Traditionally, two arts have most bent our ear: music, whose relationship with the ear is a long-running whirlwind courtship; and poetry, an art that in its earliest days hung all its hope upon the openness of the aural corridor running to the mind.  Music has retained its, shall we say, aural tradition.  Few people read [...]

(this is the first in a series of six posts on the Pillars of Mormon Art)

…thou shalt not make unto thee any graven images, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
(Exodus 20:4)
This little verse has [...]

Six Theological Pillars for the Art of God’s People
Now, if that’s not a daunting title, I don’t know what is. It was enough to pique my curiosity, though, and I left work early on Friday, November 7th to attend Vern Swanson’s thusly-named presentation at the Biennial Art, Belief, Meaning Symposium, Picturing the Divine, at the [...]

On Saturday, November 29, I participated in activities at the Bluff Arts Festival in Bluff, Utah.  This little town of just a few hundred people really knows how to throw a party.  I took my eighteen-year-old son, an aspiring writer, to this celebration of the arts, sciences, and the human spirit, and having him with me deepened my [...]

Warning: Philosophical flight ahead, soaring high into the ether, bearing little or no entertainment value and no direct references to Mormonism, the election, or Prop 8.  Just so you know.
These fall mornings, to get blood going to my brain, I walk out into the desert near my house.  A few days ago I went up onto [...]

If you are reading this post, I am overcome by temptation—the temptation to add a few words to a conversation that has dominated Mormon discourse lately.

Last Sunday I attended a fireside by well-known LDS artist James Christensen, which included a lot of slides of his artwork, and a lot of stories about his career. I found two stories he told particularly interesting.
One of the stories showed a lot about the biases of LDS Church members regarding art. The other made [...]

Several months ago my lovely wife Anne and I had the privilege to go to a retreat hosted twice a year by the Mormon Artists Foundation. Founded by James Christensen (rightfully famous for his art of fantasy and his fantastic art) and Doug Stewart (playwright of the groundbreaking Saturday’s Warrior), it’s always one of the [...]