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 Where Mel Gibson's Faith was Formed
Now that Mel Gibson's film The Passion of Christ is in theatres, we'd like to draw your attention to the captivating memoir in issue #40 of Image : "The Eyes of the Icon," by Sophie Masson, an Australian writer. Masson grew up in the small traditional Catholic community in Sydney alongside the Gibson family. Masson remembers furtively glancing at one of the young Gibson tribe, "a quietly observant and handsome young man with piercing blue eyes..." named Mel. Though this religious subculture has been frequently criticized (and with some justice), Masson gives us a very human picture of the people who made up that community.
(By the way, Image will also be touching on The Passion twice more, in forthcoming issues: in issue #41, editor Gregory Wolfe will publish an extended editorial statement about the film, and in issue #42 we will feature a memoir by one of the people most deeply involved in the making of the film.)
If you don't have issue #40, there's plenty more in its pages to tempt you, including an essay by sculptor Ted Prescott on his work, two amazing short stories by Southern writers, Ingrid Hill and Pulitzer Prize-winner Robert Olen Butler. And much more.
Order issue #40 here.
 Artist of the Month: Rodger Kamenetz
It's often been said that poetry and prayer are intimately related to each other, that they are, indeed, analogous. Both are forms of consecrated speech: language intensified, shaped, and offered up. The disciplines of mind and heart needed to progress in these two forms of expression are also analogous: both require a deeper appreciation of the relationship between sound and silence, between statement and mystery. And yet they are not the same. No one understands the resonance between poetry and prayer better than Rodger Kamenetz, who has not only written outstanding poetry but has also penned some of the most compelling explorations of Jewish and Buddhist spirituality in our time.
To view the Artist of the Month page on Kamenetz, click here.
 A Cappella: Mennonite Voices in Poetry
Mennonites have long been characterized by their desire to be "in the world, but not of it." As a result, their rich-though often misunderstood-culture of simplicity has historically limited most dialogue between Mennonite art and the outside world. In the latter half of the twentieth century, however, this tendency toward isolation began to give way. Modern-day Mennonites found themselves in a world far more complicated than their ancestors could have ever imagined, and many began to publicly explore their past in an effort to find resonance with the present. The trend was eventually recognized as a widespread renewal of Mennonite art. It is this flowering that poet Ann Hostetler has chronicled in her recent anthology A Cappella: Mennonite Voices in Poetry. A fascinating cross-section of recent writers from all corners of the Mennonite community, A Cappella takes you on an intimate journey into their world. From Julia Kasdorf's widely anthologized poem "Mennonites" to captivating works by writers like Jeff Gundy and Jean Janzen, Hostetler's compilation glows in its ability to bring out the unity that exists behind an otherwise diverse chorus of voices. In a sense, reading these poems is like listening to a Mennonite four-part choir: each writer intones in his or her own way, but when combined, a music of community and culture emerges that is unique within the Christian tradition. The pieces are delightfully peppered with a certain ethnic flavor-references to Stalin, borscht, and thorny Slavic words frequently appear-that you don't have to be a Mennonite, or even familiar with Mennonite culture, to appreciate. And the poems' overarching themes, such as family, sexuality, and religion, make A Cappella 's music at once very ancient and very new, and therefore likely to resonate with readers from any tradition.
Find out more about A Cappella: Mennonite Voices in Poetry here, or click here for an interview with its editor, Ann Hostetler.
Ursula, Under by Ingrid Hill
What makes a person worth saving? An unusual crisis brings that philosophical and religious question to a head in Ingrid Hill's debut novel Ursula, Under (Algonquin, June 2004). When a small child of Chinese-Finnish-American ancestry-two-year-old Ursula Wong-falls down an unused mine shaft in Michigan's upper peninsula, the question of her rescue and survival dominates TV news across the United States. It's a story set, in Hill's words, within the "the grit and viscerality and tenuousness of life." As Hill sketches the complex night-and-day drama of " getting her out," she regales the reader with stories about Ursula's ancestors' lives-saved, lost, or barely lived at all. Among them are her great-great grandfather, Jake Maki, who was killed by falling down a mine shaft; Professor Alabaster Wong, a nineteenth-century lecturer on Chinese exotica; and Qin Lao, a second-century B.C. alchemist. The recounting of Ursula's noble-spirited, ethnically mixed forebears, like an eclectic All Saints' story-litany, alleviate our concern for her as the story-threads of the past entwine with the present-tense ambience of continuous network programming, impressions of Ursula's parents' "decrepit mobile home" and low-income limitations, and the murmur of the underlying question: why bother? What's all the fuss over this little girl? Those familiar with Hill's short stories ("Clara Destiny" issue #28, "The Ballad of Rappy Valcour" #36, and "Valor" #40) will enjoy the chronological and cultural scope of the novel as well as the poetic and colloquial beauty of Hill's language.
Look for Ursula, Under this summer. In the meantime, find out more about Ingrid Hill and her work on the Image website. Click here for her Artist of the Month page.
 Blankets by Craig Thompson
Sometimes a comic book is more than just a comic book. Artist Craig Thompson, now residing in Portland, Oregon, breathes new life into the oft-maligned graphic novel genre with his 600-plus page Blankets. Making deft use of the comic form ("sequential art" to the purist), Thompson accents with spiritual overtones what seems at first to be a simple story of growing up and first love. Blankets is autobiographical, tracing the young Craig's spiritual journey from his fundamentalist upbringing and tumultuous teenage years in Wisconsin to his eventual decision to leave the church despite his retention of some of its beliefs. The catalyst for Thompson's change is Reyna, a remarkable girl he meets at church camp who leads him to question his parents' ideas (and his own) about sex, but who also acts as his muse as he creates psalms in praise of her beauty. Blankets is beautifully crafted and manages to capture the spark of first love without deteriorating into sentimentality, but the most compelling aspect of the novel is Thompson's struggle to balance the cold fundamentalism of his youth (when he asks if he will be allowed to draw in heaven, his Sunday school teacher responds, "I mean, come on, Craig, who ever heard of praising God with drawings?") with his sincere desire to understand faith and the nature of Christ. Thompson's illustrations of Gospel passages are moving and poignant as he interpolates them with scenes from his time with Reyna and his maturing understanding of sensuality and humanity. Though Craig's story ends without Reyna or the Church in the picture, the reader is left with the impression that Thompson continues to embody the spirit of both, in art and life.
For more on Blankets and Craig Thompson, click here, then click on the news section.
Note on Continuing Art Exhibits
Image Update is on a diet. In an effort to slim down and save our dear readers' eyes, we will be shuffling the Continuing Art Exhibits section of the newsletter directly to the What's New Elsewhere feature on the Image website. Ongoing message board items are also regularly moved to What's New Elsewhere, making it a great venue to stay in touch with what's going on beyond Image in the universe of art that intersects with faith. To visit What's New Elsewhere, simply click here.
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