.

My first love was always storytelling. I always wanted to be a writer. I always wanted to tell my stories. I love other people’s really great stories. The offer was there from this local investor if I wanted to do something different, we could create something. I was trying to come up with something new that would challenge and grow me and allow me to get back to my first love of storytelling, something that wouldn’t waste all of these great contacts I had made in the Christian music industry. So I got to thinking, what do storytelling and music have in common? They are forms of artistic expression so that’s where I came up with the art and faith intersect idea. I see it in my mind very clearly as a grid of lines: there’s a line called faith and a line called art and we try to stay right there in that sweet spot where the two of them meet and are happily co-existing.

LM: Who is your audience?

RP: It’s eclectic. I would say the majority are probably college age to early 30s but we have young kids and we have senior adults. It’s mostly people who are intuitive and savvy when it comes to popular culture and the arts. You hear that word “the arts” thrown around and it sounds like this high-minded, Boston Museum of Art kind of term with people buying turtlenecks and being stuffy but we don’t consider the arts that way. We take on pop culture and the arts so anybody who’s into pop culture, who’s into superheroes, who’s into where entertainment and art are going right now, that’s who we try to appeal to.

We don’t go out of our way to say we’re Christians. There’s nothing wrong with doing that—it’s not that we’re ashamed of it in any way. But as soon as you put that out there and say “this is a Christian website,” anyone who’s not a Christian is going to come to the website and say immediately, “Oh this is meant for a club of people that I’m not in.” It builds walls around us and creates a big “us versus them” mentality. We don’t try to turn anybody off that way. It’s sort of an advanced form of evangelism. We talk about Christian ideas, messages, morals and values, and you’re going to see it if you spend any time there but we don’t draw attention to it.

We recently opened up a message board where people can have discussions on their own. We’d like to create a place where people can come together from all walks of life and discuss the big questions of life: does God exist? What is our purpose as human beings if He doesn’t exist? What is all this about? Why are we here? It can’t all be chance, can it? Those kinds of conversations can happen where there are no walls between us.

More from Robin Parrish of INFUZE on Thursday.

Chris Tiegreen, Part 2: Artistic Prayer

This week I’m featuring Chris Tiegreen, author of Creative Prayer (Multnomah), and editor of indeed magazine from Walk Thru the Bible (www.walkthru.org).

LM: You write in Creative Prayer that sometimes words are not needed when we pray. Explain what you mean by artistic prayer and give us some examples of how we can pray this way.

CT: A picture is worth a thousand words, right? So why do we fumble around with a thousand words when we pray? There’s nothing wrong with verbalizing our requests, of course, but why stop there? I think sometimes we tend to explain to God every detail of our prayers, when really we could say, “Lord, you see this picture in my mind? That’s my prayer.” And it’s even better to draw it, write it, sing it, dance it, act it out, or whatever. When we do that, we won’t be able to pray detached prayers, and we’re not likely to forget them the next day. The more senses are involved, the more engaged we are with God and the more we’ll remember our prayers and His answers.

Some people are reluctant to do this because they don’t think they’re creative or talented, so they think their prayers will be insufficient. But the truth is that our words are also insufficient. Paul made that clear (Romans 8:26). Our creative prayers are like a three-year-old bringing mommy a drawing, and she can’t even make out what it is. Does she reject the art? No, she sees the heart behind it and she loves it. I think that’s how it is with God.

LM: What are some ways we can communicate more creatively with God through our senses and circumstances?

CT: Again, the sky’s the limit. (Actually, not even the sky is a limit!) But for a few starters, here’s what I like to do:
• Write your sins or trials in the sand and watch the waves wash them away, asking God to give you a fresh start.
• Eat an ethnic dish to identify with a certain nation, as though it’s becoming part of you. (You are what you eat, right?) Then pray for that country not as an outsider but as its representative.
• With whatever instrument you have, play a melody that reflects your current situation. Then play one that reflects what the situation would look like if God intervened. That tune becomes your prayer.
• Draw a picture of your heart and write all your ugliest attitudes on it. Then erase them and ask God to do the same. Or better yet, throw the whole drawing in your fireplace and ask God to refine and purify you with the flame of His Spirit.
• Act out one of your prayers. You may look like a bad mime, but that’s OK. God won’t mind at all — He’ll love it.

