Category: Mormon Arts
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Field Notes #1
Remember the silence around Pueblo Alto in Chaco, so heavy you felt blanketed by its snows, and the desert landscape spread out below, unmoving for miles? That was silence. Not even a breeze singing on the stones. June 8, 2006 Hiked in the rain this morning.
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Sweat
All winter I plotted how to improve the garden, my first focal point for exercising “good stewardship” over the acre plus we moved to a year and a half ago. Last year’s garden had gone all right. I loved every minute in it, especially the time spent with animals, like Woodhouses’ toads and cliff swallows,…
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MWS: Brandon Sanderson
Brandon Sanderson is the Campbell-nominated author (twice-nominated now) of the fantasy novels Elantris and Mistborn: The Final Empire. His novel Well of Ascension, second in the Mistborn trilogy, will be published in a few months. Other projects (including the playfully titled Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians) are on the horizon. Brandon also recently released another…
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MWS: Shannon Hale
Shannon Hale is a Newbery Honor-winning, New York Times bestseller-listed author of youth and fantasy fiction, most particularly Goose Girl and Princess Academy. This week sees the release of her latest novel Austenland, her first adult fiction novel. She is a returned missionary and lives in Salt Lake City with her husband and two under-three-years-old…
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MWS: Doug Thayer
Douglas Thayer is one of the pioneers of what Eugene England called “faithful realism” in his definitive study of Mormon literature. Besides having taught literally thousands of Mormon writers during his fifty years as a professor of English at Brigham Young University, his short story collections Under the Cottonwoods and Mr. Wahlquist in Yellowstone have…
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A Mormon Writers Symposium
Thirty years ago this summer, President Spencer W. Kimball gave us his “Gospel Vision of the Arts”:
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Tooth Bugs
Recently my husband and I came across a set of rather old LDS song books. As my ward’s primary chorister my favorite was The Primary Song Book: Including Marches and Voluntaries. The edition is missing the title page and so I’m not sure when it was published (and am at a loss as to how…
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Lots of Questions for Greg Whiteley
“Probably the only people who are more lonely in an LDS ward than musicians who used to be almost-famous are filmmakers who never were”–Greg Whiteley, director of New York Doll.
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Black Comedy
So maybe I missed something, but I’m pretty sure that one genre the Saints haven’t touched is black comedy. I’m not much of a narrative writer, though, so think of the following as sitting on little scraps of paper on a rickety table in my front yard with a hand-lettered cardboard sign next to them…
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Cheryl White: A Photo Essay
Cheryl White, an amazing artist who lives in Central Texas, was kind enough to open her home and studio to me (and my three rambunctious boys) for a tour last week. This is what we saw.
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Why There Are No Temples On My Walls—or Why I’m A Snob
Short answer: There are no pictures of temples beautiful enough to hang on my walls.
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Why Jesus Will Not Save You: A Short Spiritual Autobiography
When I look at my life and pick out its most significant spiritual events, one that stands out is a night when, unbidden and unexpected, God told me that he was angry because I was reading the New Testament.
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Mormonsploitation!!
That is the name of a film series currently going on at the Pioneer Theater in Manhattan’s East Village.
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Heder-day Night Live
Last night Jon Heder, star of Napoleon Dynamite, hosted “Saturday Night Live.” I caught a few of the sketches he played in, and one thing was pretty clear: the kid’s no Philip Seymor Hoffman. He’s amiable and sweet-faced, to be sure, but there’s a muddiness to his voice he can’t seem to clear, and his…
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Book Review: The Book: A History of the Bible
I should warn potential readers: there’s a real danger that you will drool on the pages of Christopher de Hamel’s new book.
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Lifestyles of the Middle Class and Boring
I figure that if Nate can go on and on and on about his garden, I might be indulged if I take you on a tour of my house.
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Toxic Fumes and Memories of Mormon Art
The summer after my mission I got a job restoring Mormon pine furniture. Over the course of its life, the furniture had been painted many, many times. My job was to painstakingly remove layers of later paint with an exacto knife and Q-tip swabs soaked in paint thinner while leaving the original layer of paint…
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Here and There in Mormon Art
Last month I kindly provided my husband some uninterrupted bonding time with his children and flew to New York City for a few days. On the recommendation of a friend (bloggernacle personality D. Fletcher), I stopped by Lane Twitchell’s current art show, “Here & There,” at the Greenberg Van Doren gallery in midtown.
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“Let us walk through the door”
In honor of this holy day, I offer a favorite poem: “Seven Stanzas for Easter.” John Updike wrote it in 1960 as a university student, as I understand, and published it in a periodical called The Lutheran. ___ Make no mistake: if He rose at all it was as His body; if the cells’ dissolution…
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Eccentrics
There is a student on the Georgetown campus that makes me uneasy. He has glasses, a bushy beard, heavy features, long brown hair knotted in dreadlocks. I see him often, and he always seems to be wearing the same thing: a camouflage jacket, brown trousers, and a heavy backpack full, I’m convinced, of books on…
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In the Cultural Hall
The danger in telling people you write a little bit is that they then assume you can. Last week a friend from my ward called and asked me to write the libretto for a musical show she has been called to coordinate for the stake; a few of the creative decisions had already been made,…
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We Haiku. How ’bout you??
No one writes enough haiku. And we want to know why? Haiku are like the potato chip of poetry—you can’t have just one. They’re clean, simple, economic, easy to read, and easy to write, provided you don’t take yourself too seriously.
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I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.
It has been over a month since we’ve had a post mentioning Bob Dylan. I’ll happily fix that problem.
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Reading Poetry Aloud
Now that I finally have a child, one of my enjoyable activities with him is to read to him before bed. The one problem I face is not in selecting poetry I want to read, but learning how to read it properly aloud. I’ve scanned Google for some suggestions. They all tell me what I…
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Very Serious Reflections on the occasion of our first anniversary.
Times and Seasons has turned the searching glare of its inquiry onto itself. We don’t know exactly the question that was asked, but whether the answers are self-parody or just self-indulgence is up to you. Enjoy.
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Sunday with Prophet Bob
Last night, after helping get the kids to bed, I went to a Bob Dylan concert. I’ve never been to a rock concert on a Sunday before, but I made an exception for Dylan. I’ve had to pass up seeing him on several other prior occasions because of finals, work, or because the show was…
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Mormon Images: Office Decor and the Place of Mormonism in American History
A few weels ago I finished my stint at the public trough and left the service of the federal courts. I know work for the law firm of Sidley, Austin, Brown & Wood in Washington, DC. The identity of the firm is significant only because this is the firm (and office) where Rex E. Lee…
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Mormon Creative Outlets
I was just thinking that I keep stumbling across LDS creative outlets, and that it might be useful to put a list of these in one place. Here are a few that I’m aware of; please let me know, by comments, of any others that I’m missing and they’ll be added to the list: The…