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Game On!: LDS Composers Writing Video Game Music Soundtracks
A Brush With Africa
Latin American Abstraction
The Tom Brady of Composers
Charlie Bird, Missionary of a More Spacious Zion
Luis Fernando Puente at Sundance
In Memoriam
William Morris
The Latter-day Saint Art World
Rat Fink
Why should I, the reportedly amazing Theric, like getting The Season in my inbox? I mean, not to boast, but I know what's going on. New novel? play? movie? I've heard about it. I keep tabs on a goodly number of LDS painters and indie-comics makers and girls with guitars and so forth. I'm hip. And yet—I had no idea Big Daddy Roth had a museum show in Colorado. I love Big Daddy Roth. I heard him speak at BYU! I was just worrying, last month as I was walking to work, that the wild and strange world he created was being forgotten. Then here comes this museum show. That I'd heard nothing about. So thank you, The Season. Thank you for filling in gaps even I, the allegedly hip, cannot see. (Now, if you only included plane tickets to Denver I'd be set.)
Eric Jepson
The Chosen
Glen Nelson's piece on "The Chosen" (Nov. 17) beautifully lays out how the "scripture Jesus" vs. "cool Jesus" debate isn't just an argument about reverence and propriety but about the reach and relevance of theology in contemporary life. Every encounter with scripture involves some creative licence, even if it's just on the part of our mind's eye. Any storyteller attempting to capture an infinite Divinity accepts inevitable sins of editorial commission and omission. (Personally, for example, I think any rendering of Jesus that doesn't portray him as funny, at least sometimes, is historically suspect, not to mention boring.)
But more importantly, any portrayal that limits the bounds of his mercy is, in my mind, far more blasphemous than a bit of anachronistic slang. Nelson's juxtaposed imagery of Jesus on the cross and Matthew Shepard on the barbed-wire fence is not only emotionally wrenching, but, to Book of Mormon readers, scripturally accurate: Alma 7 tells us outright that Golgotha and Gethsemane weren't just transactions of suffering for sin, but voluntary exercises in radical empathy. We believe in a Jesus who took upon himself our infirmities "according to the flesh," i.e., first-hand, so that he could know, first-hand, how to help us through our suffering. The cross only matters if the fence matters too.
Nelson's piece also brought to mind the moment in Levi Peterson's The Backslider when Jesus appears to eponymous ranch hand Frank Windham in the form of an irreverent cowboy--because that's the only way Frank could be convinced he was redeemable. What's more blasphemous: imagining Jesus in a cowboy hat, or imagining a Jesus that would never deign to put one on?
Jeremy Grimshaw
Kirsten Holt Beitler
Kirsten Holt Beitler is an artist and divorced mom of four boys. Her day job is making hand painted signs for Harmons Grocery in Santa Clara, Utah. She moonlights as a wannabe writer and professional symbolic contemporary realist painter using watercolor, oil, and mixed media to create introspective and vulnerable portrait and figurative work.
Richard Bushman
Richard Bushman is chairman of the Board of Directors of the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts. He lives in New York City with his wife Claudia.
Ted Bushman
Ted Bushman is a professional actor, writer, and composer based in New York. With his partner Kristen Perkins, he recently gave a seminar as part of the Grace Church Interfaith Fellowship in Millbrook, NY.
Megan Eckersley
Megan Eckersley is a graphic designer based out of New York City and has worked with clients like Squarespace. She is currently at Square as a Brand Designer.
Glen Nelson
Glen Nelson is a bookbinder with approximately 500 volumes to his credit. In 1999 he created Mormon Artists Group, which produced 29 original projects–most of them limited edition books–with some 85 LDS artists.
Gabriel González
Gabriel González is a professor of Translation and a writer. He has published ten children's books, two poetry collections, and a short story collection.
William Morris
William Morris writes, edits, and writes about Mormon literature. His more recent work is The Darkest Abyss: Strange Mormon Stories, which was recently published by BCC Press
Arisael Rivera
Arisael Rivera is an actor, playwright, and poet based in The Bronx, New York. Most recently, his poem "Jubilant Feet" was published in the anthology Love Letters to Gaia by Miro C.
Benjamin Dean Taylor
Benjamin Dean Taylor is a composer of contemporary concert music. He has received professional commissions from individuals and ensembles all over the world and is one of the few living composers today making his primary income from writing and self-publishing his music.
Kwani Povi Winder
Kwani Povi Winder is an oil painter based in Utah and an enrolled member of the Santa Clara Pueblo. She's an inspired mother, pianist, hiker, camper, who loves reading, painting and living life.
