For the first century of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, members generally did not condone artistic renderings of deity, including those of Christ.[1] It was not until the mid-twentieth century that Mormon…

Review: Delightful Futuristic Mormon Morality Tale Offers Teaching Tool for Progressive Parents Matt Page, Future Day Saints: Welcome to the New Zion

Christopher C. Smith

After his death and resurrection on Earth, Jesus Christ traveled to New Zion—a planet in the Kolob star system—and appeared to its six-eyed alien inhabitants, whom he named the Othersheep. He explained to the Othersheep…

The Mask We Must Wear in a Racist Society: Reflections of Black Suffering in the LDS Church Through Art

Darron T. Smith

I reflect upon a work of art by Marlena Wilding, a Black female artist with ties to Utah and Mormonism.[1] Her artwork is a stark representation of the complex nature of living while Black in…

The Most Beautiful Thing about Kathleen Peterson’s “The Woman Taken in Adultery”

James Goldberg

The most beautiful thing about Kathleen Peterson’s “The Woman Taken in Adultery” is not simply that it is a painting about Jesus. I believe in Jesus. I have spent my life trying to listen to Jesus.

Elegy for the Eaten

Madison Daniels

To the Ones who
Awakened the Universe with a word
And set the Cosmos afire.

A Blessing for Starting Over

Joanna Brooks

First, bless the burst of anger; its force will get you free.

Then, bless the tears that follow; they will provide new sight.

Bless your bare feet as you put them on the earth. Run.

Totality & Light

Bradley Slade

We climbed to the ridgeline atop the cliffs. With the rest of the crowd we laid out blankets, and I set up a camera. The moon slowly started to move in front of the sun. We could only see this with eclipse glasses that filtered away nearly all the sun’s light.

Symbols on Canvas

Lita Little Giddins

Women. A subject that stirs my soul as I seek to navigate this dance of life. I have recently become even more aware of my own need for a community of women to help me…

Land and Line

Andi Pitcher Davis

Doug Himes is an artist whose work strikes me as both ethereal and earthy with the ability to speak in both lithe lines and grounding colors. In other words, his art exhibits a specific Mormon…

The Absurd in Art and Mormonism

Andi Pitcher Davis

This issue marks the first time that a Dialogue cover has ever had an LDS Church President riding on a dinosaur. Or a spiral jetty made of salt-water taffy. Or green jello stacked on a…

On My Art

Royden Card

1952. I was born in Canada and raised in Utah. Received a BFA and MFA from BYU and taught printmaking there for sixteen years. Drawing and then painting desert landscape has been my primary focus…

Spring 2019 Issue Art

Emily Fox King

Finding God in the Abstract | Hildebrando de Melo and Glen Nelson, Nzambi (God): Hildebrando de Melo.

Jennifer Champoux

Hildebrando de Melo is probably not a Mormon artist you’ve heard of. And that’s just the point. Mormon Arts Centerco-founders Glen Nelson and Richard Bushman believe that bringing lesser-known artists to the attention of members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints enriches the audience and can facilitate a more dynamic engagement with religious art.

The Color of Longing

Melody Johnson

After a painting by Emily Fox King

This blood, this longing was meant for
your particular darkness. That shadow,
the red droplet on the floor, a new wound:
These are mine to name. And in my name
you are known, no less worthy than your
brother. No less chosen for this canvas of
violence and change.

Letters to the Editor

A Note from the Art Editor
Robert Greenwell, Letter to the Editor

Reflections on Life, Art, Loss, and Love

Rebecca Wagstaff

I was born an artist—I see this more clearly now. Yes, I am a painter, but that is only one of the mediums I use to make art.

What is an LDS Artist? | Glen Nelson, Joseph Paul Vorst

Micah Christensen

“Joseph Paul Vorst was arguably the most culturally significant Latter-day Saint painter of his time.”So, starts the Church History Museum’s video for the exhibition on the life and works of Joseph Paul Vorst (1897–1947). The video and the exhibition is a joint collaboration between the museum’s curator, Laura Allred Hurtado, and the independent writer Glen Nelson, who authored a catalogue detailing the life and known works of the German-American artist. Both exhibition and catalogue seek to rehabilitate the reputation of an artist that has largely been overlooked. Vorst’s life is beautifully evoked and contextualized on every page by Nelson, who raises questions about conventional definitions of what it means to be a Mormon artist.

Out of Angola

Glen Nelson

The artwork of Hildebrando de Melo rises from Angola itself—from the valleys near Huambo where he was born, through the urban streets of Luanda where he lives with his wife and children, amid the dynamism of one of the world’s most expensive cities, between the sounds of Portuguese and tribal Bantu languages, in the art and artifacts created by centuries of Africans, from the history of his ancestral tribal kingdom of Bailundo, with the political fallout in a country emerging from decades of brutality and war nearly incomprehensible to a foreigner and the convoluted legacies of racism, slavery, colonialism, liberation, interventionist politics, poverty, riches, and injustice, with the artist’s own history, his religious probing, the nation’s budding contemporary art scene, the artist’s global travels—and his attempts to reconcile and personify all of it.

The Loss of Art, The Art of Loss

Christian Anderson

Sylvia Plath wrote “Dying / Is an art, like everything else.” Perhaps there is an art to grieving as well. People talk about “closure” and “saying goodbye” like discrete events: things you do once—well or poorly—and then move on. But where exactly do we move on to? As Mark Strand points out, “In a field / I am the absence / Of field. / This is / always the case. / Wherever I am / I am what is missing.” Since my father’s death, my missing place keeps converging with his ever-shifting empty place in surprising ways. I miss Paul, miss him the same way I might miss an imagined top stair on an unfamiliar staircase in the dark: the same betrayal of expectation, the same queasy-falling feeling in the stomach, the same jolt against reality.

