Furthermore: What Is "The Season?"
By Mykal Urbina
I am thrilled to present you with the newest project of the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts. It is called The Season. It is so ambitious, its scope is so wide, and its potential so high, that I am almost afraid to describe it. Essentially, it is this: to document—as far as is humanly possible—every work of art in any creative discipline made public this year by artists who are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or feel like part of its culture, anywhere in the world. And to help distill what we expect will be an overwhelming amount of content, we are creating a free, monthly publication to write about these artists and artworks with the same level of joy, curiosity, and intensity as our favorite magazines.
Every wild idea starts with a wild question. I consider myself to be above-average in my arts knowledge, based entirely on my professional proximity to world-class artists. My background is working with some of the most distinguished performing arts organizations in America. I worked with the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center for years and then moved to the other side of the country to be with Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Orange County, California. Both of those institutions have rich histories and traditions of excellence at the highest levels and engagement with very different communities where they reside. It was an honor to be part of those families.
When in 2022 I became the executive director of the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts and relocated to Salt Lake City, Utah, I realized how little I knew about the artists of my faith community. Who are our poets? Where are our composers? What art, infused with my culture and belief, am I not seeing on the walls of my chapel and the pages of my manuals? Even so far this year, I have been continually surprised to discover the quality, breadth, and diversity of artists who in some way self-identity as Mormon. I am so very proud to be able to share their works with others. That is the role of the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts.
And yet I know that there is so much more to be uncovered. Here was my wild question: What would it look like to discover and publicize all the art being made out in the world, organically, by Latter-day Saint artists? And could we bring all of the Center’s skills and interests to bear on a project that would go beyond talking about our arts, but would show them…all?
An important aspect of The Season is its timing. Why right now? I have a feeling that after the shutdowns, delays, cancellations, postponements, and bottlenecks of Covid, these next twelve months are going to present an opportunity that may never be duplicated. It may be a year we look back upon as the time when artists reemerged, changed, newly self-reflective, emboldened, and ready to make their move. Imagine the data that a year’s worth of searching may provide us in the future? It was simply too rich an opportunity to ignore.
The Center for Latter-day Saint Arts exists at the intersection of divine creativity and cultural relevance. What a bustling crossing it is! As ever, we hear the same questions from a curious and prodding (self-appointed) border control within our audience: What “counts” as Latter-day Saint Art?, Who is included in a definition of Latter-day Saint artists?, Where in the world are these creators? In The Season, we answer those three questions, definitively: Everything. All of us. Everywhere.
From September 2022 to August 2023, let’s refocus the scene on our way-makers: self-identified Latter-day Saint artists of all stripes, globally, whose artistic work bears the influence of their LDS faith, belief, or cultural roots. The Season is our genuine, bullish attempt to document one year of Latter-day Saint art in its broadest sense, wherever it is happening organically around the world. We’re certain we have no idea what to expect.
What we do know is that this is the moment to set aside “the canon,” to decide we will embrace everyone, and to take a truly introspective look at the fullness and richness of our cultural village; ours is no ordinary village.
Here is our plan: each month, we will share our publication, The Season, and it will include short previews, longer articles, profiles, interviews, educational works, lists of off-the-radar works, summaries of what has happened that month in the arts, extended feature articles, and more. Anyone who subscribes to the Center’s emails will receive The Season in their inbox.
But we also want you to be able to search for things that are tailored to what you and your family and friends want to explore and where you live. We have crafted an exhaustive listing of things that will take place in that month: art exhibitions, book publications, recitals, concerts, podcasts, and performances, searchable by locations and their creative arts disciplines. Want to know what’s going on in Mexico this month? Great. Look it up. Eager to know when an artist’s gallery exhibition opens? Terrific. Here you go.
Yet a simple listing doesn’t go far enough. We want to provide more information and make it easy to get access to it. Each of those event happenings includes images, descriptions, dates, maps, and online links to where you can discover more. Find a new podcast that sounds interesting? Hurray. Here’s the link to listen right now. Encounter a book that piques your curiosity? Excellent. Click on the bookseller link and order it today. See an event for later in the month that sounds cool? Super. Add it to your digital calendar with a click.