Coming soon: Robin Parrish, creator and editor-in-chief of INFUZE magazine, which “examines the place where art and faith intersect,” and author of two novels, including the brand new Fearless

Chris Tiegreen: Creative Prayer

From time to time I interview people with a special interest in creativity. Author Chris Tiegreen takes that interest one step further--into his prayers. Author of Creative Prayer (Multnomah 2007), Violent Prayer (Multnomah 2006), and several other books, Chris is an editor and writer for indeed magazine at Walk Thru the Bible. Chris has also been a missionary, pastor, and newspaper journalist. He and his family live in Atlanta.

LeAnne: In Creative Prayer, you write that many of us have an unbalanced relationship with God when it comes to how we communicate with Him. What do you mean by that?

Chris: If we think about all the ways God has communicated with us, and then compare that to the ways we communicate with Him, it looks pretty lopsided. Not that we can ever match His style, of course, but we can certainly do more than just talk to Him at a set time each day. I look at it like a couple in love, where the guy expresses himself every way he knows how — music, poetry, meals, flowers, dances, etc. -- and the girl just leaves a message on his voicemail every once in a while. That’s the kind of imbalance I see in our relationship with God, and I think we’re missing out on a lot.

LM: You mention that the purpose of your book is to discuss creative expression to God. What is creative prayer?

CT: Creative prayer is praying with our whole being — using all the gifts God has given us to express ourselves. We can draw or paint our prayers, act them out, dance them, sing them, dress to match the mood of our petitions, and much, much more. The possibilities are limitless. We see some very tangible communication with God in the Bible: sights, smells, sounds, movements, etc., through the sacrificial system, the psalms, the lives of the prophets, and in Jesus’ ministry. God’s language seems to be primarily visual, but it covers the whole range of our senses and beyond. That’s an invitation to speak back to Him in a variety of creative ways.

We come into the kingdom through a very narrow gate — Jesus alone — but once inside the gate, the pasture is enormous. God encourages us to get outside the box in our communication with him. We’re never to violate His character or His will, but the means of communication in Scripture is never formulized or even specified. There’s shouting, dancing, instruments, sackcloth, incense, blood, bread, weeping, rejoicing, and on and on. God made us individually for a reason: to express ourselves individually.

More from Chris on Thursday.

Oh My

In a keynote address at a Christian writers conference I attended at Mount Hermon several years ago, Robert Benson (www.robertbensonwriter.com), author of Between the Dreaming and The Coming True and the brand new Digging In: Tending to Life in Your Own Backyard, tells the story of his visit to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. After their eyes adjusted to the darkness inside, he and his wife realized they were “standing in the presence of as much art as we were ever going to see again in our entire lives and perhaps all that we would ever need.” His wife whispered, “Oh my.” He said, “Oh my—that someone would do something like this just for the glory of God.”

Even though he and his wife didn’t want to leave the beauty that brought tears to their eyes and lumps to their throats, they caught a plane to take them home again. Robert says, “If I am to do anything just for the glory of God, it will have to be at my house, in my studio, with my dreams, with my blank pieces of paper, and with my sentences.”

This week at the International Christian Retail Show (ICRS, www.christianretailshow.com) I’m going to be interviewing Robert about his sentences—about writing and art and storytelling. I’m looking forward to seeing him again and to featuring him on the blog very soon.
I’ll post again on Thursday.

Steve Rooks, Part 2: A God-Given Honor

I’m continuing my interview with dancer Steve Rooks. Steve began his dance training in Washington D.C. with Jan Van Dyke and Greg Reynolds, after graduating with honors from Dartmouth College. He joined the Martha Graham Dance Company in the summer of 1981, and was a Principal Dancer with the company until 1991. In October 1989, Mr. Rooks’ solo, Outside, was selected to be presented in the New Choreographers series during the Graham Company's fall season at the City Center Theater in New York, and one of his works, Cool River, became a part of that company's 1996-1997 Repertory after its World Premiere at Lincoln Center in August 1996.