Throughout his life, Daniel has continually experimented with line, form, and color to create abstract artworks. He chiefly works with ink on paper, sometimes employing collage to bring more dimensionality and complexity to his endeavors.…

Norma: An Excerpt from The Encore

Charity Tillemann-Dick

The mid-November darkness settles early in the afternoon. As my window dims, a tall man with a chocolate complexion peeks through the door. “Charity,” his rich baritone voice fills my small room, “I’m one of…

Art

J. Kirk Richards

a time to believe abuse victims

Beth Adams

“I was raped by two men.”

It was only after many months of denial that I was able to utter those words. Even after facing the fact, the circumstances surrounding my assault were so muddy and bizarre that to this day it troubles me to consider them. Ultimately I decided to share my story because I am the mother of two amazing sons. Because one situation can enlighten the next, my particular parenting perspective is informed by my own experience. I am trying to break the cycle of secret-keeping and shame. My story is one of millions. It is a reflection. It is a template.

Remember Me: Discursive Needlework and the Sewing Sampler of Patty Bartlett Sessions

Stacey Dearing

In her diary entry for March 20, 1848, Patty Bartlett Sessions (1795–1892) recorded an unusual note: she had begun to work on her sewing sampler, an item she had not touched for thirty-eight years. She writes simply, “commenced to finish my sampler that I began when I was a girl and went to school.”

Thoughts on Lane Twitchell

Brad Kramer

The German painter Gerhard Richter once wrote: “I like everything that has no style: dictionaries, photographs, nature, myself, and my paintings. (Because style is violent, and I am not violent).” Lane Twitchell is an artist whose particular skillset produces immense works that are both furiously energized and so stylistically distinctive that one could recognize one of his paintings even if obscured by the most impervious haze the Wasatch Front is capable of generating. By contrast, Lane also sometimes makes pictures that self-consciously eschew “style” with a commitment very likely borne of his first direct encounter with Richter’s work, visiting a Virginia gallery a missionary for his natal religious tradition in the mid 1980s. So Lane works in two very different but not unrelated modes, each tied in its own way to his distinctive creative tools. Lane’s work is ferociously intelligent, frenzied, brimming with ideas, occasionally political, and above all a sheer pleasure to look at.

Islamic Art and the LDS Faith

Lisa DeLong

My first encounter with Islamic art was a photograph of the Alhambra: architecture transfigured by light, into light. It expressed a spiritual reality in a way I had not seen before.

Reflections

Robert De Groff

In 1517, hand-pulled woodcuts, engravings and etchings were the only techniques available to quickly disseminate images and ideas to a worldwide audience. They were the internet of their day. But in case you haven’t noticed,…

Art

Issue Art

Art

Issue Art

International Art Competition

Andrea Davis

For more than a decade the LDS Church has organized an International Art Competition, each with its own theme. Variety and diversity figure centrally into the competition and the exhibit that results from it. Submissions…

Drawings

(author)

Mormons and the Visual Arts

James L. Haseltine

It seems curious to ask, “What support has the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints given to the visual arts in Utah?” One would hardly consider as fields for fruitful exploration Baptist support of…

In Defense of the Market Place

Gary H. Driggs

Professor Clark’s “Art, Religion, and the Market Place” takes us into a very interesting world in which Art and Religion (the good guys) are engaged in a deathly struggle with the Market Place (the bad…

The Dichotomy of Art and Religion

R. A. Christmas

It is easy to sympathize with Dr. Marden Clark’s essay, “Art, Religion, and the Market Place” — too easy. We are all, I suppose, concerned about the relationship of religion and art, and on the…

Art, Religion and the Market Place

Marden J. Clark

Art and religion share a common end and a common enemy. The common end is the enrichment of the life of the spirit; the common enemy is the market place. That the end, or at…

Art and Belief: A Critique

Douglas Hill

The recent exhibit of paintings by Mormon artists held at the Salt Lake City Public Library was not, as many people hoped or expected, a confirmation of what might be called a Mormon style. The…

Art and Belief: A Group Exhibition

Dale Fletcher

Could there be a “Mormon Art”—something different, vital, worthy of both words, Mormon and art? During the school year 1965-66 this and related questions were being discussed much around the B.Y.U. art department, mostly on…

Morality or Empathy? A Mormon in the Theater

Ronald Wilcox

Late one night last November, after a visit to Utah, I was driving across the New Mexico desert. It’s a long way from Ogden to Dallas, especially in a Volkswagen, but I’ve always found the…

The Coalville Tabernacle: A Photographic Essay

Douglas Hill

Sometime late in January or early February, winter’s dregs and the rancid crackers of academic routine begin to yield singularly stale sop. During those scraps of days in 1966 both of us turned our mental…

On Haiku Art

Robert Marriott

In the human presence is the real salience of life. I’m interested in that—the human resonance really that exists in all things and so in my work, though somewhat modified, somewhat less than obviously descriptive—not…

Notes from the Artist’s Sketchbook

James Christensen

Notes on Brigham Young’s Aesthetics

Michael Hicks

“If there is anything virtuous, lovely . . . we seek after these things.” Granted. But loveliness by what criteria? We in the Church often presume a common aesthetic; or when conflicts in judgment arise—whether…

Livre d’Artiste: The Book of Abraham by Day Christensen and Wulf Barsch

Lowell Durham

Sand Dollars Gracing a Shore Within Reach

B. J. Fogg

“Hey, Brian!” Dead leaned into my room. “Be ready to leave in about thirty minutes.” “Fine,” I replied, not worried that I hadn’t even begun to pack. I rummaged through my drawers and closet and…

Words for Late Summer

Dixie Lee Partridge

Cornmeal, dusted over these loaves
like pollen. And I wish again
for the old unwritten recipes: brown breads,
chicken baked in a wrap of cornmeal,
family reunion picnics I can’t match
with my own.

