Featured Essay / Avant-Garde
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…
Essay / Avant-Garde
When your main line of dialogue is “my precious,” it’s not easy to diagram your sentences. But Gollum will try. And Freddy Age Eleven will take a break from his English homework to illustrate it. Crumpled papers litter the floor, with “papers about to be
Essay / Avant-Garde
The artist known as Phoebe Age Nine has been working on this piece for a while. Every few days her friends, fans, and gallery agent have been asking, “Is the Cat Card done yet?” The terse but unworried answer has been, “Not yet. There’s still
Essay / Avant-Garde
Supercat! Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap over tall buildings in a single bound! Yes, Supercat! Saving kittens as crowds cheer! Super, duper, supercat!
Essay / Avant-Garde
Freddy Age Eleven is a prolific artist who draws dragons daily. His studio is littered with them, a hoard of sketches big enough to make Smaug jealous. But for Halloween, he undertook a collaboration with Sanders Consulting, a company that specializes in taking sketches and
Essay / Avant-Garde
Here is a little glimpse of what an intense writing schedule apparently looks like to the fourth-grader who shares the home with the busy scholar. The thing on the (awesome retro-modernist) table is a small scroll containing the Decliration of DaddyLand. What Daddy has to
Essay / Art
Everyone has his or her notion of what constitutes a relaxing evening. For me, among other things, it is an occasional trip to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles to watch and experience an operatic performance. This weekend, neither time nor finances permitted such
Essay / Art
The caption under it says “Violin Player by Clara Crampton (The artist has been blind since birth.) You need not rely on the eyes alone.” It’s an illustration on page 7 of The Natural Way to Draw by Kimon Nicolaides (first published 1941). Nicolaides’ Natural
Essay / Avant-Garde
The artist known as Phoebe Age Nine submits an anatomical study. Or does she? A skeletal study is a foundational beginner’s exercise in many life drawing courses, but an artist as original and accomplished as PA9 is not likely to publish a simple exercise in
Essay / Avant-Garde
The church bulletin featured a photomontage based on Jean-Francois Millet’s 1857 painting The Angelus. But Freddy Age Ten, perhaps influenced by the recent craze for street art, added a little something. The average viewer thinks of this descending dragon as a menacing presence, perhaps as
Essay / Art
Leo Steinberg (1920-2011) died earlier this week (NYT obit), leaving behind a rich legacy of writing on art, both criticism and history. There are some great art historians out there, but it’s hard to imagine who can fill the void left by a Steinberg. Steinberg
Essay / Avant-Garde
Since the violence-drenched, action-soaked, gore-marinated trailer, there has been much debate about the details of Two-Fisted Gun Monger with Knife Breath. What does his costume look like? How many guns does he mong? How do the knives come out on his breath? Here is a
Essay / Avant-Garde
Sure, movies are violent these days. But in between the violent bits, there’s always a bunch of dialogue and character development and stuff. What we really need is a movie designed for pure violence. What we need is a character who is designed for nothing