Mr. Rooks is currently Resident Choreographer and Associate Professor of Dance at Vassar College, and was one of the founding faculty members for the Dance Degree Program at Howard University. He is also a Guest Instructor at the Alvin Ailey and Martha Graham Schools of Dance. Steve would like to thank Jesus Christ for all that has happened to him.


LM: How has your faith affected or impacted your passion for dance?

SR: Particularly now as a teacher, I feel it is a God-given honor to dance and to serve others (as a mentor/teacher) through dance. I don’t think that I could love the art if the Lord had not given me that love. It is pretty impossible for any dancer not to feel that there is a “heavenly endowment” that he/she has been given to experience the world of dance, and I believe that as one passionately seeks to know the giver of all good gifts, it will ultimately lead that person to the feet of Christ.

LM: Have you faced challenges from the world because of your faith?

SR: Yes, but not any different from those challenges that most Christians face as we live in our world. I have had to turn down a couple of opportunities that might have been lucrative but would have put me in a questionable light. And there have been and will always be scoffers who simply believe it’s not possible to call yourself a dancer and serve Jesus.

LM: Have you found that Christians don't understand why you are involved in the arts?

SR: As a young believer many years ago, there were many Christians who simply thought that dance was much too worldly and that God really couldn’t be pleased with any dancer working in a secular world. I have had well-meaning saints tell me that they felt that God wanted me to start a Christian dance school or that dance would only be a pit stop on the way to what the Lord “really wants me to do.”

But things are different now, and there is an entire generation of Christians who are solid in their faith and feel called to serve God in their craft—whether that be in ministry at their home church, or as a Broadway artist, concert dancer, or studio director. In the past, we have made God “too small” and I feel that Christians shunned away from many arenas that desperately needed to have the light of truth. But this is a great day, and I believe that we will see an even greater calling for believer artists!

Steve Rooks: Pursuing Excellence in Dance

Steve Rooks began his dance training in Washington D.C. with Jan Van Dyke and Greg Reynolds, after graduating with honors from Dartmouth College. He joined the Martha Graham Dance Company in the summer of 1981, and was a Principal Dancer with the company until 1991. Mr. Rooks has appeared in the Metropolitan Opera House presentation of Martha Graham's Diversion of Angels televised for "Celebrate! 100 Years of the Lively Arts at the Met". He has appeared in television commercials, and as a featured dancer on the television special, "The Martha Graham Company in Japan." In October 1989, Mr. Rooks’ solo, Outside was selected to be presented in the New Choreographers series during the Graham Company's fall season at the City Center Theater in New York, and one of his works, Cool River became a part of that company's 1996-1997 Repertory after its World Premiere at Lincoln Center in August 1996.

Mr. Rooks has been a guest artist with the Hakodate Ballet in Japan, and toured with the Morning Star Classical Biblical Theater in their 1996 International Tour to Israel. He has portrayed Joseph in the 1996 International Christmas Television Special of Billy Graham Ministries, and in May 1997 appeared as a guest artist with the Great Day Chorale in their performance at Carnegie Hall. He was also the recipient of a Vassar Research Grant for an Artist Residency in Riga, Latvia in May 2002.

Mr. Rooks is currently Resident Choreographer and Associate Professor of Dance at Vassar College, and was one of the founding faculty members for the Dance Degree Program at Howard University. He is also a Guest Instructor at the Alvin Ailey and Martha Graham Schools of Dance. He was a 2001 Artist-in-Residence at the North Carolina School of the Arts, and has been a member of the International Association of Blacks in Dance. Mr. Rooks has taught internationally at several dance festivals and as a guest instructor for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, the Martha Graham Dance Company, the Symposium on Dance at Yale University and others. Mr. Rooks would like to thank Jesus Christ for all that has happened to him.