I Am Watching Four Canada Geese

Susan Elizabeth Howe

in a perfect diamond of flight
slip between me and the sky, circle
toward rest and cover for the night.
The lake is a polished absurdity

Listening to Mozart’s Requiem While Crossing the San Rafael

M. Shayne Bell

The Requiem matched
the smell of death
on the leather of my coat,
and the fear in the music

“Similarity of Priesthood in Masonry”: The Relationship between Freemasonry and Mormonism

Michael W. Homer

Toldot/Generations

Seymour Cain

now that I’m old
and know it
I begin to glimpse
the endless line

Poor Sad, Dead Girls

Elizabeth Visick

You poor sad, dead little girls
Tonight I am crying for you.
I have walked gingerly in your blue shoes,
Your small shoes, your worn shoes,

Women of Cards

Jocelyn Kearl

In a monthly cycle,
women gather to play cards,
to not talk of the children
they have or don’t.

Pottery

Jocelyn Kearl

I sit at the wheel as I did
when I was young.
My hands pull the
warm plastic sediment

Hard Publics

David Seiter

Not their felon, not their lackey, you.
After the sclerosis of your tissues,
the emulsifying of your fluids,
reprieve

The Lighthouse Bookstore

Michael J. Noble

Halfway between here and Oregon, the Lighthouse Bookstore
opens along some residential street we browse unwittingly
when reading after dark, where the words and road signs
blur and the sky clouds up and thunders.

Revival

David Seiter

One day we were healed
by a man in a tent.
You remember. We had driven
streets of Four Castle,

Temple II

Michael R. Collings

A Handsome Volume | Thomas E. Toone, Mahonri Young: His Life and Art

Jessie L. Embry

Mormons associate Mahonri Young with his LDS sculptures: Seagull Monument and This Is the Place Monument in Salt Lake City, and the Brigham Young statue in Washington, D.C. Yet Young was internationally known for his…

Winter Dies

N. Andrew Spackman

The full third moon of passing
winter rears up
against an x-ray white orchard.
There are tree skeletons.
And puddles like black eye sockets.

Intricate, Lucid, Generous | Robert Hodgson Van Wagoner, Dancing Naked

Neila C. Seshachari

Few first novels in Utah in the last three decades have earned the popularity and notoriety of Dancing Naked. When Robert Hodgson Van Wagoner did a “pre-publication” reading from the book at the Writers@Work conference…

In a Pueblo Indian Dwelling, Four-Corners

Amy E. Jensen

Beside
shards of earthen jars and bowls,
the Kachina-Child returns
in the desert’s smoldering gaze. He enters

Legacy

Danielle Beazer Dubrasky

Her afghans and roses give her day a pattern
that will untighten her mouth pursed by a memory—
how her mother would fatten the favored son with milk,
claiming only boys needed calcium, not girls.

Critical Condition

R. A. Christmas

for Gene England at Utah Valley Hospital, 2001

When I heard about Gene’s surgery, I
thought, “Even with half a brain he’d still
be ten times smarter than me!”

God’s Army: Wiggle Room for the Mormon Soul

David G. Pace

If you can get past the unfortunate title of Richard Dutcher’s God’s Army, you will find the first commercial film of what might be a new era in Mormon art. Dutcher’s creation likely spikes interest…

Without Mercy? Neil LaBute as Mormon Artist: A consideration of Your Friends and Neighbors, Bash, The Mercy Seat, and The Shape of Things

R. W. Rasband

Philip Roth once noted that American writers were divided into two camps: “palefaces,” followers of the refined genteel tradition of Henry James and William Dean Howells with their elevated sensibilities and decorous language, and “redskins”…

What is the Challenge for LDS Scholars and Artists?

John M. Rector

“We will yet have Miltons and Shakespeares of our own.” —Orson F. Whitney Since the organization of the Church, Mormon spiritual leaders have emphasized the importance of attaining knowledge, both spiritual and secular.[1] Not only have…

Alive in Mormon Poetry

Danielle Beazer Dubrasky

The summer 2002 edition of Irreanteum: Exploring Mormon Literature is de voted to the theme of environmental writing in LDS theology and culture. It features poems solicited by guest editor Todd Petersen by several contemporary…

Poetry Matters in Mormon Culture

Robert Hughes

When the above notice appeared in the Improvement Era in September 1933, it did not seem out of place in a publication intended for the general church membership. In the same issue of the Improvement Era, Theodore E. Curtis posted a notice for another collection of poetry. Its announcement included endorsements from notable leaders of the church:

About the Artist

Issue Art

Scott Carrier, whose photographs we feature in this issue of Dialogue, is an independent writer and radio producer. His print stories have been published in Harper’s, Rolling Stone, Esquire, QQ, and Mother Jones magazines. His radio…

About the Artist

(author)

Maryann Webster was born in San Francisco and grew up in north ern California. She received an MFA and a Research Fellowship award from the University of Utah where she now teaches. Recent exhibitions of…

Christmas Conflict: 2001

Dawn Baker Brimley

How were we to know
through the thick, smoking days,
the awful rubble of terror

U.S. Navy Photo: “Dawn Landing on Wake Island”

Ruth Salter

I knew it was dawn
With the sun blurring whitely
Through the gray clouds,
But I’m glad someone wrote that.
The light and the words make a bridge
Across the water to the sand.

