The Glen Workshop features writing classes, art classes, and a seminar on Faith and Imagination -2001 seminar will be on the topic of The Return of Beauty and the seminar leader is Ted Prescott, former president of CIVA. The seminar explored recent critical and artistic trends that have rehabilitated beauty from its rejection in the 20th century: a time marked by war, violence, and social unrest -- and the artistic equivalent of these troubles. Videos, slide lectures, and seminar discussion were employed.

Other CIVA sponsored courses includee The Incarnate Figure -- a course in drawing from the nude with Bruce Herman, emphasizing essential gesture and the figure in context; Landscape Painting with Cathy Prescott, responding to the raw beauty of the Southwest ala Georgia O'Keefe; and a mixed-media course entitled Material & Metaphor with Erica Grimm-Vance, which will employ encaustic and a layering approach to image making.

This year’s Glen Workshop, sponsored by Image: A Journal of the Arts and Religion in cooperation with CIVA, will take place August 3-10, 2003, at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Visual arts offerings include two brand new classes--Woodcut Printing with Tyrus Clutter and Icon Writing with Christopher Gosey--plus returning favorites Collage and Mixed-Media with Mary McCleary and Nihonga with Makoto Fujimura. Classes fill up fast, so get your deposit in now! The Glen also offers a selection of writing classes in fiction, poetry, spiritual writing, and now playwriting, as well as a retreat option for artists who prefer to work independently rather than take a class.

The Glen is an innovative and enriching program combining the best elements of a workshop, an arts festival, and a conference. Daily classes are taught by nationally known authors and artists, and are small enough to allow the faculty to give close attention to each participant—to beginners as well as those advanced in their craft. The Glen also offers a retreat option for those who wish to join us for meals, readings, and worship, but prefer to spend mornings working, exploring the area, or in contemplation, instead of attending a workshop. Like its sponsor, Image, the Glen is grounded in a Christian perspective, but its tone is informal and hospitable to all spiritual wayfarers.

This year’s theme--“Bringing Home the Work: The Artist and the Community”--will provide a focal point for reflection over the course of the week. The relationship between artist and community is often fraught and complex, but for artists of faith, the tensions can be particularly intense, since religion is about being bound together. While the artist at times may need to stand apart from community in order to reflect it or criticize it, the community also provides nurture and solidarity. The struggle to work out a healthy dialectic is an urgent imperative, not only for the sake of church and synagogue, but for the good of the larger culture. By addressing these issues, every participant will share a common ground for discussion during the week.

Free time (including a full free day) will offer all participants opportunities for conversation, hiking, visiting the many museums and sights in and around Santa Fe, and exploring the stunning scenery around the St. John’s campus. Here in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, you will encounter a stimulating and inspiring environment saturated with the spirituality of Hispanic and Native American cultures.

The Glen Workshop, sponsored by Image: A Journal of the Arts & Religion, is an innovative and enriching program, combining the best elements of a workshop, an arts festival, and a conference. Add to this the intimate setting at St. John's College and the rich cultural, spiritual, and natural resources of northern New Mexico and the result is an unforgettable experience. Daily classes are taught by nationally known authors and artists, and are small enough to allow the faculty to give close attention to each participant—to beginners as well as those advanced in their craft. The Glen also offers a retreat option for those who wish to join us for meals, readings, and worship, but prefer to spend mornings working, exploring the area, or in contemplation, instead of attending a workshop. Like its sponsor, Image, the Glen is grounded in a Christian perspective, but its tone is informal and hospitable to all spiritual wayfarers.


The Glen Workshop combines an intensive learning experience with a lively festival of the arts. Each participant selects either a workshop or the retreat option. Workshops are held concurrently each morning. Afternoons and evenings feature readings, lectures, and concerts. Each day will conclude with a worship service incorporating the arts.


This year's theme -- "The Generations in Our Bones: The Artist and Tradition" -- will provide a focal point for reflection over the course of the week. No artist makes his or her work in isolation from what has come before. Reverently or contentiously, with anxiety or with love, we all must find a way of approaching the great artists who define our inheritance -- and of mediating their influence on what we make now. As heirs of a tradition, who also struggle to create what hasn't been imagined before, how do we choose our guiding spirits? How does the past reappear -- and how is it transformed -- in our own work? What do we gain from participation in the community of the past? By addressing these and other questions, every participant will share a common ground for discussion during the week. By addressing these issues, every participant shares a common ground for discussion.


Writing classes combine general instruction and discussion with the workshop experience, in which each individual's works are read and discussed critically. In the visual arts classes, students create new work while also receiving individual and general instruction. For those seeking a non-workshop class solely devoted to study and discussion, we offer a seminar on film, taught by screenwriter and director Scott Derrickson. Free time (including a free day) offer all participants opportunities for conversation, hiking, visiting the many museums, galleries, and sights in and around Santa Fe, and exploring the stunning scenery around the St. John's campus. Here in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, you will encounter a stimulating and inspiring environment saturated with the spirituality of Hispanic and Native American cultures.

The purpose of the weeklong workshops at Gordon College is to allow artists the opportunity to experience concentrated work in particular format, medium, or technique under the direction of a master artist. The studio spaces in the department of art, housed in Gordon's Barrington Center for the Arts, allows for work in equipment intensive media such as computer-based/aided imaging, sculpting, and printmaking. What makes this program a welcome alternative to most other visual art workshops is the pairing of faith and art. The submersion in this fairly cloistered setting for a week not only allows for intense focus in a given medium but time to meditate onthe intersection of art and faith. Students will work throughout the day in the studios in their chosen medium or art form. Supper seminars will complete and complement the workday as the entire workshop community will join together to consider teachings on art, creativity, and spiritual life. This will be a time of reflection, discussion, and inspiration. The studios will again be available in the late evenings for further creative work. One evening during the week will revolve around a trip to Boston, including a visit to the Museum of Fine Arts and the Newbury Street gallery district of the city.