LeAnne: For ten years, you were a principal dancer with Martha Graham. What was that experience like?

Steve: It was a formidable experience—to have the opportunity to study under the tutelage of one of the leading artists of the 20th century. Even in her latter years, when many of her works lacked the searing impact of some of her earlier classics (like "Appalachian Spring", "Cave of the Heat", "Primitive Mysteries"), Martha’s concept of theater and the dramatic use of the stage space was unparalleled. Her approach to dance still impacts my teaching and creativity to date (under a great shadow!) and at a time when this term has lost a lot of credibility, she was truly a “genius.”

LM: You're an Associate Professor of Dance and Resident Choreographer at Vassar College, and you teach regularly elsewhere as well. How would you encourage your students and other artists trying to live their Christian faith in the world?

SR: The call to be light and salt (a “witness”) in the dance world is no different from the call to live out one’s faith as a lawyer, a stay-at-home parent, a plumber, or a pastor. So much of our effectiveness as a believer is how we approach and execute our craft. There is a scripture that has been a kind of “blue print” for my walk—Colossians 3:23-24 says:

"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving."

The bottom line is that we need to pursue excellence and integrity in our work not to make us look good, but to give God glory. Once people find out that you are a follower of Christ, your life immediately goes under a microscope (and that is a good thing!). We need to reveal God’s nature in how we approach life in our successes—and in our failures.

More from Steve Rooks on Thursday.

More from Nicora Gangi

I’m on vacation and will be back at my post posting on Monday July 2nd. I have some fabulous features lined up for the next couple of months: dancers, musicians, a culture expert, a writer, and more. I’m excited about what’s coming up so be sure to check back. Also, if you haven’t signed up to receive the blog via email, you can do it now in the box in the sidebar on the right. It’s easy and convenient—the posts show up in your inbox so you don’t have to remember to come to the blog to read it.

A few months ago I featured painter Nicora Gangi. Not only is she an extremely gifted artist, she also has great insight into the issues that face Christians in the arts. The original Q&A, plus some additional answers from Nicora, is now up at my friend Colin Burch's site, www.liturgicalcredo.com. Check it out and let me know what you think.

Delta David Gier: Authenticity

Today I’m concluding my interview with Delta David Gier, Music Director of the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra (www.sdsymphony.org), assistant conductor for the New York Philharmonic, and Assistant Artistic Director of Soli Deo Gloria (www.sdgmusic.org), which is dedicated to preserving, promoting, and enhancing the classical sacred music repertoire
in the biblical tradition.

LM: You have a long list of accomplishments. Name one of the highlights of your career.

DG: The New York Philharmonic debut pretty much tops the list. I have an ongoing relationship with them that’s very satisfying. Last season I conducted one of their Young People’s Concerts. The host cancelled so at the last minute I found myself hosting and conducting. It went so well, though, that next season I will be conducting all of them. It’s very exciting to be a part of such a creative team. We are doing some cutting-edge stuff there, some great music.

LM: Do you have any advice for other Christians in the arts?

DG: That question makes me think of a conversation I had with Brennan Manning, who wrote Ragamuffin Gospel. I corresponded with him a bit when I was on the road doing a tour of Carmen. I was alone for several months. I read 8 or 9 of his books and found them very inspirational because he focuses on authenticity, particularly in prayer. He came to Brooklyn for a week of meetings one year and I went to see him. I was able to chat with him a couple of times and here’s what he said (I’ll never forget it): “With prayer, there are 2 cardinal rules: Pray as you can, not as you can’t, and there’s no such thing as a bad prayer.” I’ve held onto that ever since.

It sounds simple but it’s true: be yourself. What makes the most impact on people is your own walk with God and allowing that to influence your work. Never shy away from asking tough questions. If you’re performing a work of art and you feel uncomfortable about it, engage in authentic talk about it—yes, with Christians but also with nonChristians. Talk about your struggles with it. It will give an authentic representation of your own walk with God. People respond to that so much more than pat answers. None of us has all the answers. It’s about relying on God, listening to the Holy Spirit, and being honest.