The Push (Captain Pratt’s Story from Korea)

Ruth Salter

That whole war we were never told what
was happening, never given a plan. We thought there
were only a few, but one day they covered
the hilltops around us. One shot would mean a massacre;

August 6

Marden J. Clark

“Go get dressed. You’re no man for this army!”
I went, thanking for the first time that crook
In my spine that had stopped me buck naked
From buck privacy, taken me back to you
After a three-hour, not a three-year, separation.

November 2001

Robin Russell

You notice the smells first, more spring, or
even summer, than late fall, the stale-clean
scent of wet sunlit streets after last night’s
heavy rain, the musk of soaked dead leaves,
humid decay in a season usually dry, a
shining solstice sigh through open windows,
suspended on a candent morning breeze.

About the Artist

Issue Art

Janis Mars Wunderlich, born in Akron, Ohio, in 1970, received a BFA J from Brigham Young University (1992) and an MFA from the Ohio State University (1994). She has given numerous lectures and workshops throughout…

About the Artist

Issue Art

Marylee Mitcham was born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1943. She received a B.A. in English literature in 1967 from the University of Colorado at Boulder. She and Carl, her husband of forty years, currently reside in…

About the Artist

Issue Art

Kathy Wilson is the owner and manager of Sego Gallery and Framing Center in Salt Lake City. Her paintings featured on the cover of this issue, Tulips and Aspens at Fish Lake, were done in watercolor.…

About the Artist

Issue Art

Throughout a long life, Robert Perine continually sought new ways to express his vision and use his creative gifts. Born in Los Angeles in 1922, he identified himself as a practicing artist from the age…

About the Artist: William Kenneth Laursen

Issue Art

Born in 1948, Bill Laursen grew up in Salt Lake City and Brigham City, Utah. He graduated from Utah State University in 1972 with a BFA degree in art and art education. While at Utah…

About the Artist: Bonnie Posselli

Issue Art

A native of Salt Lake City, Bonnie Posselli was introduced early by her mother to plein air painting, which she describes as her “abiding love and strongest asset.” She has traveled extensively to paint in…

Swimming in the Sea of Azov

Barry Gaines

For the first and only time, my wife sent my father a letter. I have since retrieved the letter and have it still. It is two deckle sheets neatly typed on the electric portable I…

“Astonished Each Day”: An Interview with Richard J Van Wagoner Utah Artist

Levi S. Peterson

Note: This interview, conducted by Dialogue’s editor, introduces Richard J Van Wagoner, whose art is featured in this issue. Richard is a retired professor of art from Weber State University, where he and Levi sat…

About the Cover Artist: Lane Twitchell

Lane Twitchell

A native of Salt Lake City, Lane Twitchell lives with his family in Brooklyn. He has exhibited widely in galleries and museums and has received numerous awards, grants, residencies, and commissions. His work is in…

About the Artists

Issue Art

Valerie Atkisson, Notation in Time
Kent Christensen, Salt Water Jetty
Jon Moe, Manhattan New York Temple
Kah Leong Poon, Christmas in Central Park

Mormon Artists Group: Adventures in Art Making

Glen Nelson

It is an elaborate experiment really, this Mormon Artists Group that I founded in 1999, seven years ago. In my interviews with the press, I have been saying that the number of LDS writers, painters,…

About the Artist: Nola de Jong Sullivan

Issue Art

Nola de Jong Sullivan was raised in Provo, where, after sojourns elsewhere, she presently resides. Her art interests began in grade school with painter Flora Fisher and received further development in the art classes of…

About the Artist: Dianne Dibb Forbis

Issue Art

Born in upstate New York, Dianne Dibb Forbis received a B A. in Art from BYU. Currently residing in Orem, Utah, she has three daughters and twelve grandchildren. For twenty years she had full and…

About the Artists: Bethanne Andersen, Hal Doulgas Himes, Wulf Barsch, Greg Olsen, Liz Lemon Swindle, and David Koch

Issue Art

The Last Supper (Place Setting) Bethanne Andersen A graduate of Brigham Young University’s BFA and MFA program, Bethanne Andersen initially focused on abstract painting but later moved to New York to study illustration at the…

Making the Absent Visible: The Real, Ideal, and the Abstract in Mormon Art

Barry Laga

In April 1993, President Bill Clinton, Elie Wiesel, international dignitaries, and Holocaust survivors celebrated the opening of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Initiated by President Jimmy Carter in 1978, the monument is one of the most expensive additions to the federal museum system. Its mission, described by the museum’s project director Michael Berenbaum, is to “memorialize the victims of Nazism by providing an exhaustive historical narrative of the Holocaust and to present visitors with an object lesson in the ethical ideals of American political culture by presenting the negation of those ideals.”