To give you an idea of the scale of this thing, our initial research shows that over 200 books have already been published in 2022 by authors who are LDS. Another 50 are already announced by publishers to appear before the end of the year. What about podcasts? A few hundred of them are already documented. It’s difficult to predict, but any given month may have as many as 500 event listings to peruse. The Center’s existing databases of composers, visual artists, dancers, and others are our bedrock source material. We’re looking each of them up to answer the question for the artists: What have you got coming out?
We’re realistic enough to know that we’re going to miss things. Maybe we’ll miss a lot of things. So we plan to take all of the information you have and are willing to share, even for events starting September 14 that we may have missed. We’ll document them, too. Together, we’re crowd-sourcing the answer to a big, big question: What is going on? You’ll see on our website an email address that you can use to let us know of something that’s coming up that you want to be sure we are onto. We also welcome letters to the editor sharing your insight and further reactions to our articles. Thanks in advance for them.
We have a terrific team at work on The Season. Our editor-in-chief is Glen Nelson, who never met an artist he didn’t like and seems to have a knack for uncovering new voices in LDS arts culture. Our communications chair is Emily Larsen Doxford who has devised a fantastic cadence to keep you up to date throughout the year on a host of digital platforms of our many offerings. We have treated the launch of The Season as if it were a shiny, new digital magazine with its own design identity, thanks to Connor King and Megan Eckersley. Our contributing writers are a who’s who of expertise and talent. I’m serving as the publisher of the whole thing, which is a bit overwhelming but also exhilarating.
Still, I felt strongly that a small team was insufficient to capture the potential of the project. We are very excited to share that our Editorial Board is made up of sterling examples of the various art forms as well as people who represent diverse identities within the Church. Their names appear within our publication. Just for fun, each month we will ask our Editorial Board members to provide something cool for readers: what book is on their nightstand, what song they just added to their playlists, and so on.
If you follow the arts like I do, you will have noticed that LDS artists are everywhere these days and stories about Mormons pop up all the time. I’m not completely sure what that’s all about. Here is one high-profile example for you, but there are many others:
In early March, Brandon Sanderson, a prolific sci-fi and fantasy novelist who is LDS, started a kickstarter campaign seeking a staggering $1 million to publish the four novels that he wrote during the pandemic. He said that over the previous two years, “a group of ideas wormed their way into my brain and I found I couldn’t let them go.” He hoped to raise the money in 30 days. It took his fans about 35 minutes to reach the $1 million mark. And the pledges of funds kept coming in. After 24 hours, according to a breathless article in The New York Times, the tally was up to $15.4 million. Kickstarter announced it was the single most successful day in their campaign platform history. He wasn’t done. At the completion of the campaign, 185,341 supporters had pledged…drum roll, please…$41,754,153!
The Season will capture the projects that grab headlines and the opposite end of the spectrum, too—humble projects created for audiences that could fit in your living room. Works by artists many know as well as work by artists almost none of us knows, yet. To us, it is all interesting. What’s more, we believe that all of this has the potential to be fascinating not only to people within our culture but to the world. We want to share it in a way that can appeal to anyone, anywhere.
Mormonism as a cultural phenomenon is once again (or perhaps, still) trending in the zeitgeist; look no further than your recommended Netflix line-up for proof. And while the community itself is the subject of great speculation, the fingerprints of Mormonism exist in all our favorite forms of media, from video games to animation to font design. Over the next twelve months, we’ll attempt to capture and extract the impact of Latter-day Saint creators within the larger landscape. In other words, what are they making? What is the influence of their Mormonism on their art? And why does it matter?
With gratitude to our Editorial Board, collaborative partners, designers, and developers, we present to you The Season. Read, listen, watch—and then, please, tell us who and what we’re missing.
This is the gathering and the celebration. This is all the hard-won, handmade pride and neighborliness of a global ward pinewood derby, though swap block carvings for inspired masterworks of every artistic discipline. Let’s see, together, what the most creative hands among us are molding.
Curtain up on the 22/23 Season.
