{"id":38758,"date":"2019-03-11T08:31:53","date_gmt":"2019-03-11T13:31:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=38758"},"modified":"2019-03-11T08:31:53","modified_gmt":"2019-03-11T13:31:53","slug":"where-are-the-women-artists-in-the-come-follow-me-manual","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2019\/03\/where-are-the-women-artists-in-the-come-follow-me-manual\/","title":{"rendered":"Where are the women artists in the Come, Follow Me manual?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"As I started preparing family lessons using the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints\u2019s new Come, Follow Me manual, I was struck by the quantity of art. In addition to photos and screenshots from Church-produced videos, the manual includes 78 reproductions of paintings or stained-glass windows. Many lessons \u2013 particularly in the first half of the year \u2013 include two or three paintings. But as I started going through the art, noting the artists, I saw a pattern: Brent Borup, Del Parson, Walter Rane, Dana Mario Wood, Walter Rane, Tom Holdman, Greg K. Olsen, Robert T. Barrett, Jorge Cocco, Simon Dewey. They\u2019re all men. It\u2019s not until the 20th painting that we get to a woman artist: Liz Lemon Swindle\u2019s Against the Wind<\/a>, showing the Savior lifting Peter out of the water in Matthew 14.<\/p>\n

Out of 76 paintings for which I could identify the artist and the artist\u2019s gender, only 9 were by women artists \u2013 that\u2019s just under 12 percent.* What\u2019s more, 5 of those 9 were by just one artist, Liz Lemon Swindle. Even though Walter Rane has 12 paintings and Del Parson has 6, those only make up a quarter of all the paintings by men, leaving room for a wide array of lesser known artists to be featured.<\/p>\n

Why does this matter? We want to be involved in organizations where we can see ourselves (or see what we\u2019d like to be). In India, adolescent girls who saw women<\/a> in politics had higher educational aspirations for themselves. When women in Peru and Mexico<\/a> saw female role models in software-coding jobs, they were much more likely to apply for those jobs. When schoolgirls in Uganda<\/a> saw a movie in which a Ugandan girl overcame challenges to succeed as a chess master, their grades improved. If girls see women artists, it\u2019s not a stretch to believe that they\u2019ll feel empowered to contribute their art. And who\u2019s to say that it might not extend even to other contributions. The current structure of the Church precludes equal representation in key areas: Women can\u2019t see themselves as the prophet or as apostles. So why not seek equal (or more than equal) representation in areas where we can?<\/p>\n

Is it difficult to find women gospel artists? No. In addition to the women featured in the manual \u2013 Liz Lemon Swindle, Sandra Rast, Kamille Corry, Sandy Freckleton Gagon, and Annie Henrie \u2013 I asked for suggestions for women who do gospel-related art from friends on Facebook and got more than a few within a couple of hours. Here are some who have created clearly representational New Testament related art (i.e., the kind of art that we see in the manual): Rose Datoc Dall<\/a>, Meagan Getz<\/a>, Emily McPhie<\/a>, Lynne Millar<\/a>, Jenedy Paige<\/a>, Kathleen Peterson<\/a>, Katherine Ricks<\/a>, Minerva Teichert<\/a>, Elspeth Young<\/a>. I\u2019m sure there are many more.<\/p>\n

Achieving representation takes a little bit of effort. But women represent roughly half the world population and they\u2019re making beautiful, relevant art, so it seems like in the next manual, perhaps we can do better than 12 percent and let our sisters see themselves in the manuals in one more way. We can also show our sisters that they can worship through art and have that worship recognized just like that of their male counterparts.<\/p>\n

* One painting is unattributed, at the end of the lesson for December 23-29. And one is \u201cPeter Delivered from Prison,\u201d by A.L. Noakes, about whom I was unable to find additional information.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I started preparing family lessons using the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints\u2019s new Come, Follow Me manual, I was struck by the quantity of art. In addition to photos and screenshots from Church-produced videos, the manual includes 78 reproductions of paintings or stained-glass windows. Many lessons \u2013 particularly in the first half of the year \u2013 include two or three paintings. But as I started going through the art, noting the artists, I saw a pattern: Brent Borup, Del Parson, Walter Rane, Dana Mario Wood, Walter Rane, Tom Holdman, Greg K. Olsen, Robert T. Barrett, Jorge Cocco, Simon Dewey. They\u2019re all men. It\u2019s not until the 20th painting that we get to a woman artist: Liz Lemon Swindle\u2019s Against the Wind, showing the Savior lifting Peter out of the water in Matthew 14. Out of 76 paintings for which I could identify the artist and the artist\u2019s gender, only 9 were by women artists \u2013 that\u2019s just under 12 percent.* What\u2019s more, 5 of those 9 were by just one artist, Liz Lemon Swindle. Even though Walter Rane has 12 paintings and Del Parson has 6, those only make up a quarter of all the paintings by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10383,"featured_media":38760,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,1163,57,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-images","category-latter-day-saint-publications","category-arts","category-women-in-the-church"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/women-artists-come-follow-me.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10383"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38758"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38758\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38761,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38758\/revisions\/38761"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}