About the Artist: Allan West

Issue Art

The American-born Allan West has become widely respected for his pursuit of a traditional form in Japan. Raised in Washington, D.C., Allan served in the Okayama Japan mission during the early 1980s. In 1987, he…

About the Artist: Anne Muñoz

Issue Art

Anne Muñoz resides in Salt Lake City with her husband. Trained in art and textile design, she worked as a freelance graphic artist for many years but continued to produce her own artwork, taking part…

About the Artist: Jacob Fossum

Issue Art

Jacob Fossum has little sense of belonging to a specific place, having lived in a number of states while growing up. He currently lives in Sacramento. He derives from a long line of Mormon pioneer…

About the Artist: Brian Kershisnik

Issue Art

Brian Kershisnik lives with his wife, Suzanne, and three children in Kanosh, Utah. The son of a petroleum geologist, he grew up in Angola, Thailand, Texas, and Pakistan. After serving a mission in Denmark, he…

About the Artist: Sharon Alderman

Issue Art

Sharon Alderman has been weaving cloth by hand since 1969, specializing in apparel fabrics, upholstery, and color studies. Her work has won many awards, and she lectures, gives keynote addresses, acts as a juror, and…

About the Artist: Lee Udall Bennion

Issue Art

Lee Udall Bennion and her husband, Joseph Bennion, both descend from a long line of pioneers. They live in Spring City, a Utah village, where Lee paints and Joe makes pottery, which he fires in…

About the Artist: Nathan Florence

Issue Art

Nathan Florence is a Utah native who studied art at Swarthmore College in Philadelphia and at the International School of Art in Todi, Italy. He lives in Salt Lake City with his wife, Marian, and…

About the Artist: Emily Plewe

Issue Art

Emily Plewe grew up in Centerville, Utah, and attended Wellesley College where she studied art and literature. She then pursued a master’s degree at BYU. Emily and her husband, John, who is also an artist…

Pulses

Caleb Warnock

For more than a week, I thought
cutting off my toe was penance.

I delved a hole for this toe,
a quick, tiny sepulcher at the crook

Some Kind of Beginning

Sunni Brown Wilkinson

The alfalfa fields had their own luster
and, besides, no one came
for any harvest. Instead, as children, we drifted
in a golden sea with monarchs, my brother waving

Miracle #1; Miracle #2

Sunni Brown Wilkinson

First, it was water:
a marriage festival,
a mother
asking a favor
from her son
And it came:
wine.

About The Artist: Ricky Allman

Issue Art

Ricky Allman was born in Provo, Utah, and studied art at Utah Valley University, Massachusetts College of Art, Brown University and Rhode Island School of Design. He now teaches painting and drawing at the University…

About the Artist: Mark England

Mark England

In my earlier drawings I focused on line and the wealth of information it could convey. Now I am working through the challenges of color and value in the context of issues I have continued…

What is Mormon Cinema? Defining the Genre

Randy Astle

Latter-day Saints made their first known cinematic appearance in 1898 in Salt Lake City Company of Rocky Mountain Riders, part of a series of very short motion pictures depicting American troops in the Spanish-American War. Since then thousands of films and television programs have dealt with Mormonism; at present the Mormon Literature and Creative Arts database lists 4,591 such items.

About the Artist: Michael Slade

Issue Art

Michael Slade has been photographing all over the world for the past twenty years. A Cache Valley native, Slade received his B.A. degree in photography from Utah State University (1994) and is currently an MFA…

Untitled

Russell Moorehead

My next poem
will have gunfire

About the Artist

Thomas D. Aaron

Featured Artist

Issue Art

Babble
Discus
Double Split
Dozer
Filter
Fruit of Memory
Honey Blue
Pink
Recompose
Monument to the Western Landscape
Skull Valley

About the Art: Valerie Atkisson

Issue Art

“Tanner Spiral” is an exploration of my great-grandfather’s (Henry S. Tanner) family. He decided to take his first polygamous wife ten years after the first Manifesto. He had already been the mission president of the…

What if Mickey Mouse Isn’t Mormon? | Floyd Gottfredson, Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse: “Race to Death Valley”

Theric Jepson

The 2010 videogame Epic Mickey, before its release, was looking to be one of the more controversial games of the year. And that’s without any sex or decapitation. What made it so controversial? Because its Mickey was a bit more adventurous and scrappy and dangerous than the carefully controlled Mickey Mouse that developed in the animated cartoons. But that Mickey was never the only Mickey—or even the original Mickey.

Communicating Jesus: The Encoding and Decoding Practices of Re-Presenting Jesus for LDS (Mormon) Audiences at a BYU Art Museum

David W. Scott

There is a growing recognition among scholars that museums are discursively constructed sites. One scholar noted that museums often are merely a “structured sample of reality” where science empowers their message. Alternatively, museums might encourage a pseudo-religious experience of ritually “attending” them— factors, some critics observe, that reduce the probability of resistant readings by patrons.

Winter 2013 Art: Jared Clark

Issue Art

Jared Lindsay Clark is a visual artist who mainly constructs installations, sculpture and drawings. During his years at Brigham Young University where he earned a BFA, he found himself drawn to abstraction and minimalism. Today…

Spring 2014 Art

(author)

Summer 2014 Art

Issue Art

A Walk through Blenheim

Karen Kelsay

Across the field, a partial hedgeline planted
three hundred years ago still winds its way
between an ancient English oak and plum.
At sunset, their silhouettes turn granite-gray,

Resonance

Amber Blue

A breath of dark earth;
The moist brown-black humus
Enfolds my body.
Tingling

Issue Art: Page Turner

Issue Art

Viewing Kershisnik’s Nativity

Douglas L. Talley

A child, a little girl of four,
a balled string of curiosity,
had to touch the canvas

One Glory of the Moon

Douglas L. Talley

Wild raspberry leaves had turned deep crimson and the stalks black.
For prayer I bowed in the field like one of the stalks, no less resigned.
Leaves of silver maple were shed and their underside had surrendered
to autumn mauve. In the eastern acre of the woods a sheet of yellow

Volume Art

Editor

Volume Art

Editor

Listen to an interview about these pieces here.

