Following Christ 2008: Arts Track
Welcome to the Arts Track informational page for Following Christ 2008! Read here about our plans for the program and get to know those who are leading the track.
You may be interested in participating in this track if you are an artist of any kind (visual artists, poets, musicians, performers, dancers, etc. — all are welcome), an art or music historian, a designer, or a student of one of these fields. Those working with media may also want to consider the Journalism & Media Track, and historians may want to take a look at the Humanities Track.
Return to the Tracks page to consider other options available to you. |
Track Leaders
Bruce Herman, Chair
Bruce Herman is a painter living and working in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and is currently Lothlórien Distinguished Chair in the Fine Arts at Gordon College in Wenham, Massachusetts. Herman lectures widely and has had work published in many books, journals, and popular magazines. He completed both undergraduate and graduate fine arts degrees at Boston University School for the Arts, studying under Philip Guston, James Weeks, David Aronson, and Reed Kay. His artwork has been exhibited in over 55 exhibitions in eleven major cities and five different countries, and his work is housed in many public and private collections including the Vatican Museum of Modern Religious Art in Rome; the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts; and the Armand Hammer Museum at the University of California in Los Angeles.
Bobby Gross, Track Point
As a National Field Director for InterVarsity, Bobby Gross oversees campus ministry in four regions in the South/Central part of the country (covering 17 states). Previously, Bobby served as an InterVarsity chaplain at the University of Florida, launched campus ministry in South Florida, and gave leadership as the Regional Director for New York/New Jersey. Bobby serves as Vice-President on the national board of Christians in the Visual Arts (CIVA). He is currently writing a book, Living in the Christian Year: Time to Inhabit the Story of God, to be published by InterVarsity Press in 2009. He has contributed chapters to three other books, including Faith on the Edge (IVP) and Signs of Hope in the City (Judson). Bobby enjoys reading widely, writing poetry, and collecting contemporary art on religious theme. He lives in Atlanta with his wife and son.
Program Summary
The term flourish evokes both flowering and dramatic flair — a gratuitous gesture full of vitality and playfulness.
Serious play is the gravitational center of the arts, and the arts have always been at the heart of human culture — from cave walls and tribal ritual to the high drama and architecture of the Greeks to the endless experimentation with form in modernity and postmodernity. It’s no accident that a dramatic production is called a play. We play a musical instrument.
But how can we play in world so beset by pain? How can artists flourish when their own lives are flawed and filled with suffering? Where does the Gospel join with this fundamental human need for play in the midst of a painful world?
Artists often speak about “receiving” their work from an invisible source — a phrase, a color, a melody comes unbidden, and so the labor begins. Like the Virgin Mary saying to the Angel, “Be it done unto me as thou hast said,” artists birth their work in mystery — anticipating both pain and joy — in faith that their art will speak into culture a word of insight, of challenge, of hope.
In this track, we will create a forum to muse upon such themes as well as to discuss the practical implications of making art as Christians in the context of contemporary culture.
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