Coming soon: dancers, musicians, a culture expert and more

Delta David Gier: Bringing Life to Composers’ Gifts

Delta David Gier has been called a dynamic voice on the American music scene, recognized widely for his penetrating interpretations of the standard repertoire and his passionate commitment to new music. In summer 2000 he conducted the New York Philharmonic in what were described as “splendid performances.” He came to national attention in 1997 while conducting a tour of Carmen for San Francisco Opera’s Western Opera Theater. For the past ten seasons Mr. Gier has been an assistant conductor for the New York Philharmonic, and has served in that role for the Metropolitan Opera as well. He has performed with many of the world's finest soloists, including Midori, Lang Lang and Sarah Chang.

Since the 2004-05 season, Mr. Gier has held the post of Music Director of the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra (www.sdsymphony.org). During his first two seasons the orchestra has enjoyed great success with its series of concerts featuring works of Pulitzer Prize-winning composers.

As a Fulbright Scholar (1988–90) Gier led critically acclaimed performances with many orchestras of Eastern Europe. Gier earned a Master of Music degree in conducting from The University of Michigan under Gustav Meier. As a student at Tanglewood and Aspen he studied also with Leonard Bernstein, Kurt Masur, Erich Leinsdorf, and Seiji Ozawa, and was later invited by Riccardo Muti to spend a year as an apprentice at the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Mr. Gier has also been in demand as a teacher and conductor in many highly regarded music schools, serving as visiting professor at the Yale School of Music, the College-Conservatory of Music in Cincinnati, the San Francisco Conservatory and SUNY Stony Brook. In addition, he serves as Assistant Artistic Director of Soli Deo Gloria (www.sdgmusic.org).


LeAnne: You’re Music Director of the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra. Tell me about next season.

David: One of the joys of being Music Director is crafting an entire season’s repertoire. The SDSO is growing in every aspect. We have hired four new full-time musicians and another string quartet (we already have one string quartet and one woodwind quintet full-time), which is a big step for us. As we grow, we are taking on a more difficult repertoire. Our chorus is growing as well. We closed out last season with Mahler’s 2nd Symphony and we’ll be doing Brahms’ Requiem next season, both with the chorus. Next season Midori the violinist will be coming. We are premiering an SDG commission—a piano concerto composed by Jacob Bancks (www.sdgmusic.org/CurrentProjects/Index.html). In addition to our regular season, we are hosting a series of composer readings, expanding on a program that the Minnesota Orchestra already has in place.

We will also continue to develop our work with Native American musicians. There are nine reservations in South Dakota so, from my perspective, it doesn’t make sense for us not to be making music with them. Ultimately, we would like to do a tour side-by-side with Native musicians. Each group will play for each other on the first half of the program while having a public discussion about what music means in our different cultures, then on the second half we will commission new works for us to play together. The purpose is to find a means for cultural understanding, to enable cross-cultural dialogue.

LM: How has your faith affected or impacted your passion for music?

DG: That question actually prompted a bit of a crisis for me. I wondered, how does a committed Christian give his life energy over to the performance of this repertoire? For me, it came down to the principle of common grace. Jesus said that God causes the sun to rise on the righteous and the unrighteous and the rain to fall on the just and unjust (Matthew 5:45). The gifts of God are given liberally to all mankind, and we recognize them in places and from people that may be unexpected. It’s easy to see it in Bach, who wrote all of his music to the glory of God; it’s more difficult with Wagner. (Of course Wagner was a genius, his music incredible.) It has taken a lot of soul-searching for me, but it keeps me honest in terms of faith. My response to great music and great performers is a welling up of thankfulness to God. And when I perform, I realize that I am participating in bringing life to the gift God gave this composer. All of us are exercising God-given gifts, which makes me thankful and prayerful. It’s a life-long journey, finding a way to worship God through the re-creation of this music.

