Category: Art
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Christian Comics Collection at Biola Library
Today the Biola University Library announced the opening of its Christian Comics Collection, an archive of comic books housed as a special collection in the university library’s archives. The announcement was made at the second annual Alpha-Omega Con held at Redeemer Church in La Mirada (I’ve been to a lot of conferences, but this is the only…
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No Mules Were Skinned: The History of the Muleskinner Blues
Let’s say you get obsessed with a song. And let’s say it’s an old song, one that’s been around a long time and has been performed so many ways that it’s no longer possible to name any particular version of it as definitive. If you’re like me, that’s when you fire up a Youtube search…
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Are Artists Creators?
What do people do when they make a work of art? What do we mean when we speak of human creativity? Are artists creators? Humans are made in the image of God; does this imply that, in our creativity, we mirror his creating? Surely in some sense, human uniqueness includes our capacity to intentionally shape…
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Spaaaace Tuuuunes!
Here’s some fun music by friends at my church: Lost in Space, by The Pop Rockets. Click through to the Noisetrade page to sample all five tracks and download them if you like what you hear. As for me and my house, we like what we hear. Anybody with Vacation Bible School in their background will…
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Spiegelman’s “Maus,” Rights, & the Atonement
World War II and the Holocaust of the Jews have been a significant part of my life. I have toured Washington DC’s Holocaust museum several times, spent a day at the Dachau concentration camp in Germany, and read several books on the subject. My grandfather was an Army Corps engineer, building bridges across Europe to…
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Christ’s Death and the Fate of Western Lowland Gorillas
Paul Fryer’s striking art installation is a beautiful and realistic work… of a crucified gorilla. At first one might think his “Privilege of Dominion” is little more than a parody of the Christian faith, a repetition of ancient graffiti portraying Christ crucified with the head of a donkey. And in fact there has been some…
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Conversation on Theology & California
Here’s a one-hour video about theology and California, or, more specifically, Theology and California, the book of essays that Jason Sexton and I edited (Ashgate, 2014). You can view it at Open Biola (which includes several video and audio options), or stream the embedded version here below. Jason and I were joined by Bob Covolo, author…
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If You Had Been There
Once upon a time –not quite “in the beginning,” but not too long after– a snake had a question. He sauntered up and posed it quite politely, and if you’d been there you’d have agreed that both his posture and his manners were impeccable. He found the Mother of All Mankind minding her own beeswax…
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Christmas Playlist 2014: Monophonic
So much Christmas music is an overproduced mess. This year for our annual Christmas mix we decided to cleanse the palate by finding a set of songs at the other end of the production spectrum. We’ve got buzzing, droning, hissing and popping. We’ve got yowling backup singers that ought to be on a different layer…
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“We See These Things:” Drawing with Dale Leys
My drawing teacher, Dale Leys, has recently been the subject of a forty-year, three-gallery retrospective exhibit. And while I couldn’t go to Kentucky to see the shows, I was thrilled to see that Kentucky’s public television channel, KET, aired a 30-minute documentary about his work (see below). I’ve had some great teachers since college, but…
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The Life of Jesus in Paintings at the Getty
The Getty Center in Los Angeles is not really the best place to go if you want to see Christian art. Except for the remarkable collection of illuminated manuscripts, the Getty’s collection just isn’t built around the themes and images of the Christian visual tradition –it started as a collection of French furniture and antiquities,…
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Dante, Illustrated by Boccaccio
I did not know this existed until today. I knew that Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–75), author of the Decameron, admired Dante Alighieri (1265–1321). I knew Boccaccio had written a short Life of Dante, and I even knew that Boccaccio had studied Dante’s work intensely and lectured on his poetry. But I didn’t know that Boccaccio had written…