Volume Art

Editor

Correlating Orthodoxy and Style: Institutionally “Approved” Christ-Centered Art in LDS Visual Resources and Meetinghouses, 1990–2021

Noel A. Carmack

Racial Innocence and the Christus-Based Latter-day Saints Symbol

M. David Huston

The Great Awakening of the LDS-Mormon Art Scene | Chase Westfall, Great Awakening: Vision and Synthesis in Latter-day Saint Contemporary Art

Heather Belnap

Volume Art

Issue Art

Abstraction in Latter-day Saint Art: An Interview with Chase Westfall

Margaret Olsen Hemming

Volume Art

Issue Art

Listen to the Out Loud Interview about this art here.

ART NOTE Black Joy

Grace Soelberg

Dialogue 2022 Summer Issue

(author)

The Divine Feminine in Mormon Art

Margaret Olsen Hemming

Review: Delightful Futuristic Mormon Morality Tale Offers Teaching Tool for Progressive Parents Matt Page, Future Day Saints: Welcome to the New Zion

Christopher C. Smith

The Mask We Must Wear in a Racist Society: Reflections of Black Suffering in the LDS Church Through Art

Darron T. Smith

I reflect upon a work of art by Marlena Wilding, a Black female artist with ties to Utah and Mormonism.[1] Her artwork is a stark representation of the complex nature of living while Black in…

The Most Beautiful Thing about Kathleen Peterson’s “The Woman Taken in Adultery”

James Goldberg

Elegy for the Eaten

Madison Daniels

To the Ones who
Awakened the Universe with a word
And set the Cosmos afire.

A Blessing for Starting Over

Joanna Brooks

First, bless the burst of anger; its force will get you free.

Then, bless the tears that follow; they will provide new sight.

Bless your bare feet as you put them on the earth. Run.

Totality & Light

Bradley Slade

Symbols on Canvas

Lita Little Giddins

Women. A subject that stirs my soul as I seek to navigate this dance of life. I have recently become even more aware of my own need for a community of women to help me…

Land and Line

Andi Pitcher Davis

Doug Himes is an artist whose work strikes me as both ethereal and earthy with the ability to speak in both lithe lines and grounding colors. In other words, his art exhibits a specific Mormon…

The Absurd in Art and Mormonism

Andi Pitcher Davis

This issue marks the first time that a Dialogue cover has ever had an LDS Church President riding on a dinosaur. Or a spiral jetty made of salt-water taffy. Or green jello stacked on a…

On My Art

Royden Card

1952. I was born in Canada and raised in Utah. Received a BFA and MFA from BYU and taught printmaking there for sixteen years. Drawing and then painting desert landscape has been my primary focus…

Spring 2019 Issue Art

Emily Fox King

Finding God in the Abstract | Hildebrando de Melo and Glen Nelson, Nzambi (God): Hildebrando de Melo.

Jennifer Champoux

The Color of Longing

Melody Johnson

After a painting by Emily Fox King

Letters to the Editor

A Note from the Art Editor
Robert Greenwell, Letter to the Editor

Reflections on Life, Art, Loss, and Love

Rebecca Wagstaff

I was born an artist—I see this more clearly now. Yes, I am a painter, but that is only one of the mediums I use to make art.

What is an LDS Artist? | Glen Nelson, Joseph Paul Vorst

Micah Christensen

Out of Angola

Glen Nelson

The Loss of Art, The Art of Loss

Christian Anderson

“In Brick and Stone”: The Art of Paul L. Anderson

Paul L. Anderson

Art

Issue Art

An Intuitive Approach to Art

Daniel Hall Bartholomew

Norma: An Excerpt from The Encore

Charity Tillemann-Dick

Art

J. Kirk Richards

a time to believe abuse victims

Beth Adams

“I was raped by two men.”

Remember Me: Discursive Needlework and the Sewing Sampler of Patty Bartlett Sessions

Stacey Dearing

Thoughts on Lane Twitchell

Brad Kramer

Islamic Art and the LDS Faith

Lisa DeLong

My first encounter with Islamic art was a photograph of the Alhambra: architecture transfigured by light, into light. It expressed a spiritual reality in a way I had not seen before.