Soon I’ll be going to the Masterworks Festival, a dynamic Christian youth camp in Indiana. The curriculum is written specifically for artists who are Christians. It started with orchestra and now includes dance, opera, theater, lots of different art forms. It’ll be my tenth year as a guest conductor. Faculty—players from major orchestras around the country—and students sit next to each other in the orchestra. It fosters mentorship, both professionally and spiritually. At night, we break up into small group Bible study. I’m amazed at the interaction, and the worship—if you can imagine—is fantastic. It’s intended to equip the next generation of artists to be salt and light in what is sometimes a very dark world.

I enjoy interaction with people of different beliefs. Sharing my faith is simply that. It’s who I am and it’s the motivation behind why I make music. When rehearsing works from the sacred repertoire, bringing the text alive is very exciting to me. Other times, it’s more complicated. For example, Mahler’s 2nd Symphony that we just did is subtitled Resurrection. On the surface, it appears to have a Christian text, but when you look deeper, it’s really about universalism. We can have a discussion about where he was spiritually at the time he composed this piece, what he was trying to say. Of course it was just his 2nd Symphony, still early in his career and his journey.

On Thursday David will discuss one highlight of his career as well as his advice for Christians in the arts.

More from My Collection: On Poetry

Here are a few more quotations from The Christian Imagination, edited by Leland Ryken (Shaw Books, a division of WaterBrook Press).

What is poetry?

The rhythmic creation of beauty. Edgar Allan Poe

The art of doing by means of words what the painter does by means of colors. Thomas Macaulay

The expression of the imagination. Percy Bysshe Shelley

Speech framed to be heard for its own sake and interest even over and above its interest of meaning. Gerard Manley Hopkins

The art that offers depth in a moment. Molly Peacock

Perfection of form united with a significance of feeling. T. S. Eliot

A way of using words to say things which could not possibly be said in any other way, things which in a sense do not exist till they are born…in poetry. C. Day Lewis



Coming soon: a dancer, a poet, a musician, a composer, a culture expert, and more

More from My Collection

Last Christmas my husband gave me the book The Christian Imagination: The Practice of Faith in Literature and Writing, edited by Leland Ryken. It has reflections from Tolkien, Flannery O’Connor, Madeleine L’Engle, Frederick Buechner, Annie Dillard, Francis Schaeffer and others. It also has lots of quotations. Here are a few I especially like about writing and story:


When we are at a play, or looking at a painting or a statue, or reading a story, the imaginary work must have such an effect on us that it enlarges our own sense of reality. Madeline L’Engle, Walking on Water

The poet’s job is not to tell you what happened, but what happens: not what did take place, but the kind of thing that always does take place. Northrop Frye, The Educated Imagination

The primary job that any writer faces is to tell you a story of human experience—I mean by that, universal mutual experience, the anguishes and troubles and gifts of the human heart, which is universal, without regard to race or time or condition. William Faulkner, Faulkner at West Point

My assumption is that the story of any one of us is in some measure the story of us all. Frederick Buechner, Listening to Your Life

The poet is not a man who asks me to look at him; he is a man who says “look at that” and points. C. S. Lewis, The Personal Heresy

I’m always highly irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality. Flannery O’Connor, “The Nature and Aim of Fiction”

Coming soon: a poet, a musician, a composer, a culture expert, and more

Tyrus Clutter, Part 2: Christians in the Visual Arts

Tyrus Clutter is a painter and printmaker. He holds a BA in Painting from Spring Arbor University and an MFA in Painting from Bowling Green State University. Clutter's award-winning work can be found in many private collections as well as in the Print Collections of the New York Public Library and the Spencer Museum of Art, as well as the collections of Spring Arbor University and Union University. Images of Clutter's work have illustrated journals and magazines including The South Carolina Review, Chiron, The Christian Century, and Arts & Letters: Journal of Contemporary Culture. The Beginning: A Second Look at the First Sin, by Square Halo Books, also incorporates Clutter's illustrations. Clutter currently resides in Massachusetts where he works as the director of Christians in the Visual Arts (CIVA.)


LM: What are some ways the church can support or encourage Christians in the visual arts?

TC: The old mentality that the mission field is only in some far off land where the heathen have never heard of Jesus is fading away. The contemporary church can see that right here in North America many people have heard of Jesus, but they do not actually understand the message of the gospel. Therefore, one of the most important things that the church can do is validate the role and calling of the artist. The roles and callings are as various as the types of art people make. Some artists are called to be liturgical designers. Their work is specifically made to function in the setting of communal worship. Others are called to be fine artists working in the national and international art scene—exhibiting in major galleries and museums or teaching at secular universities and art schools. The message of their work will surely be informed by their faith, but they are also a form of missionary to the cultural set in society. Their role is to make great art and live in a Christ-like manner in the world. Still others may be called to work in the film industry or graphic or industrial design. Again, all these people are called to be Christians in their workplace and we all know that that is no small task. And it is not just the practicing artists but the art historians and critics that need to be encouraged as vital within the Body.

Young people need to hear from the pulpit and from those in church leadership that all occupations are needed. Christians are called to every type of work, including the arts. I am not necessarily calling for a sermon on the arts from every pastor, but it would not hurt. And the support from leadership needs to begin at the level of seminary education, too. There is a surge of interest in the cultural class by young seminarians. They understand that this is a largely unchurched segment of society, yet few seminaries are preparing men and women to be conversant in the arts. While they will not be experts, they need to be comfortable around artists if this corner is to be turned.

LM: Tell me about your background as an artist and how you became involved with CIVA.

TC: I did not grow up in a family that embraced visual art. All of us were musicians—very acceptable in the church setting—but no one was serious about art. My siblings and I had dabbled in art but by the time I reached high school I recognized that this was the direction I needed to take. My parents, like many, were concerned. Our culture recognizes the term “starving artist” and that can easily put fear in the heart of any parent who only wants the best for his or her child. I reached a compromise with my parents to major in art and minor in business. The reasoning was that I would work toward a graphic design emphasis and have some hope of gainful employment. The minor disappeared after a year and a half when I declared that I was going to become a painter. That was not met by applause.

It was during these years at college (Spring Arbor University) that I first began to seriously consider how my faith and vocation should be integrated. Somehow during that time I first heard about CIVA. It was not until I was working on my MFA in painting at Bowling Green a couple of years later that I really began to look closely at CIVA. As one of two Christians in my MFA program I was in a very different place than at Spring Arbor (a four-year Christian liberal arts college). The topics of the CIVASEEN newsletter were timely. The news about projects, exhibitions, and conferences was exciting. The books suggested to read were formational. I longed to be part of that larger community and I knew I was, if only through my annual membership and the occasional mailings it provided to me.

In 1998 and 1999 my involvement in CIVA took off. I was accepted into the “Ignite” traveling exhibition of young emerging artists from within the ranks of CIVA. At the same time I took my first full-time teaching position and was able to attend my first CIVA biennial conference. When I look back now I see myself as so young and naïve at that first conference. I was in awe of all these people I had only read about, and now I had an opportunity to meet them. It is somewhat laughable today, because many of those same artists are now close personal friends and there are literally hundreds more I know through CIVA. Still, I remember that first conference and I know the exhilaration and intimidation that many feel at their first conference. I strive to let people know that CIVA members are generally the most open and giving people I know. There isn’t the vying for position that one finds in the broader art world. The network of CIVA is just like the church. We are a group of people at various levels of development who all need each other to press forward on our journey.

Because I was willing to volunteer in various roles for CIVA, was making contacts at the conferences, exhibiting work by CIVA artists at the college gallery I directed, and having work accepted by a variety of jurors for some CIVA shows, many on the CIVA Board knew who I was. When the Board took the step to hire a director everything came together at the right time for me to move into my current position. Directing CIVA’s programs was not something I would have imagined myself doing; nor was teaching, for that matter. God has other intentions for our lives sometimes and it takes faith to discern that leading.

LM: Is there anything you'd like to add?