Reflections

Robert De Groff

Art

Issue Art

Art

Issue Art

International Art Competition

Andrea Davis

Drawings

(author)

Mormons and the Visual Arts

James L. Haseltine

In Defense of the Market Place

Gary H. Driggs

The Dichotomy of Art and Religion

R. A. Christmas

Art, Religion and the Market Place

Marden J. Clark

Art and religion share a common end and a common enemy. The common end is the enrichment of the life of the spirit; the common enemy is the market place. That the end, or at…

Art and Belief: A Critique

Douglas Hill

The recent exhibit of paintings by Mormon artists held at the Salt Lake City Public Library was not, as many people hoped or expected, a confirmation of what might be called a Mormon style. The…

Art and Belief: A Group Exhibition

Dale Fletcher

Morality or Empathy? A Mormon in the Theater

Ronald Wilcox

Late one night last November, after a visit to Utah, I was driving across the New Mexico desert. It’s a long way from Ogden to Dallas, especially in a Volkswagen, but I’ve always found the…

The Coalville Tabernacle: A Photographic Essay

Douglas Hill

On Haiku Art

Robert Marriott

Notes from the Artist’s Sketchbook

James Christensen

Notes on Brigham Young’s Aesthetics

Michael Hicks

Livre d’Artiste: The Book of Abraham by Day Christensen and Wulf Barsch

Lowell Durham

Sand Dollars Gracing a Shore Within Reach

B. J. Fogg

Words for Late Summer

Dixie Lee Partridge

Cornmeal, dusted over these loaves
like pollen. And I wish again
for the old unwritten recipes: brown breads,
chicken baked in a wrap of cornmeal,
family reunion picnics I can’t match
with my own.

I Am Watching Four Canada Geese

Susan Elizabeth Howe

in a perfect diamond of flight
slip between me and the sky, circle
toward rest and cover for the night.
The lake is a polished absurdity

Listening to Mozart’s Requiem While Crossing the San Rafael

M. Shayne Bell

The Requiem matched
the smell of death
on the leather of my coat,
and the fear in the music

“Similarity of Priesthood in Masonry”: The Relationship between Freemasonry and Mormonism

Michael W. Homer

Toldot/Generations

Seymour Cain

now that I’m old
and know it
I begin to glimpse
the endless line

Poor Sad, Dead Girls

Elizabeth Visick

You poor sad, dead little girls
Tonight I am crying for you.
I have walked gingerly in your blue shoes,
Your small shoes, your worn shoes,

Women of Cards

Jocelyn Kearl

In a monthly cycle,
women gather to play cards,
to not talk of the children
they have or don’t.

Pottery

Jocelyn Kearl

I sit at the wheel as I did
when I was young.
My hands pull the
warm plastic sediment

Hard Publics

David Seiter

Not their felon, not their lackey, you.
After the sclerosis of your tissues,
the emulsifying of your fluids,
reprieve

The Lighthouse Bookstore

Michael J. Noble

Revival

David Seiter

One day we were healed
by a man in a tent.
You remember. We had driven
streets of Four Castle,

Temple II

Michael R. Collings

A Handsome Volume | Thomas E. Toone, Mahonri Young: His Life and Art

Jessie L. Embry

Winter Dies

N. Andrew Spackman

The full third moon of passing
winter rears up
against an x-ray white orchard.
There are tree skeletons.
And puddles like black eye sockets.

Intricate, Lucid, Generous | Robert Hodgson Van Wagoner, Dancing Naked

Neila C. Seshachari

In a Pueblo Indian Dwelling, Four-Corners

Amy E. Jensen

Beside
shards of earthen jars and bowls,
the Kachina-Child returns
in the desert’s smoldering gaze. He enters

Legacy

Danielle Beazer Dubrasky

Her afghans and roses give her day a pattern
that will untighten her mouth pursed by a memory—
how her mother would fatten the favored son with milk,
claiming only boys needed calcium, not girls.

Critical Condition

R. A. Christmas

for Gene England at Utah Valley Hospital, 2001

When I heard about Gene’s surgery, I
thought, “Even with half a brain he’d still
be ten times smarter than me!”

God’s Army: Wiggle Room for the Mormon Soul

David G. Pace

Without Mercy? Neil LaBute as Mormon Artist: A consideration of Your Friends and Neighbors, Bash, The Mercy Seat, and The Shape of Things

R. W. Rasband

What is the Challenge for LDS Scholars and Artists?

John M. Rector

Alive in Mormon Poetry

Danielle Beazer Dubrasky

Poetry Matters in Mormon Culture

Robert Hughes

About the Artist

Issue Art

About the Artist

(author)

Christmas Conflict: 2001

Dawn Baker Brimley

How were we to know
through the thick, smoking days,
the awful rubble of terror

U.S. Navy Photo: “Dawn Landing on Wake Island”

Ruth Salter

I knew it was dawn
With the sun blurring whitely
Through the gray clouds,
But I’m glad someone wrote that.
The light and the words make a bridge
Across the water to the sand.

The Push (Captain Pratt’s Story from Korea)

Ruth Salter

That whole war we were never told what
was happening, never given a plan. We thought there
were only a few, but one day they covered
the hilltops around us. One shot would mean a massacre;

August 6

Marden J. Clark

November 2001

Robin Russell

About the Artist

Issue Art

About the Artist

Issue Art

About the Artist

Issue Art

About the Artist

Issue Art

About the Artist: William Kenneth Laursen

Issue Art

Born in 1948, Bill Laursen grew up in Salt Lake City and Brigham City, Utah. He graduated from Utah State University in 1972 with a BFA degree in art and art education. While at Utah…

About the Artist: Bonnie Posselli

Issue Art

Swimming in the Sea of Azov

Barry Gaines

For the first and only time, my wife sent my father a letter. I have since retrieved the letter and have it still. It is two deckle sheets neatly typed on the electric portable I…

“Astonished Each Day”: An Interview with Richard J Van Wagoner Utah Artist

Levi S. Peterson

About the Cover Artist: Lane Twitchell

Lane Twitchell

About the Artists

Issue Art

Valerie Atkisson, Notation in Time
Kent Christensen, Salt Water Jetty
Jon Moe, Manhattan New York Temple
Kah Leong Poon, Christmas in Central Park