TC: I have come to understand that the term “Christian artist” needs to be put to rest. There is always a problem when the word Christian is used as an adjective. I try to keep it in the realm of a noun. Christians are people, but so are artists. I prefer the term “artist of faith.” While I know that it is problematic for some, because it does not describe what the faith is in, it also does not come with a preconceived idea of what type or style of work the artist creates.

I meet many people in both the higher ranks of the church and the higher levels of the art world. If I was to ever describe myself as a Christian artist, people from both camps would arrive at the same preconception—that my work was illustrative biblical narrative, some kitschy reworking of a scene of angels, or some equally generic scene with a biblical quote attached. There is probably a place for each of those but to think that every artist in CIVA is doing that style of work is absurd.

A major thrust of my job is to have serious conversations with both sides. Usually this happens without words. I show lots of examples. CIVA is not simply a liturgical art and design organization—though those people are in our ranks and some of their work would inspire the imagination of even a die-hard atheist. CIVA encourages artists at every level to reach their highest potential. Good art work is simply good art work. It will be engaging and expanding for the viewer and it makes little difference whether it is created for use strictly inside the church or not, with an obvious and overt evangelical message or not.

We are in a time of openness in which the church knows that the visual can no longer be overlooked and the broader culture realizes that spirituality is essential to our well being. I find that, both as an artist and the Director of CIVA, this is an exciting time to be working.

Tyrus Clutter: Christians in the Visual Arts

This week I’m featuring Tyrus Clutter, painter and Director of CiVA (Christians in the Visual Arts).

LeAnne: According to your website, "CiVA exists to explore and nurture the relationship between the visual arts and the Christians faith." How did CiVA get started?

Tyrus: No one actually thought about starting a large organization in the early days. CIVA actually came into existence through the initial work of Gene Johnson, the former chair of the art department at Bethel University in Minnesota. Johnson realized that there were Christian colleges with art departments all over North America and that it was likely that the art professors in some of these remote places felt as isolated, from both the art world and the church, as his colleagues did. That was the atmosphere of the time; both the church and the art world were equally suspicious of an artist working from a Christian worldview.

Johnson began calling around to the various colleges in 1976 and planned to host a small conference at Bethel the following year. Key participants were asked to give presentations, to ensure that there would be a core group in attendance. Johnson assumed that around fifty people would show up. As word got around between 200 and 250 gathered at Bethel. Everyone was astounded at this turn out and the real need for fellowship and networking was keenly felt. A second conference was planned for 1979. When there were just as many participants that time, bylaws were drawn up and the organization was formed that year.

LM: What are some ways the organization is fulfilling its mission?

TC: CIVA is currently in the process of beginning implementation of a new strategic plan that fine tunes the mission of the organization to “supporting the artist, serving the church, and engaging the culture.” The traditional means that CIVA employed to accomplish this were the biennial conferences (rotating to various locations around North America) and the newsletter (CIVASEEN). The newsletter eventually became a semi-annual journal called SEEN and now CIVA has annual media specific workshops on the campus of Gordon College and a range of traveling exhibitions.

At the core of CIVA is a network of nearly 10,000 individuals and institutions. CIVA cannot do every good thing that integrates art and faith, but it has always been a catalyst to see that these things can be done. In the realm of culture, CIVA has collaborated with the Museum of Biblical Art in New York City to produce an exhibition entitled The Next Generation. That show is still traveling to churches and college galleries around the country. The catalogue essay on the artists and their work has opened the eyes of many in both the church and the culture. The message is that excellent contemporary art can be created from the context of faith.

Other exhibitions and projects specifically in collaboration with churches have helped the general church-goer to see that faith and theology can be deepened through visual media. Thirty years ago there was simply not this kind of openness and it is exciting to see the warm reception more churches have to the arts today.

Plans are in the works to start affiliate local groups around the country. Still, in an electronic age we realize that the website, more and more, will be a means to educate and inform. In the coming year there will be more resources online to help the mission along.

On Thursday, Tyrus Clutter will talk about why the term “Christian artist” needs to be put to rest, one of the most important things the church can do, and how he got involved in CiVA.