Mormon Artists Group: Adventures in Art Making

Glen Nelson

About the Artist: Nola de Jong Sullivan

Issue Art

About the Artist: Dianne Dibb Forbis

Issue Art

Born in upstate New York, Dianne Dibb Forbis received a B A. in Art from BYU. Currently residing in Orem, Utah, she has three daughters and twelve grandchildren. For twenty years she had full and…

About the Artists: Bethanne Andersen, Hal Doulgas Himes, Wulf Barsch, Greg Olsen, Liz Lemon Swindle, and David Koch

Issue Art

Making the Absent Visible: The Real, Ideal, and the Abstract in Mormon Art

Barry Laga

About the Artist: Allan West

Issue Art

About the Artist: Anne Muñoz

Issue Art

About the Artist: Jacob Fossum

Issue Art

Jacob Fossum has little sense of belonging to a specific place, having lived in a number of states while growing up. He currently lives in Sacramento. He derives from a long line of Mormon pioneer…

About the Artist: Brian Kershisnik

Issue Art

About the Artist: Sharon Alderman

Issue Art

About the Artist: Lee Udall Bennion

Issue Art

Lee Udall Bennion and her husband, Joseph Bennion, both descend from a long line of pioneers. They live in Spring City, a Utah village, where Lee paints and Joe makes pottery, which he fires in…

About the Artist: Nathan Florence

Issue Art

Nathan Florence is a Utah native who studied art at Swarthmore College in Philadelphia and at the International School of Art in Todi, Italy. He lives in Salt Lake City with his wife, Marian, and…

About the Artist: Emily Plewe

Issue Art

Pulses

Caleb Warnock

For more than a week, I thought
cutting off my toe was penance.

I delved a hole for this toe,
a quick, tiny sepulcher at the crook

Communicating Jesus: The Encoding and Decoding Practices of Re-Presenting Jesus for LDS (Mormon) Audiences at a BYU Art Museum

David W. Scott

Art

Recommended

Volume Art

Volume Art

Volume Art

Correlating Orthodoxy and Style: Institutionally “Approved” Christ-Centered Art in LDS Visual Resources and Meetinghouses, 1990–2021

Racial Innocence and the Christus-Based Latter-day Saints Symbol

The Great Awakening of the LDS-Mormon Art Scene | Chase Westfall, Great Awakening: Vision and Synthesis in Latter-day Saint Contemporary Art

Volume Art

Abstraction in Latter-day Saint Art: An Interview with Chase Westfall

Volume Art

ART NOTE Black Joy

All Content

Volume Art

Volume Art

Volume Art

Correlating Orthodoxy and Style: Institutionally “Approved” Christ-Centered Art in LDS Visual Resources and Meetinghouses, 1990–2021

Racial Innocence and the Christus-Based Latter-day Saints Symbol

The Great Awakening of the LDS-Mormon Art Scene | Chase Westfall, Great Awakening: Vision and Synthesis in Latter-day Saint Contemporary Art

Volume Art

Abstraction in Latter-day Saint Art: An Interview with Chase Westfall

Volume Art

ART NOTE Black Joy

Dialogue 2022 Summer Issue

The Divine Feminine in Mormon Art

Review: Delightful Futuristic Mormon Morality Tale Offers Teaching Tool for Progressive Parents Matt Page, Future Day Saints: Welcome to the New Zion

The Mask We Must Wear in a Racist Society: Reflections of Black Suffering in the LDS Church Through Art

The Most Beautiful Thing about Kathleen Peterson’s “The Woman Taken in Adultery”

Elegy for the Eaten

A Blessing for Starting Over

Totality & Light

Symbols on Canvas

Land and Line

The Absurd in Art and Mormonism

On My Art

Spring 2019 Issue Art

Finding God in the Abstract | Hildebrando de Melo and Glen Nelson, Nzambi (God): Hildebrando de Melo.

The Color of Longing

Letters to the Editor

Reflections on Life, Art, Loss, and Love

What is an LDS Artist? | Glen Nelson, Joseph Paul Vorst

Out of Angola

The Loss of Art, The Art of Loss

“In Brick and Stone”: The Art of Paul L. Anderson

Art

An Intuitive Approach to Art

Norma: An Excerpt from The Encore

Art

a time to believe abuse victims

Remember Me: Discursive Needlework and the Sewing Sampler of Patty Bartlett Sessions

Thoughts on Lane Twitchell

Islamic Art and the LDS Faith

Reflections

Art

Art

International Art Competition

Drawings

Mormons and the Visual Arts

In Defense of the Market Place

The Dichotomy of Art and Religion

Art, Religion and the Market Place

Art and Belief: A Critique

Art and Belief: A Group Exhibition

Morality or Empathy? A Mormon in the Theater

The Coalville Tabernacle: A Photographic Essay

On Haiku Art

Notes from the Artist’s Sketchbook

Notes on Brigham Young’s Aesthetics

Livre d’Artiste: The Book of Abraham by Day Christensen and Wulf Barsch

Sand Dollars Gracing a Shore Within Reach

Words for Late Summer

I Am Watching Four Canada Geese

Listening to Mozart’s Requiem While Crossing the San Rafael

“Similarity of Priesthood in Masonry”: The Relationship between Freemasonry and Mormonism

Toldot/Generations

Poor Sad, Dead Girls

Women of Cards

Pottery

Hard Publics

The Lighthouse Bookstore